A New SmartApp That Gives Your Home a Voice

Many people have already seen the SmartThings Labs integration with Sonos, but today, we’re happy to announce a brand-new way to give your home a custom voice with SmartThings.

Enter ObyThing.

iPhone-SmartThings-169x300Created by Brice Dobry, a developer in the SmartThings Community, the ObyThing Music SmartApp allows you to play a sound or start a playlist when your SmartThings devices are activated. Here’s a list of features that are possible with SmartThings and ObyThing.

In addition, you can also perform many of the same actions with the ObyThing Music SmartApp as you can with the SmartThings Labs & Sonos integration–without having to purchase the actual Sonos speaker. For instance:

• Set up custom alerts when things happen (ie: a barking dog if the SmartSense Multi sensor or SmartSense Open/Closed sensor on your door or window opens unexpectedly)

• Trigger a custom greeting to play when a family member enters the front door

• Set up a message to play when your mail has arrived, if a door opens unexpectedly, or when a variety of other things take place

Note: In order to perform these actions, you’d simply access the Sonos Notify With Sound SmartApp that’s found in SmartThings Labs. When prompted to select a speaker system in the field “On this Sonos player,” you’d just select “ObyThing”–or whatever it is that you’ve named it.

Ready to get started? Here’s how:

  1. Purchase the Mac app ($3.99) from the Apple App Store, download, and install it.
  2. Start the app and a small icon will appear in the menu bar in OSX.
  3. Install the ObyThing Music SmartApp on your smart phone (See video below)
  4. User configures the SmartApp
    1. First add the IP address and port info from the Mac App
    2. Then select which hub to set it up with
    3. Optionally, assign a name and choose the specific modes in which to allow the app to run

Here’s a video showing you how to set up ObyThing on your SmartThings app. Note: The ObyThing Music SmartApp is located in the SmartThings Labs category, which is found under the More header of SmartSetup.

 

And here’s a video of ObyThing in action with Airplay:

Category:
Featured, SmartThings Updates
Tags:
, , , , ,

Join the conversation! 14 Comments

  1. Gotta ask: Android?

    Reply
    • Hey, Kurt: This SmartApp was created by a third-party developer from our Community, so we can’t speak to his future integration plans. We just thought it was really cool and valuable, so we published it on our open platform for others to use.

      Reply
    • I believe you only download a Mac App (not iOS) on your computer, you then use the SmartThings app to configure and control your Mac. There’s no unique iOS or Android app.

      Reply
  2. I just got it set up, Android or IOS doesn’t matter. Having a Mac (iMac, Mini, Air, Macbook Hackintosh) is the only thing that does until there is a windows or linux version. The app is pretty slick… now to write some smart apps to make it smarter :)

    Reply
    • Hey Sidney. If you come up with any great SmartApps to work with ObyThing Music and you want to share, send them our way. We plan on adding a page on the site for SmartApps that work with ObyThing to do cool stuff.

      Reply
  3. Hi guys – It looks like http://obything.obycode.com/ is not working. All the links seems dead.

    Reply
    • Sorry about that. Our hosting company experienced a major DDoS attack yesterday and some systems were down for a while, including email (sorry for delayed mail responses). Everything should be up and running correctly today.

      Reply
  4. Mac-only support should have been mentioned earlier. Thanks for getting me excited for nothing!

    Reply
  5. Does not seem to work. I have everything correctly installed, but on el capitan this does not work :(

    Reply
  6. Just downloaded this from the App Store on my Mac Mini running El Capitan (v.10.11.2). The app won’t even start. Click on the icon and… nothing. I should have read the recent reviews as this has happened to others. Now, it is nothing more than an icon I purchased for $4.99.

    Reply
  7. Sorry if this us foolish question but I can’t find ObyThing in apple app store on my Mac. Where can I get it?

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *