I have sev­er­al win­dows PCs in my house that run Kodi. I wanted to con­nect them to SmartTh­ings for a range of pur­poses. There are vari­ous things that can be done depend­ing on the func­tion­al­ity you want.

Firstly I wanted to be able to put my PCs to sleep and wake them up again via a but­ton in SmartTh­ings. I have achieved this, although the pro­cess is quite a long one to set up. I’ll detail it below.

Next I wanted to be able to con­trol Kodi remotely via smartth­ings. This is reas­on­ably straight-for­ward to set up, again I detail how below

Lastly, I wanted to get the status of a PC in SmartTh­ings. This is so that when a PC goes to sleep I can use a routine in smartth­ings to turn off a power adapter with the home cinema amp­li­fi­ers plugged in. I ori­gin­ally looked at doing this with an energy sav­ing “smart” sock­et, but most of these have been dis­con­tin­ued and the reviews of them are mixed at best. Using SmartTh­ings seemed a more reli­able way to achieve the same thing, with the added bene­fit that I can over­ride the beha­viour at any time from the con­veni­ent of my phone.

PART A: Controlling sleep of a PC

I fol­lowed the (not in depth) art­icle on the SmartTh­ings for­um writ­ten by ront­al­ley. This took a bit of time to fig­ure out as many of the things required I had­n’t used before, but it was­n’t as tricky as I’d expect. I’ll give a more detailed ver­sion below.

Note — you will need the tar­get PC to have a fixed loc­al IP address (usu­ally in the format 192.168.x.x) and you will also need to know the MAC address of the net­work con­nec­tion it uses. If you don’t know how to find these then you’re not really the kind of user this guide is aimed at — you do need a bit of tech­nic­al know­ledge to do this kind of tinker­ing with SmartThings.

1. Configure the PC with WOL

• Hold the win­dows key and R to open the run menu
• Type in devmgmt.msc and press enter
• Expand ‘net­work adapters’
• Double click on the net­work adapter yo use to con­nect to your net­work — this will need to be either a wired eth­er­net con­nec­tion or a wire­less card built in (not a USB WiFi card). In my case this was “Real­tek PCIe GB Eth­er­net Con­nec­tion” on 1 PC and “Intel Eth­er­net Con­nec­tion” on another
• Click on the “Power Man­age­ment” tab
• Make sure all 3 boxes are ticked, then click OK and close device manager

2. Install Event Ghost on the PC you want to control

• Down­load Event­Ghost
• Install Event­Ghost on the PC you want to con­trol. The default set­tings are all ok to use. At the end of setup run EventGhost
• Cre­ate a new file (the white file but­ton at the top left) and then use “File, Save As” to save it some­where con­veni­ent (prob­ably in My documents)
• Right Click on “Auto­Start” and select “Add Plugin”
• Scroll to the bot­tom of the list and select “Web­Serv­er” and click OK
• Change the Event Pre­fix to ST. Do not cre­ate a user­name or password
• I changed the port as I already had some­thing run­ning on Port 80. You can change the port or leave it, but if you change it make a note of what you changed it to.
• Click OK, and then when the Win­dows Fire­wall prompt appears, click Allow.
• Click Can­cel to reject the offer to add the “Con­fig­ur­a­tion Tree” actions
• Right click on “Auto­Start” again, this time select “Cre­ate Macro”
• Expand “sys­tem” and then “power management”
• Select “Stand By” (or “Hibern­ate Com­puter” if that is what you prefer your PC to do)
• Click OK, and Click OK again on the next prompt (without choos­ing force close all programs)
• Now resave the file. We’re nearly (but not quite) fin­ished with it
• Go to File, Options
• Tick the first 2 options (run on star­tup and min­im­ise to tray) and click OK
• Leave Event­Ghost for now and go on to the next stage.

3. Install the Custom SmartThings Smart App “Send Events to EventGhost” in the SmartThings IDE

• Login to the SmartTh­ings IDE USA or EU & UK
• Click on “My SmartApps”
• Click on the green but­ton “+ New SmartApp”
• Click on “From Code”
• Open a new browser tab and go to the Git­Hub code for Send-Events-to-EventGhost
• Click on the “Raw” but­ton to view the raw code
• Copy and paste the code into the SmartApp cre­ation form on the oth­er tab you still have open
• Click “Cre­ate”
• Then Click “Save”, and finally “Pub­lish”.

