What is webCoRE?
webCoRE (“Community’s own Rule Engine”) is a free, ‘rule engine’, with advanced capabilities, for Samsung SmartThings; WebCoRE enables full customization of tiggers, automation flows, geo-fencing, and much more.
While users can create their own scripts, no coding experience is required to get started. WebCoRE interprets and executes each custom script using the companion SmartApp for SmartThings.
WebCoRE Wiki
The WebCoRE team maintains a tremendously helpful wiki with detailed guides to each step. To help you be efficient with time, here are the most relevant ‘getting started’ pages on the Wiki for anyone who’s new to webCoRE. Click here to visit the webCoRE Wiki homepage.
Steps to Setup WebCoRE (new installation)
- Install core components (2 options)
- Using GitHub via the SmartThings Developer IDE (easy, if you’ve setup GitHub)
- Manually Add webCoRE components to SmartThings
- Enable oAuth for WebCoRE (required)
- Finish Setup in SmartThings mobile app
- Access webCoRE from a Desktop Browser (much easier to create/edit on desktop)
What can webCoRE do?
The platform is capable of executing automation flows using inputs from any Z-Wave or Zigbee device connected to your SmartThings hub. These automation flows, or “pistons” (using webCoRE terminology), can be as simple as “Turn on lamp when motion detected”, or as complex as: “If I am home, and it is between 4pm and 6pm, and the mailbox has not been opened today; when the mailbox lid is opened, flash the kitchen lights, say “Mail has arrived” on the Kitchen Sonos”, and send me a push notification alert.”
Believe it or not, even you can write a complex webCoRE piston like the example above. All piston creation takes place in the web dashboard of webCoRE, and use a clean graphic user interface with human-readable words and elements.
Here’s an example piston I use to automatically open the garage door and prepare the house upon my arrival home:
In the example above, the script checks to see if I have been gone for a minimum of 30 minutes, and if I return home, open the garage door, unlock the exterior doors, turn on the air conditioning, and fade the lights on.
