Modes, SHM, Routines... and more!

[josh]

We are excited to announce another SharpTools.io release which brings some awesome enhancements to the web dashboard and Rule Engine!

As the title implies, we are introducing support for Modes, Smart Home Monitor, and Routines… but we didn’t stop there! We are also bringing additional enhancements to the web dashboard including custom icons, custom colors, clock tiles, dashboard tiles, hyperlink tiles, and more!

Tip: Click any of the title headings to jump to more details about that topic.

Rule Engine:

• New Triggers:
  • Smart Home Monitor Armed/Disarmed
  • Routine Executed
  • Mode Changed
• New Conditions:
  • Smart Home Monitor status
  • Active Mode
• New Actions
  • Arm/Disarm Smart Home Monitor
  • Execute Routines
  • Change Modes

Dashboard:

• New Tiles:
  • Smart Home Monitor
  • Routines
  • Modes
  • Dashboard Navigation
  • Clock (w/ optional Date)
  • Hyperlink (w/ App opening capabilities!)
• New Customizations:
  • Tile Colors
  • Tile Icons
  • Tile Labels

Rule Engine

We are introducing several new features for the SharpTools.io Rule Engine and hope you enjoy them as much as we do!

New Rule Triggers

Now you can have your rules triggered by changes to Smart Home Monitor armed/disarmed status, modes changing, and routines being executed!

Just like Thing triggers, the new triggers will cause a rule to be run anytime your specified trigger conditions are met. For example, if you want to run a special set of actions on anytime Smart Home Monitor is set to ‘Armed (Home)’, now you can!

New Rule Conditions

Now you can setup IF conditions in your rules based on the armed/disarmed status of Smart Home Monitor or the active Mode!

Just like IF conditions for things, the new conditions allow you to implement IF-THEN-ELSE logic in your rules when certain conditions are met. For example, you might have a rule trigger whenever motion is detected, but you only want to take action is the SHM status is Armed or your home is set to a certain mode, now you can!

New Rule Actions

Now you can Execute Routines, Change the Mode your home is in, or Arm and Disarm Smart Home Monitor!

Just like Thing actions, the SHM, Mode, and Routine actions allow you run actions and change the status of things in your home. For example, you can now setup a routine in SmartThings which is comprised of a set of actions and then run that Routine directly from the SharpTools.io Rule Engine!

Similarly, you can change your SmartThings Mode which could be used as a condition in a SharpTools Rule or in a SmartThings Routine! And finally, you can set your Smart Home Monitor status to Armed (Away), Armed (Home), or Disarmed from a rule - for example, you might set a rule that IF all your presence devices are not present, then SHM will be set to ‘Armed (Away)’ after a delay of 10 minutes.

Dashboard:

We are introducing several new features for the SharpTools.io Dashboards and hope you enjoy them as much as we do!

New Tiles

As the heart and soul of the dashboard, it’s always exciting to announce the release of new tiles as that means new actions and ways to display your data. As we’ve continued to introduce new tile types, we have outgrown our original ‘Add Thing’ dialog… accordingly, we’ve designed a new ‘Add Item’ dialog which displays categories of items to add. As you click on a category, the menu expands to show you the available items for that category.

SHM, Routines, and Modes

The SharpTools.io web dashboard now includes several new ‘location’ related features including tiles for Smart Home Monitor, Routines, and Modes.

Each of the tiles comes in a ‘single-item’ and ‘picker’ variant. The single-item variants allow you to pick a specific mode to change to, specific routine to execute, or specific SHM status to change to. When combined with the new Tile Colors feature, the single-item Mode and SHM tiles will change to your desired active color whenever that mode or SHM status is active.

The ‘picker’ variant of the SHM, Mode, and Routine tiles provides a dialog with a list of options to choose from whenever it is clicked. For example, the Mode Picker shows a list of all the available modes that you can choose from when clicked… and also shows the currently active mode in the footer of the tile. Also note that for the SHM and Mode picker variants, the icon will change to reflect the currently active SHM state or Mode.

Dashboard Navigation

With all these new features, you’re probably going to want to create several dashboards to better categorize all your content. And if you have more dashboards, you’ll need a way to navigate between them, right? That’s why we are excited to announce Dashboard Navigation tiles!

