Does Flair Work With SmartThings Hub?
Hello -
My five new Mitsubishi mini-splits have been installed and they are absolutely delightful. My Flair Pucks are on backorder, but once they get here I will be over the moon.
I'm considering getting the SmartThings Hub from Aeotec or the Hubitat. SmartThings was created by Samsung, and is often refered to as the Samsung SmartThings Hub. Hubitat looks to be a little more versatile than SmartThings.
Will Flair Pucks play nice with SmartThings and/or Hubitat? I don't see Flair on the lists on Aeotec or Hubitat's websites.
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I guess it depends on what you are trying to do. I have the Samsung hub and I got the pucks and vents working using the Flair API. There were developers in the Smartthings forums wanting to charge for DHT support, so I wrote my own. So far I have implemented being able to open and close vents, set temperatures in the pucks, and set heat/cold mode. The assumption is that you got everything working via the Flair app before you try to control things via the Flair API and Smartthings.
You are welcome to try what I have. Obviously, the setup assumes that you are a little tech savvy, but it is not too bad. Send me a note if interested.
Regards,
Jose
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Hi Jim,
Jose Paredes is correct. There's no current SmartThings integration with Flair and you can use our API. Also, you have to create a Flair account using the Flair app and add all your devices via the Setup process before you can control them with the API.
Out of curiosity, why not use the Flair app to do these things?
All the best,
Finn
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Out of curiosity, why not use the Flair app to do these things?
I can't speak for Jim S, but for me it is because I have all my home automation controlled via the Smartthings app. Lights, thermostats, garage doors, fireplace, movement detectors, etc. It's useful to have it all in once place.
For example, I have a simple smartapp that detects if my thermostat has changed mode from cold to heat or vice versa and changes the flair mode accordingly. This can happen all the time at this time of year in Austin, TX (last night was 40 degrees and tomorrow will be close to 80 degrees).
Regards,
Jose
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"why not use the Flair app to do these things?"
As Jose points out, it would be nice to have everything under one "roof" on my phone or tablet. It's also my understanding that with the SmartThings or Hubitat hubs (I'm leaning towards Hubitat) I can have some rudimentary IFTTT actions. I'm just starting on my home automation learning curve, but it seems that Zigbee and Z-Wave are the two protocols that are essentially the gold standard and I'm surprised Flair doesn't use those protocols.
Jose Paredes - I would be very interested in what you have, Thank You! But I don't have the Flair Pucks yet, I will set a reminder to ping you when I get them.
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Jim S - I can't vouch for Hubitat, though. I've only written DHTs for SmartThings.
Regards,
Jose
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Hi BrianH,
In Flair, you can temporarily unassign the Puck from that room and use the Smart Vent widget to manually close the Vent.
Later, you can reassign the Puck to that room to restart automating the Smart Vent operation.
All the best,
Finn
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Hey Finn -
I appreciate the woirkarounds like you mentioned to BrianH above. But the unassigning then reassigning a puck seems to be extra steps that shouldn't be needed. Really, the more I read about the Zigbee and Z-Wave protocols, the sillier it seems that Flair doesn't support them. In the spring and fall shoulder seasons, there are always many weeks in a row where we use heat in the morning, then air conditioning in the afternoon. With the Mitsubishi mini-splits I can't turn on any afternoon air conditioning until I've turned off all the units that were being used for heating. I'm pretty sure with the Puck app I can open each unit, turn it off, then go back and turn on the A/C I want. But if Flair would subscribe to Zigbee/Z-Wave, I should be able to create a single action that will do all of that for me.
Disclaimer - I don't have my pucks yet and I don't have my Hubitat yet, so I might be speaking out my backside. If so, please be gentle while straightening me out :-)
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Jim S My previous post to you got deleted, most likely because there was a link that could be interpreted as commercial.
A) Don't hold your breath about Flair going Zigbee or Z-Wave. Keen is Zigbee but I think they are on life support looking at their lack of every products. So that does not leave many options...
B) I'm using Hubitat to connect with the Flair API, using a paid plug-in. If you go to the Hubitat's forum you will find easily what Yves Racine has a solution. I've been using the Flair-Hubitat integration for maybe a full year and find it very reliable, although I'm a firm believer that Flair should come-up with a local gateway or any other local solution. The downside of the Flair-Hubitat integration is the polling time of (5) minutes. That being said you can also issue on demand "Refresh" command if you need the latest status before taking an action.
C) Have not tried the Smarthing but Hubitat is very stable. Rock solid.
Hope that helped.
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Michel V For the Flair-Hubitat integration, since Hubitat does not require Internet (As I understand it), Does it use internet to control Flair vents, or can it control them locally?
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Hi Jose,
I would be interested in your custom DTH for SmartThings if you could point me in the right direction.
Thanks,
AHB
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Victor What Hubitat does is handle/communicate with Flair's web API. Therefore you are depending on internet being available AND Flair servers being up an running. So this is not a local solution.
Anthony Berkemeyer Unless you want to build your own from scratch, riding on Jose Paredes work, you can search for "Flair vent" on ST forum and discover Yves Racine's paid version DTH.
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Hi Michel V
From what I saw on the ST form for Yves Racine's paid version of DTH, it requires the classic app which is no longer available. Unless I'm missing something.
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Try to go to ecomatiqhomes dot com
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Anthony Berkemeyer : I don't mind sharing my code for vents and pucks. The code is able to open/close vents, set temperature of pucks and set mode (cool/heat). I don't have fancy features like figuring out if the puck/vent are offline, for example. For the code to work you must have at least one puck installed in your system and and access to the API. You don't have to know how to use the API, but you do need personal API access (ID and Secret) to use the code I wrote. Figuring out which puck/vent ID goes with which DHT instance is a little more involved. In order to not make this post to complicated, let me know if you get as far as getting API access and I will take you through the process.
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