New House, New to ST, old ADT alarm (DSC)

[JDRoberts]

Smartthings can’t talk to the sensors directly. You have to set up an alarm server. See the following thread for other people who have been working on it:

DSC + Envisalink 4 + smartthings-dsc-alarm-server

Hello All! I will be receiving the Envisalink 4 any time in the mail. Does anyone have any input as I did not see any posts with this version of the Envisalink in it. Should I assume that I can just follow the other posts to get it running, I see that there is a server module but has anyone gotten this to work without the dependency of a server? Thanks!

All of that said, it’s important to understand that SmartThings is a cloud-based system and while it’s exceptionally versatile, it’s not particularly reliable. It does not meet my own personal requirements for a security system for that reason. Since last October I have yet to go 10 days without an impactful SmartThings failure and I have a very simple system.

The company is very aware of the reliability issues and has committed to making that a top priority, but they made that a public statement back in April and have continued to have several major outages since.

A Message from Alex on Platform Improvements and Our Plan Forward

First, I want to let you know that everyone at SmartThings is fully aware of the issues that have been affecting platform reliability. In the past few weeks, we’ve redoubled our efforts to make some fundamental improvements that will soon be felt by all of you in your everyday experience with SmartThings. Know that these improvements are only the beginning, that we are in this for the long term, and that we are absolutely committed to building the best, most open platform in the world. It’s just scratching the surface, but I’d like to take you through the technical details of some of the changes we’ve implemented recently: Smart Home Monitor We’ve made a few changes to Smart Home Monitor that should help to resolve issues with data consistency, load time, and Arming/Disarming. The fir…

Also, you should be aware that SmartThings pushes out firmware updates to your hub that can take your system off-line for anywhere from 15 minutes to a few hours. Sometimes they give us a few days notice for that, sometimes not, but you cannot freeze your system or refuse the updates. Updates just happen, even if they break your system. Or come at an inconvenient time.

Finally, unlike most security systems, there is no option for notifications when the Internet is down. In fact you can’t even use the mobile app on your phone when the Internet is down even if your local Wi-Fi is still working. Everything goes through the cloud first except for a few local lighting applications And a little bit of the official security feature. My own requirements are that a security system be able to notify using cellular even if both Internet and local power is out. Smartthings does not meet that requirement.

When SmartThings works as intended, it is absolutely my favorite home automation system, but so far they don’t have the reliability that I would require from a security system so I use an entirely separate system for that.

But of course everyone has their own priorities for peace of mind, and it may be that you find SmartThings meets your own requirements. Just look carefully into all the details, it may not work the way you would expect.