I’ve been digging into the SmartThings Automation platform a bit. Admittedly, I’m fumbling around a bit. 😊

According to the definitions in the documentation, I think I want to build a WebHook automation. As per the documentation, one should consider an “when the end-user configures the Automation to monitor an open/close sensor, the Automation subscribes to open/close sensor events. SmartThings Cloud waits on these open/close sensor events. Anytime an open/close event occurs, it is first noticed by SmartThings Cloud, which then calls back the SmartApp.”

This is pretty much what I would like to do. I’d like to be able to track the batteries that need replaced on my some 200+ devices in my house.

So I’m going through the process to setup an Automation.

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Select automations from the side menu.

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Then select new.

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Now, on the automation setup screen this appears to be relatively familiar for an OAuth-enabled WebHook type integration with some additional meta-data for use in the Human Interface.

I couldn’t find the documentation for what the WebHook interface should be to meet the contract of the interface. According to the documentation, I’m supposed to support taking in a JSON payload. So maybe I should just create a HTTP Post endpoint that takes a single string as a parameter? Wish there was better documentation.

So just to hack around, I created a vanilla ASP.NET Core Web API and deployed it to Azure App service just to see what would happen when I plugged in the target URL and it failed (as expected).

I think I found the documentation that explains the data contracts I need to handle. It looks like you need to handle various lifecycle events. Starting with the first one, “PING”, that I assume is only used when the SmartApp is registered. I’ll updated my WebAPI and post again when I make progress.