4. Create a virtual switch in SmartThings IDE

• Still in the SmartTh­ings IDE (from the pre­vi­ous step) click on “My Devices”
• Click the Green “+ New Device”
• Give your device a sens­ible name and label — I used the same for each — using the name and loc­a­tion for the PC I wanted to control
• Change the type to “Vir­tu­al Switch”
• Give your device a unique net­work name — I used the format “vs-###” where ### was the com­puter name
• Select your Home loc­a­tion for Loc­a­tion and select your SmartTh­ings Hub (most of us only have 1) that you want to con­trol the switch from for the Hub
• Make sure ver­sion is set to published
• Leave group and zig­bee ID blank
• Click “Cre­ate”

5. Set the switch to send the “off” signal to event ghost via the Smart App

• Open the SmartTh­ings app on your mobile device
• Go to Auto­ma­tion and click on “+ Add a SmartApp”
• Scroll down to “My Apps” at the bot­tom of the list
• Select “Send Events to EventGhost”
• Enter the IP address of the PC you wanted to con­trol (it should have a fixed IP)
• Change the port from 80 if you changed the port in the Event­Ghost web­serv­er cre­ation earli­er, oth­er­wise leave it at 80
• Click on the “Switches” option and select the name of the vir­tu­al switch you cre­ated and then press “Done”
• Click “Save” and you should see “Suc­cess­fully added…” shown in green
• Switch back to “My Home” in the SmartTh­ings app and toggle the switch that you cre­ated on and off
• Go back to the PC you wish to con­trol and look at the “log” on the left hand side of “Event­Ghost”. You should see a couple of entries that show your switch toggle activ­ity in SmartTh­ings — mine were lis­ted as “ST.ST.CompName.switch.off []” and “ST.ST.CompName.switch.on []”
• We want to put the PC to sleep when we toggle the switch to off, so we need the entry “ST.ST.CompName.switch.off []”
• Drag and drop the “ST.ST.CompName.switch.off []” from the log onto the “Stand By” entry in the main panel
• Save the Event­Ghost file again
• Now try the but­ton in SmartTh­ings on your mobile device. When you toggle the switch to “off” the PC should go to sleep! You’ve com­pleted the first part of the oper­a­tion. The rest will be easy from here.

6. Setup webCoRE for your SmartThings

• I have based this on the offi­cial guide which is well worth look­ing at if you have any problems
• You will need a Git­Hub account (free) so if you don’t already have one then head over to Git­Hub and cre­ate one, it only takes a few seconds
• If (like me) you are in the EU or UK then yo uneed to activ­ate Git­Hub integ­ra­tion for your SmartTh­ings IDE.
  Go to this link and fol­low the instruc­tions to link your Git­Hub account to SmartThings
• Once you are done (or if it’s already set up) log into the SmartTh­ings IDE USA or EU & UK
• Click on “My SmartApps”
• Click on “Set­tings” and then click on “Add new repos­it­ory” in the win­dow that appears
• Use the fol­low­ing details for the repos­it­ory: Own­er= ady624; Name= web­CoRE; Branch= master
• Click “save”
• Next click the but­ton “Update from Repo” and select “web­CoRE (mas­ter)”
• Tick ONLY the “web­CoRE” option (not the oth­er 3 options), and tick the “pub­lish” but­ton and click “Execute Update”
• Click on “Update from Repo” again, and select “web­CoRE (mas­ter)” again
• Tick the remain­ing 3, tick “pub­lish” again, and click “Execute Update” again
• Click on the “edit prop­er­ties” but­ton (the right of the 2 but­tons) next to the web­CoRE smart app in the list
• Scroll down and click on “OAu­th” to expand the OAu­th options
• Click on “Enable OAu­th in Smart App” and then click “Update”
• Now go to the SmartTh­ings app on your mobile device
• Click on “Mar­ket­Place” at the bot­tom and then select “Smart Apps” at the top
• Scroll down to “My Apps” and select “web­CoRE” (not the dash­board, stor­age or piston)
• Fol­low the setup wiz­ard, includ­ing choos­ing a password
• Give web­CoRE access to the vir­tu­al switch you cre­ated earli­er when you get to the devices to con­trol choices.
  You can also select any oth­er devices you might want to con­trol web webCoRE
• Now click on the “Auto­ma­tion” tab in the SmartTh­ings App
• Scroll down until you find web­CoRE and click on “Dash­board”
• Enter the pass­word you cre­ated in the web­CoRE setup
• To make web­CoRE easi­er to use we are going to access it via the browser on your PC…
• In the auto­ma­tion tab click on web­CoRE again, but this time select “Register a browser”
• On your PC open dashboard.webcore.co and enter the code shown on your SmartTh­ings App
• Now you have web­CoRE set up we can use it to send a WOL signal

