They are forcing everyone to use their new ST App, as well as new Alexa and Google Home integrations, where all of your devices are shared no matter what. And, they are killing off Echo Speaks in its current form due to it being very resource intensive.
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Well that just stinks, I wasn't planning on delivery of bad news and doing extra work this fall. Now I will be forced to. Time to give the news to my SmartThings clients that they can stick with the platform and get no support from me or move to a better supported platform.
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Just shut my SmartThings off yesterday. What timing!
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Here comes the next wave of new HE users. 
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Hubitat couldn't possibly have better timing on the improvements they just released for their Alexa skill (and, I think, have announced more to come).
At least some of the reasons for them moving to non-ST-hosted SmartApp execution makes sense. This isn't the first time they've done this, though it's the first time I remember them being so public about it. I remember early HomeKit integrations with whatever that device-to-JSON-serializer SmartApp was getting similar treatment, though in that case I was personally contacted by ST support and told to upgrade to a newer version with changes they requested from the dev. 
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Still no info though on when the Groovy IDE will be shut down for custom DTH's and SmartApps. It appears that as long as your app/DTH complies with the published capability schema you're good for this year at least. Is that how other folks are reading this?
ordered C7 the first day it was released, and now my ST hub has a bunch of off line devices.
but hubitat is not perfect either. a lot of its own issues. but at least we have almost full control.
goodbye ST. maybe I should go to the ST community to sell my hub.
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Yeah I believe that is correct. If everything was updated with the "new app compatibility" you're good "for now." I don't know about the "at least a year" part, I haven't seen an official date for the end of Groovy support yet?
Edit: Indeed, ST simply said they will be "communicating we developers more down the road on what that looks like and how the transition will work." no timing given.
The problem is, as a developer, they're asking me to shoulder the cost of hosting integrations because they don't want to. What would encourage me to recode everything I already built + take on the expense of hosting it all??? It's not that it doesn't make sense, it's a consequence of them deciding to be cloud based. I just wonder how many developers who built complicated integrations in Groovy want to recode it all in another language and pay to host it for their free users. I wouldn't./
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Not many, if any at all. I no I would not pay to host code for other users, especially not for free. Plus, I have never taken even one donation from a user, as I am happy to give back to the community. Once the company starts pushing these devs away, the platform will lose that which made it attractive to so many.
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Yeah, I didn't mean to say it was easier for developers or likely to be better for end-users in the long run, just that it makes some sense if you are Samsung. I imagine the "new" model won't be a huge problem for larger companies that can just pay for this hosting and maybe hope to offset it by luring in more people to buy their products if those people care about ST compatibility (or like the "iPod/iPhone effect" end up buying more of their other products). I don't imagine this working out well for small developers like most of us unless there's an easy way for users (or devs*) to host these things on their own with minimal to no cost or effort like there currently is.
From an end-user standpoint, I see this eventually (or, again, possibly quickly) translating into fewer and fewer integrations and SmartApps, eroding the appeal of the platform ("works with lots of things!", "lots of custom SmartApps from the community!", etc.). I'd consider setting up a local server (if possible) for me to run my own SmartApps,* but I'd be hard pressed to pay for one on my own for an unknown quantity of community users.
*and there sort of already is--that's why I switched to Hubitat!
Or they could have just made a new hub with more local execution like they’ve talked about for years.
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Dan does ST_Anything work in the new app or will it ride off into the sunset?
I honestly don't know how well it works with the new ST App. I know users can currently set up a ST_Anything device from start to finish in the ST Groovy IDE - so the Classic App may not be required. However, I don't know if all of the child devices and the parent will behave correctly at all in the New ST App. There have been a few Pull Requests where users have added some metadata to improve compatibility with the New ST App. However, I really have no plans to put much effort into ST at this point, knowing all Groovy Code is going away in 2021.
UPDATE: I did make some minor changes to the ST_Anything Groovy DTHs to make them more compatible with the 'New' ST App. However, some GUI functionality is missing for the Parent Device. I am not going to bother to even try to fix it as custom devices/capabilities for the 'New' ST App are not trivial whatsoever.
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The cost of Storage is not free!
That's what the ST model has been all of these years, and as their numbers increased, their overall costs in this area went up dramatically.
Although we all know that the cost of Storage (in terms of $/Mb) has actually gone done (dramatically), if the number of users increases, their overall costs go up!
It's only reasonable that they try another model to recoup these costs.
Further compounding the matter for the is their cloud execution - of course that isn't free. As anyone who has recently purchased AWS (or any other competitor) capacity lately knows, this is also a large cost!
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Their plan was they’d recoup costs by selling you all their fancy appliances that integrate exclusively with st. As it turns out, smart home Compatibility Isn’t the #1 deciding factor when you buy a fridge
My last ST integration was Arlo. I ditched Arlo a couple of weeks ago and went with IP cameras and Blue Iris. So goodbye ST! And good riddance Arlo!
I control Blue Iris camera arming using NodeRed MQTT integration. All is good now!
EDIT: Anyone want to buy an Arlo system? PM me for details.
My take from this is that WiFi integrations (Honeywell prestige thermostat) will keep working, however I suppose I’m now at the mercy of them allowing hubconnect to get that Tstst into HE (my system is limited based on wiring/# of wires and it would be a huge effort to change; I’ve looked into it many times).
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I'll be honest, I'm sad to see it go. I was a kickstarter backer of SmartThings, attended their DC launch party, and did a few in-person user experience interviews with them. I've always been a strong defender of the platform because though it had it's faults, it had a very strong community behind it, and seemingly anything was possible.
With the announcement a bit back that Groovy would get turned off, I knew I needed to look elsewhere. When I found out that Rule Machine, Rooms Manager, and most importantly to me, a custom integration with the SmartThings Arduino Shield for my security system by ritchierich were all living with Hubitat, it was a super obvious move.
I still a lot to learn, experimentation to do, and minor bugs to squash, but bringing over around 40 devices and having little to no issue getting them up and running has been great.
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I didn't say that....I said...
as in, you'll be good up through January 2021 at a minimum, since they published the schedule for the rest of this year. It is a big distinction.