Dashboard Navigation tiles let you pick which dashboard you want to navigate to when clicked up. Like other tiles, they support custom color and icons which helps them better fit into your dashboards and reflect where they are going to take you!

Clock

As you might expect, Clock tiles display the time! Optionally, you can choose to include the date on your clock tile. Like other tiles, clock tiles include support for changing their dimensions, color, and adding a label!

Hyperlink

Hyperlink tiles open the doors for infinite possibilities by allowing you to link to external content. Link to other web application pages in your network (like Kodi) or on the web (like your favorite news).

Additionally, hyperlinks include support for opening other applications on your iOS or Android mobile device. For example, in the screenshot below, the ‘SharpTools App’ hyperlink opens the SharpTools Android app and the ‘Community’ hyperlink opens the SharpTools Community web page.

Check out the following article for more details on how to use the Hyperlink tiles:

How do I create a Hyperlink tile? - SharpTools Knowledge Base

In order to link to other applications using Fully, be sure to enable ‘Open URL Schemes in Other Apps’ in the Fully Kiosk Browser settings. From there, you’ll need to discover the appropriate URL to open your desired app.

Check out the following KB article for some links you can use in Android and iOS:

How can I link to other Android or iOS apps from the SharpTools.io Web...

New Customizations

As shown in some of the previous sections of this post, tiles now support a variety of customizations including the ability to customize the dimensions, colors, icon, and label.

In order to access any of the customization features for a tile, start by adding the tile to your dashboard. Once the tile is on your dashboard, make sure you are in edit mode for your dashboard and the ... overflow menu will show up in the top-right corner of your tile. From there, you can select edit and the Tile Editor will be displayed:

Note: In the current release, the tile editor shows up in the top-left corner of the page or where you last dragged it to. If you have a large dashboard which requires scrolling, be sure to scroll up to find the Tile Editor if you can’t find it.

Tile Colors

This release includes support for a new tile color customization! This feature allows you to customize the colors used for each individual tile. If you simply check the box for ‘Color’ in the Tile Editor, the default colors of a dark gray default color and a warm orange active color will be used.

For tile types that support reporting an ‘active’ state, the active color will be used any time the tile becomes active… otherwise the default color will be used. If you want quickly reverse or invert the active state, just check the ‘Invert Active State’ checkbox below the color pickers.

Note that for most devices, the active state is when a device is on, closed, contacted, or secure. If you prefer to only highlight ‘exceptions’ on your dashboard, you might choose to use the default colors and check the ‘Invert Active State’ box for many devices like Locks and Doors.

Note that we have plans for a larger theme customization feature, but we hope you enjoy the tile customizer as a step in the right direction!

Tile Icons

As the name might suggest, you can now customize the icons for each individual tile! In the Tile Editor, check the box for ‘Icon’ and then tap the blue ‘Select Icon’ button to be shown a grid of available icons.

Once you select the icon, it will override whatever the default icon was for your chosen tile type.

Tile Labels

The new Tile Labels feature allows you to customize the label which is shown at the top of your tile. In the Tile Editor, check the box for ‘Label’ and type a custom label into the Label field. Once you save your changes, the new title will be displayed on the icon.

This feature is especially helpful if you’ve given your Things long or cryptic names in SmartThings in order to organize them in a special way. Now you can use context friendly and easy to understand names on your tiles.

[Adrian_C]

Can’t figure out how to make it when I press SHM toggle it changes to a diff color. I tried the settings for each tile, but nothing will show which one is “active”.

[josh]

The top left one in your screenshot should be have the active color applied if an active color was applied (eg. Either a dashboard level color or tile override).

Checking on my side now…

Edit: It looks like the latest release with dashboard level colors may have introduced a bug. I’ll get a hotfix out - thanks for reporting.

[josh]

Hotfix has been deployed. You should see active colors for individual SHM and Mode tiles as long as an active color is either set directly on the tile or in the Dashboard Settings.

Note that as noted in the original post, the active highlighting applies to the single-item variant of the SHM and Mode tiles (eg. not the picker type) and will highlight if an active color is set and that particular mode/SHM state is active.