7. Create a webCoRE piston to send a WOL signal when the switch it toggled to “on”

• In the web­CoRE Dash­board, at the left hand side, click on “+ New Piston”
• Select “Cre­ate a blank piston”
• Set your Author Name, and give the pis­ton a sens­ible name (e.g. WOL) and click “Cre­ate”
• In the code view win­dow click on “+ add a new statement”
• Click on “Add an if” and select “Add a Condition”
• Change “what to com­pare” to “phys­ic­al device” and then change “noth­ing selec­ted” to the name of the vir­tu­al switch you cre­ated earli­er. Change the final box to “switch”
• Leave the next box set to “any interaction”
• Set the box “what kind of com­par­is­on” to “changes to” and set the value to “on”
• Click the “add” but­ton. You will see a little bit of code has been added.
• Next, click on the sec­tion of code that says “then” and click on “Add an action”
• Leave the “devices” box set to “loc­a­tion” and click “add a task”
• in the “Do” list, scroll down and select the “Wake a LAN device” option
• In the “value” field enter the MAC address of the PC you want to con­trol. Use the format xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
• Click the “Add” button
• Now click the “Save” but­ton at the top right of the web­CoRE Dash­board to save your code
• You should now be able to use the switch in your SmartTh­ings app to wake your PC from sleep mode as well as put­ting it to sleep. We finally have the basic func­tion­al­ity we wanted! Try put­ting the PC to sleep and wak­ing it up with the switch. Wait 20+ seconds between each oper­a­tion to give the PC chance to respond or the but­ton can get out of sync with the real state of the PC. We’ll do some more work next to keep the but­ton always in sync with the status of the PC.

8. Install HostPinger on an always-on PC

• To keep the switch always in sync with the real con­di­tion of the PC we ‘ping’ the PC from anoth­er device which needs to be always on. I have a serv­er which I have used for this pur­pose, but you could use a Rasp­berry Pi. This guide will focus on using a Win­dows PC, but you can use the guide by the STHost­Pinger app author to do this with oth­er devices.
• Down­load STHostPinger.exe from Git­Hub (EXE V2.zip) and extract it to a con­veni­ent loc­a­tion on the “always on” PC
• Modi­fy the config.config file that comes with STHostPinger.exe to include the IP address of the PC that your vir­tu­al switch controls
• Change the check inter­val if you wish — I changed mine to 10 seconds from the default of 30
• Keep the con­fig file open as we need 3 more set­tings for it once we have set up the smartapp
• Login to the SmartTh­ings IDE USA or EU & UK and click on “My SmartApps”
• Click on “Set­tings” and then click on “Add new repos­it­ory” in the win­dow that appears
• Use the fol­low­ing details for the repos­it­ory: Own­er= jebbett; Name= STHost­Pinger; Branch= master
• Click “save”
• Next click the but­ton “Update from Repo” and select “STHost­Pinger (mas­ter)”
• Tick the only option, and tick the “pub­lish” but­ton and click “Execute Update”
• Click on the “edit prop­er­ties” but­ton (the right of the 2 but­tons) next to the STHost­Pinger smart app in the list
• Scroll down and click on “OAu­th” to expand the OAu­th options
• Click on “Enable OAu­th in Smart App” and then click “Update”
• Now click on “My Device Handlers”
• Next click the but­ton “Update from Repo” and select “STHost­Pinger (mas­ter)”
• Tick the only option, and tick the “pub­lish” but­ton and click “Execute Update”
• Go to the SmartTh­ings app on your mobile device
• Click on Auto­ma­tion at the bot­tom right, and then scroll down and select “Add a SmartApp”
• Scroll down and choose “My Apps”
• Choose Host­Pinger, enter the name of the PC you want to mon­it­or, the IP address of the PC you want to monitor,
  change the “Turn this device on/off with status” and select the vir­tu­al switch you cre­ated earli­er. For the delay I’ve found I needed to change the default to 30 seconds to avoid rebooted PCs going straight to sleep. Once set click “Save”
• Open the Host­Pinger smartapp from the auto­ma­tion menu, scroll down and turn on debug log­ging and click Save to close the smartapp
• Switch back to the SmartTh­ings IDE and select the “live log­ging” menu
• Reopen the Host­Pinger smartapp on your mobile device
• Switch back to the IDE and you should see that sev­er­al events have appeared in the live log. These will include some inform­a­tion called “AppId”, “access­Token” and the IDE entity (US or EU). You need this information
• In the config.config file that you were edit­ing earli­er you need to enter the 3 bits of inform­a­tion from the live log. The IDE entity will look some­thing like this: “https://graph-eu01-euwest1.api.smartthings.com”. The oth­er 2 entries will be in the form xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx
• Copy these entries into your config.config file and save it. Now run the STHostPinger.exe and you should see a com­mand prompt style win­dow. It should dis­play the status of the PC you want to mon­it­or as either online or off­line, and hope­fully this will match what the PC is actu­ally doing.
• Your vir­tu­al switch should now accur­ately show the status of your PC, no mat­ter how it was switched on or off. You can test this by turn­ing the PC and mak­ing sure it shows as “on” on the switch in the SmartTh­ings App. Now go to the PC and turn it fully off (turn it off at the wall). Now, use the switch in the SmartTh­ings App to turn the PC on. Of course the PC can­’t turn on because it is off at the wall. The switch should say “turn­ing on” for 10–15 seconds, and after­wards should go back to say­ing “off”. If this works the pinger ser­vice has turned the but­ton back to off correctly. 

