STBitBarApp

SmartThings BitBar App

Overview:

Monitor SmartThings sensors from the Apple OSX Menu Bar. Currently it works for displaying temperature, contact, presence and motion sensors, and controlling switch/dimmer level devices, locks and also thermostat control. If there’s interest I can add more devices and features, or anyone in the community is welcome to modifying it.

Section 1: Installation:

Section 1: Making the SmartApp available via the IDE

1. Setup the SmartApp: Find your SmartThings IDE link (Note: USA Site URL).
2. Click My SmartApps > then New SmartApp (top-right green button)
3. Click the From Code tab and paste the SmartApp code from GitHub then click Create.
4. Enable OAuth: Back at the My SmartApps page, click the little edit icon for the BitBar Output App, then click OAuth section, then click Enable OAuth in SmartApp.

Section 2: Installing the SmartApp

1. Now for actually installing the SmartApp: On your mobile device in the SmartThings app > tap Automation > SmartApps > + Add a SmartApp (at the bottom). Go down to My Apps > select BitBar Output App.
2. Open the IDE Live Logging in a separate browser tab.
3. Tap to Enable the API then tap Done. You should have a URL and secret displayed in the Live Logging screen tab.
4. Copy/Save these two lines to input in the ST_Python_Logic.cfg in the step ahead.
5. Select Devices: choose the devices you want to display/control then tap Done.

Section 3: Setting up BitBar and ST Plugin

1. Download and install the BitBar app
2. IMPORTANT: When selecting a plugin directory, make sure you create one that does not contain spaces. There were issues in an older release of BitBar if the path contained spaces, but supposedly it’s fixed, but I still had issues in some cases. If there were no spaces, it always worked.
3. Download the ST plugin from GitHub. Copy ONLY the ST.5m.sh file to the plugin directory you specified along with the ST subfolder containing the Python script and the ST_Python_Logic.cfg (make sure these two files stay in the folder named ST). These files shoud be the only files in the plugins directory and the ST subfolder.
4. Add your URL and secret to the ST_Python_Logic.cfg file: Open the ST_Python_Logic.cfg with a text editor of your choice. put the URL that was displayed in step 5 in the smartAppURL variable and Secret in the secret variable. Change any other variables for customization of the App.
5. Save the ST_Python_Logic.cfg file in the ST subfolder.
6. Start the BitBar app and you should see your status’ in the menubar!

Issues / Limitations:

1. Calling cURL via Python is not the best thing to do, but I wanted to make it as simple as possible using the built-in Python available in macOS/OSX. It would be better to use the requests library, but this requires setting up a new Python installation.
2. BitBar is capable of cycling through multiple status bar items, but all I really needed was to display one temperature sensor at the top with the rest in the dropdown. So the app only allows a selection of one temp sensor and a custom title (I didn’t want to use the full sensor name since menubar real estate is top dollar)
3. There is no alignment supported by BitBar so it’s all done by character spacing, which means using monospace fonts. Which also means a limited selection of pretty looking fonts. Menlo works good enough for me, but feel free to change it.

Misc Features / Tips

• Hold Alt while menu is open to display battery information
• Max items per sensor catagory can be set in configuration file (if you want to save space but still have access to the sensors)

I’m open to any feedback or suggestions/features! Let me know what you think!