Thanks again for reporting it!

[Adrian_C]

SHM works now! Thx

But my Alarm(.com) virtual buttons based on a community device handler/app doesn’t seem to show which one is activated. Any ideas on getting that to work?

[josh]

Can you share which DTH/SmartApp you are using for Alarm.com?

The DTH would need to report an attribute with a state we could use to determine that it is active (like switch = on). The button state would only be active when it’s actively being held down - it automatically returns to a normal state when it isn’t being held anymore.

[Adrian_C]

https://github.com/schwark/smartthings-alarmcom?files=1

[Adrian_C]

These buttons for my alarm system do show when active inside the Smartthings app. Not sure if that’s the same thing.

[josh]

Thanks for sharing the link to the DTH - it looks like it implements both Switch and Button (Momentary) capabilities and the SharpTools web dashboard currently weighs buttons as a higher default than switches.

@Tommy has some Inovelli switches which also implement button and switch capabilities, so I’m looking into the best way to handle this.

My broader vision would be to enable the selection of the specific tile type you want to use if the device implements multiple capabilities - maybe part of the ‘Change Layout’ feature like how the Hero Attribute layout and thermostat layout selections work.

In the short term, I might swap the weighting so that switches are higher than buttons, but I need to think through the implications of this.

[Tommy]

Hey @josh. I bought some GE switches too. Not sure if they present differently. Be really nice for all the switches to be able to pick the glow if able. I’ll install them this weekend. Thanks!!

[josh]

I just pushed an update tonight which prioritizes Switches over Buttons (among other things) Refresh your browser and you should see the new changes.

[msazone]

How do you implement a trigger that can set armed away with exit delay for 60 sec? The use case is when an user set armed away from Sharptools.io, an exit delay can be fired to allow the user leave the house within a period of time. Thank you.

[josh]

Are you trying to delay the arming of SHM from a dashboard or a rule?

You could create a Rule that has a delay for 60 seconds and then arms SHM… then you could add that rule to your dashboard as a Rule Tile and even pin protect it. (You may want to remove any SHM tiles that allow you to arm as those would not be delayed)

Alternatively, some people are using the SHM Delay SmartApp. I haven’t personally used it, but I understand that it effectively creates virtual sensors that you use in SHM in place of your real sensors and alert events from those sensors are automatically muted/disabled during the delay. This would allow you to keep all the native SHM tiles in place, but it seems to be a bit more involved in terms of setup.

[msazone]

Thanks for the reply. I actually use SHM Delay with webcore for a keypad. Currently this can not work for my situation with Sharpetools. The SHM Delay has 2 parts. One is the virtual sensor you mentioned. Another one is for the real keypad. The real keypad is base on the request from the keypad then delay the SHM status to be set. The virtual sensor is base on the virtual sensor that connects to a real sensor. Since I don’t have a real sensor of my entry door, I am unable to do this way.

Thank you very much to provide me the options.

[msazone]

Hi josh,
I actually wanted to report a bug but I forgot. After I created a rule to set armed away with a delay then I tried to use it with a security pin. When I was in the edit mode, I hit the 3 dots on the tile, the pin screen popped. After entered the pin, the screen just showed a loading circle. Even if the screen was gone, I still couldn’t enter the edit screen of the tile. It’s also impossible to drag and drop the tile. Once you hit the mouse, the pin protection pops.

My rule is simple. There is no trigger involved. I only have a flow with a delay then an action to set armed away.

Thank you

[josh]

Thanks for reporting - I was able to reproduce this on a rule tile after enabling PIN protection on it. It looks like the PIN protection is improperly getting triggered when trying to edit a Rule Tile with PIN protection enabled. I’ve recorded this and we’ll get a fix out. Thanks for reporting!

[msazone]

Hi josh,
BTW, it’s not only for PIN protection popup. It’s for all types of popup such as prompt for confirmation.

Thank you.

[josh]

Just an update that tonight’s SharpTools.io platform update included a fix for the Security setting on Rule Tiles triggering in edit mode that you reported. Thanks again for your support!