ADT Pulse Help

For once I finally just barely beat @JDRoberts to a reply and referencing the same material. There has to be a badge for that…

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LOL, that works!

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I guess I was hoping to at least try it as a secondary hub even if I have to do a factory reset but I can’t seem to get that far. The join an existing Network feature just spins forever

ADT has a new z-wave hub called “cloud link.” Does anyone have any experience integrating this w/ smartthings as a secondary hub? Perhaps this works better than their old iHub?

I figured I would post a quick reply here in case other folks are looking.

About 2 months ago, I had ADT pulse installed. They installed 3 security cameras, updated my panel electronics, added the ADT Pulse Z-Wave gateway (the black one by Netgear), 1 Z-Wave door lock, 1 Z-Wave garage door opener, 1 Z-Wave plug-in switch, and 1 Wireless keypad.

All of this stuff worked great…and I became addicted to having a “smart house”.

Since their install, I have added 22 Z-Wave switches (a few are dimmers). I used the new GE/Jasco Z-Wave plus switches. Also, added a few 3-way (and 1 4-way) switch.

At first, I was in heaven. However, the ADT Pulse automation couldn’t do everthing what I wanted to do.

I bought a SmartThings Ver 2 hub, and added it as a secondary Z-Wave controller! Yay…more automation possibilities.

To add the SmartThings hub as a secondary controller, go into the ADT Pulse portal on your PC, and put it into the “add a new Z-Wave device” mode. (System --> Manage Devices --> Devices --> Add). When it starts doing the “spinny thingy”, go into your SmartThings IDE on your PC --> My Hubs --> Utilities (View Utilities) --> Z-Wave Utilities --> Join/Leave another Z-Wave Network.)

This has to be done while the ADT Pulse system is looking for a new Z-Wave device.

The ADT Pulse system will time out and say that it can’t find a compatible device, however it will give the SmartThings Hub a Z-Wave address.

Now, go into your SmartThings smartphone App --> My Home --> Things --> Add a Thing. Let it look for devices…it takes a bit of time to find all of the Z-Wave devices.

When it’s done, the Z-Wave devices connected to the ADT Pulse will now be available in SmartThings. Make sure to “Refresh Mesh” in the ADT Pulse system when SmartThings is done (System --> Manage Devices --> Devices --> “Refresh Mesh”) so that the SmartThings node does the Z-Wave repeating properly.

With this setup, you can control Z-Wave devices from either system.

Whatever the ADT Pulse system does for polling is superior to SmartThings. The ADT Pulse will always find a SmartThings Z-Wave activation within a few minutes (on my 30-ish node system). The SmartThings doesn’t always get a device activation done by ADT Pulse.

The ADT Pulse gets manual activations with the same reliability as a SmartThings activations. However, the SmartThings doesn’t always get manual activations.

To make this better, I installed the “codersaur : Z-Wave Tweaker” utility to set the “Life Line” associations to both the ADT Pulse hub and the SmartThings hub. When I did this, both the ADT Pulse and SmartThings see manual activations within 1 second.

For “key logic” events that I implemented in CoRE that “need to know” when the ADT Pulse does something, I implemented a polling routine (it samples 2 Z-Wave devices).

Needless to say, I have had several Nergasms while doing all of this. I told my wife that a “Smart House” is my mid-life crsis!

Since this, I have added Zigbee devices into the SmartThings.

SmartThings isn’t 100%, but it’s getting there.

Hope this helps!

Oh - and in this journey, I had the “Great Internet Outage of 2017” (as seen through the eyes of a 12 year old) because the cable company is a bunch of dorks. As we know, SmartThings won’t work with a bunch of stuff if the internet is down. I decided to take a look at Vera (Vera Plus to be specific) to see if I could get more “local processing”.

Vera is JUNK…total JUNK. To say that their software is in Alpha development stage is generous. Vera totally wouldn’t work reliably for more than 5 minutes. In the process, Vera totally dorked up the SmartThings AND the Z-Wave devices connected to the ADT Pulse…even though it was setup as a secondary controller.

I had to factory reset the SmartThings hub and all of the Z-Wave devices. Add them to the ADT Pulse again, and then go through the above to bring everything back into SmartThings.

To say I was dissapointed is an understatement.

The most positive thing I can say about Vera is that when I called their tech support, I spoke to a human (who barely spoke English). This guy tried to help, but he was totally clueless. After 70 minutes on the phone (after pulling my hair out for over 12 hours), I punted Vera.

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Thanks for posting this. Having had a similar mid-life crisis I am now slowly adding to my new home to make it a smart home and learned a lot from my previous endeavours at the old house.

I’d been looking at options for getting my ADT system to work with my Smartthings hub but wasn’t sure it would work if I added ADT pulse capability to the existing hard-wired system.

A couple of questions - do the non z-wave sensors in your ADT system (if there are any) communicate with the Smartthings hub at all? I’d like to have the existing door/window and motion sensors show up in the home without hacking into the panel.

Can you arm or disarm the ADT system from Smartthings routines?

Thanks.

I have the ADT Pulse system setup as the main hub, and use the ADT system for all things security.

The window and door contacts are all wired, and go back to the ADT box.

The ADT Pulse system lets you use the wired ADT contacts to trigger events and logic. The ADT Pulse App lets you arm and disarm from the phone (or through Alexa).

The SmartThings cannot disarm the system. But why would I need it to when the ADT Pulse app can disarm it?

With the SmartThings as a secondary controller, I can build more complicated logic…but not off direct triggers from the wired contacts. However, I have a couple of “link” z-wave plug-in switches that I use for this purpose.