PART B: Controlling Kodi

I tried a couple of dif­fer­ent Smart Apps for SmartTh­ings, but found one was easi­er to set up and did what I needed. Again, I fol­lowed a guide on the SmartTh­ings for­um, this time writ­ten by the author of the smartapp called “Kodi for SmartTh­ings Beta”.

1. Install smart app and device handler in the SmartThings IDE

Use the same prin­ciples as for the first stage, add the cus­tom smart app and device hand­ler and then configure.

• Login to the SmartTh­ings IDE USA or EU & UK and click on “My SmartApps”
• Click on “Set­tings” and then click on “Add new repos­it­ory” in the win­dow that appears
• Use the fol­low­ing details for the repos­it­ory: Own­er= iamcanadian2222; Name= ST-Kodi; Branch= master
• Click “save”
• Next click the but­ton “Update from Repo” and select “ST-Kodi (mas­ter)”
• Tick the only option, and tick the “pub­lish” but­ton and click “Execute Update”
• Now click on “My Device Handlers”
• Next click the but­ton “Update from Repo” and select “ST-Kodi (mas­ter)”
• Tick the only option, and tick the “pub­lish” but­ton and click “Execute Update”

2. Enable HTTP control of Kodi

• Load Kodi on your PC
• Open Sys­tem settngs
• Nav­ig­ate to the “Ser­vices” option
• In the UPnP tab, turn on “Allow remote con­trol via UPnp”
• In the “Web serv­er” tab, turn on “Allow remote con­trol via HTTP”

3. Configure the smartapp via the SmartThings app

• Open the SmartTh­ings App on your mobile device
• Click on SmartApps at the bot­tom right
• Scroll down to the bot­tom to “My Apps”
• Select “Kodi (formerly XBMC)”
• The auto­mat­ic setup should find your Kodi box, when it has, select it and click done
• Click “Done” a second time to fin­ish the setup
• A device will appear in “My Home”, it should show what the Kodi machine is doing. Click on it to get a set of media controls

PART C: Using SmartThings routines to turn off sockets when PC goes to sleep

Once the above 2 guides were com­plete it was very easy to cre­ate a SmartTh­ings routine to mon­it­or the status of the PC and turn off sock­ets when it is off, and turn on sock­ets when it is on.

1. Create SmartThings routine

• Open the SmartTh­ings app on your mobile device
• Click on the “auto­ma­tion” tab at the bot­tom and then select the “Routines” tab at the top
• Click “Add a routine”
• Give your routine a name
• In the second screen, select the “turn off these lights or switches” and set the smart­plug you want to turn off
• Next click on “Auto­mat­ic­ally per­form…” and then select “Some­thing turns on or off”
• In the next menu click on “Which?” and select the vir­tu­al switch you cre­ated for your PC. Change “On” to “Off”
  for the “Turns” option, then click save, then click save again. You should now see your routine listed
• Cre­ate a second routine to turn the smart­plug back on when the vir­tu­al switch is turned on