For example, I have the ADT Pulse system turn on my outside fans when I open the back door, or when the back camera motion sensor clicks. At first I had a 15 timer running through the ADT pulse system, but it would start a new instance of a timer each time the door was opened. If the door was opened at 5 minute intervals due to traffic (like my kids), the fans would turn off at 15 minutes, 20 minutes, 25 minutes, etc…even if I turned them on by hand.

One application of an “integration” is that I have the ADT Pulse system turn on the fans AND turn on a Z-Wave plug in switch (that isn’t connected to anything) when the back door is open or a camera motion detector (both ADT Points). When the SmartThings sees that the Z-Wave plug in switch was turned on, it turns it off and then starts a 15 minute timer.

If the door is open again, or if the camera motion sensor trips, the fans are turned on (already on) and the Z-Wave plug in switch is turned on. SmartThings sees that the Z-Wave switch was turned on again…turns it off, and resets the timer to 15 minutes.

I hope that makes sense.

That’s very helpful. Using that type of logic I can imagine many possibilities. I will see about adding pulse to my system and let you know how I get on.

JrClocker,

I read your post with great excitement as I’ve been trying to do the same thing for a long time. I tried to follow your instructions for adding my SmartThings hub as a secondary to my existing ADT Pulse z-wave network, but it didn’t work, unfortunately.

No devices get discovered by the SmartThings hub no matter what I try. I even did a factory reset of the SmartThings hub and started from scratch, but that didn’t work.

I’m curious to know whether it might be some difference in hardware. What version & firmware for iHub and SmartThings do you have?

Thanks!

Hrm…I’m not quite sure what’s going on. Here is the version information:

Security Panel - Safewatch Pro 3000/3000CN
ADT Pulse Gateway - PGZNG1

SmartThings - Hub v2 US
SmartThings Firmware Version - 000.018.00021

I have repeated my steps a few times and it has worked every time for me.

You have to put the ADT Pulse Z-Wave system into “add new device mode” and then put the SmartThings hub into “Join/Leave another Z-Wave Network” mode.

The ADT Pulse system will time out and say it can’t find any compatible devices, but it will assign a node ID number to the smart things hub. After that, you “add a thing” an let it look for devices and it will find them.

The final step of “refresh mesh” in the ADT Pulse Z-Wave system AFTER the SmartThings discovers all the will properly incorporate the hub into Z-Wave mesh.

Try the steps I originally posted, and see if your SmartThings gets a Z-Wave address (and verify the HomeID). If it gets a Z-Wave address, you can try manually adding a Z-Wave device into smart things. You can get the Z-Wave address from the ADT Pulse system to add it in. Be careful, the ADT Pulse address is decimal (base 10) and the SmartThings is hexadecimal (base 16)…so you have to do the conversion properly when manually adding a device into SmartThings.

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I have an older ADT Pulse Gateway: iHub-3001B-ADT

I wonder if that is responsible for the difference.

I see that the PGZNG1 model can be had on eBay for pretty cheap. I wonder if it is worth the trouble to swap it out and try again…

I have ST and about to make the switch to ADP Pulse pro system (not the new DYI system). I have Schlange smart locks currently on ST and what I really want is to disarm the ADT system by entering my code in the door lock so i don have to enter two codes to enter my house.

I can switch them to the ADT system instead of being part of ST have you had any success with this? then when i unlock the house/mode state changes on the ADT system i want to trigger other actions…

same thing the other way when the system triggers Arm i want to activate my “away” mode in ST which changes the temp in the house amongst other things…

thanks!

Josh, I looked through the ADT web site and can’t find any mention of “Pulse Pro”. Can you clarify what that is?

Think they call it pulse plus with video basically their zwave system that
isn’t DIY

Can you explain how you were able to setup the lifeline between the ADT Pulse hub and the ST hub. I was trying to use the z-wave tweaker but get confused on what to do next. I see that my ADT hub is node 01 and ST is node 05 I tried to set up an association group for ADT hub to ST hub but get an error saying that the ADT hub does not support associations. Thanks!

I am so glad I found this post, as I had been looking for a way to do this for some time and only found posts that said it was not possible… I followed your instructions, and everything worked as described. Thanks so much for posting your solution!

I have a question, though. Are you able to add additional Z-Wave devices to the SmartThings hub after this? I tried adding several Z-Wave devices, and the hub never finds them. I am still able to add devices to the ADT Pulse Hub and then incorporate them, but this limits considerably the kind of devices I can add.

Thanks!

Hey Alex…glad my post helped you out!

Unfortunately, I have not figured out how to add Z-Wave devices into SmartThings after following this procedure.

However, you can still add Z-Wave devices through ADT Pulse and then have SmartThings scan for new devices. It should find them. If not, you can manually add the Z-Wave device to SmartThings…just get the address from ADT Pulse (which is in decimal) and use this address in SmartThings (which is hexadecimal). You select the appropriate device driver and you are good to go!

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Thanks for the quick response! Adding through ADT Pulse works, but the problem is that one is then limited to ADT-supported devices only. Unfortunately I have a few devices that SmartThings supports and ADT Pulse does not. As painful as it may be, I may factory reset the SmartThings hub, add the non-ADT Pulse devices, and then redo the process of adding the devices registered with the ADT Pulse hub (hoping that this would work).

That won’t work. There can be only 1 Z-Wave Master, and the ADT Pulse Hub can only be master. You will end up with 2 different Z-Wave networks.

I got around this by getting the special devices in Zigbee, and adding them to SmartThings.