I see. That’s unfortunate as I would love to be able to go into sleep mode from ST and have it enable my alarm, etc. I am currently a SimpliSafe customer and am very unhappy with their lack of innovation. I am looking for alarm alternatives that provide ST integration and 24 x 7 central monitoring. Seems like IFTTT is the best way to do this and right now Scout Alarm looks promising but is lacking smoke and CO detectors, and their motion sensors aren’t pet friendly.
Also, FP seems expensive upwards of $40 a month? I am paying 24.99 a month now and have no plans on increasing my bill.
The extra $20 to $25 for Frontpoint pays for actual security monitoring so authorities will be sent to your house if you don’t cancel the alarm or answer the phone. Pretty much still a must have unless you don’t travel or go places where you won’t have a mobile signal or respond to your phone.
I thought about long and hard. I like to fully mute my phone on many occasions, travel on airplanes, sleeping at night while traveling without getting unnecessary phone notification wake-ups, and not monitoring my phone during dinner out, events, meetings etc. I’m ok paying the extra $20 p/month for now for freedom and peace of mind. I don’t expect to be paying for too many more years though. Better solutions and pricing are inevitable.
Right now I just don’t want to be more of a slave to my phone than I already am!
With SimpliSafe, I get 24 x 7 central monitoring with the authorities for $24.99 and full text/email/interactive and I am very happy with that aspect of the alarm system, I am not saying SimpliSafe is better than Frontpoint, but it is half the price monthly. This also includes smoke and CO fire department monitoring as well.
I didn’t realize that. This is good to know. Hope we see more innovative entrants at the same price point or less.
The hardware investment for SimpliSafe looks pricey though for up front cost. I’m sure the devil is in the details for what you need. You still save a few bucks over three years, but only if they don’t raise the monthly fee which is not guaranteed?
I wouldn’t start a new 3 year contract these days with all the change going on. I did do that five years ago though with FP. At $15 more over 3 years, 36 x $15 = $540 for FP service. But with FP on contract your initial hardware costs are much less. And FP has kept my monthly fee for interactive/monitored plan at $39.99. My FP hardwaresetup on SimpliSave would cost me over $600 and I think I prefer the FP hardware and ability to switch vendors with standard Simon system.
Good info though. I did’n’t realize there were interactive and fully monitored services out there at the $25 price point. I thought they were all like 24InControl which only lacks full alarm response monitoring at the same price point.
Thanks. Frontpoint wins the top security awards on a lot of reviews. The house I purchased had SimpliSafe in it already so I didn’t have as much of an investment and just added stuff. That being said, I would switch to another provider and would be willing to pay up to $45 a month for total two way integration with ST. Sounds like FP is close and if they added IFTTT, it would definitely help. ADT is supposed to be adding IFTTT soon which will put pressure on the competition.
At the end of the day, I want to do all of my HA logic through ST and have my alarm be an alarm, all while sharing hardware and having the systems be able to talk to one another with two way integration. I think the market will get there eventually. Watching Scout Alarm very closely. If ST would be more reliable, I would trust them to be my alarm if they added central monitoring, but that hasn’t been the case as of yet.
That WOULD be a game changing move. Hope it happens.
I’m with you on keeping HA and alarm separate for now, but connected. Long term, I think ST could be a leader in both areas and generate revenue if things evolve and stabilize. I’m not sure that kind of secure reliability is on their open platform roadmap though. Not sure I’d be happy with the consequences or costs. So even just IFTTT integration from the security providers would make it a happier marriage.
ST is supposed to partner with Scout Alarm to use their $9.99 self monitoring plan. For me that shows they have no plans to get into the security business as they are partnering with an alarm company like Scout. I can see Samsung buying Scout and merging it all one day.
There are lot of DIY security companies offering Alarm.com monitroing for under $24.99, if you own the panel
Given the fact that you can get 10-20% discount on the home owners insurance for a monitored alarm system, its worth the cost to have a live dispatch agent call the police if there is an issue. You do end up with dual door/window and moton sensors, but the alarm stuff is pretty cheap to buy for DIY, just getting past the WAF for 2 sensors on each exterior door is the biggest issue
unfortunately there isn’t any way to add the actual FP sensors to ST. It’s just the z-wave devices, which if you aren’t using FP for z-wave then there’s no need to add them there first.
The reason I have z-wave added into FP at all is because I use some of the sensors to trigger z-wave. For example, when I open my front door the overhead foyer light comes on for 5 minutes then turns off. That can’t happen in ST because there is no integration with the door sensor.
I’d like to pick this topic back up now that it seems Scout monitoring is working with Smartthings. Can anyone share their experience?
I actually just signed up with Alarm.com because I wanted a monitoring company and was worried about using ST/Scout since it relied on internet/IP signal to Scout which can be cut. Unless they use cell backup???
I have been using ST for a long time and am extremely pleased with it. I have over 60 devices so I wasn’t too happy about switching, but alarm.com does offer the benefit of integrating hardwired sensors which was pre-installed on every door/window. I also liked the idea of turning on/off all lights, adjusting thermostats, and locking doors when I arm/disarm/sleep from alarm.com system. Still can’t believe there no way to link the 2 so arm/disarm from ST would also arm/disarm alarm.com.
There is a bit of a gap here in reply but I’m an existing Alarm.com customer and am working on integrating a recently purchased ST v2 hub and my alarm GC2 panel. My understanding is that you can add your ADC panel as a secondary hub into your ST hub and the ST hub will pass through the z-wave devices.
I’m currently in the process of getting my ADC GC2 panel firmware updated and will be removing all my devices(currently around 30). So that I can add them into my ST hub as the primary before then syncing it to my ADC panel.
I do love the fact that when I unlock my door that my Foyer lights turn on if it’s dusk(set to only turn on from dusk til dawn). or when I arm my house all of my lights turn off and my thermostat drops. I was hoping to only need to have to open one app to do home automation and security but as I continued to add Home Auto devices, including an Amazon Echo, I realized that ADC panel had a few limitations that I wanted to hurdle.
The recent Echo integration was nice but for some reason the Echo was only able to see a handful of my light switches. However, I was able to close my garage door, check status and lock my front door which was nice. It was annoying to have to say a lengthy sentence for every interaction that involved my ADC system. the ST hub has more support for the Echo and pulls in devices so that you can do things like say “Alexa, turn on my living room lights.” but with the ADC integration I have to say “Alexa, ask Alarm dot com to turn on my living room lights.” it may not seem like a lot but I wasn’t able to access groups or scenes. which means if I wanted to set my house up to have movie night with the wife. I’d have to either do it all through the ADC app(make sure all the lights were off throughout the house and set the living room light to 10% dimmer). and then pick up the remote to set the tv. or with the Echos groups with devices added from ST and some recipes from Yonomi and can just say “Alexa Movie Night”. I’m not there yet but that’s the end goal.
That sounds like something I could use. I already have frontpoint and ST (v1). Is there any instructions somewhere about how to add ST as a secondary controller to FrontPoint?
Thanks.
I have the older Simon XT Control Panel. I was able to get ST to read that in and it shows up as a Controller in my FP configuration which is a good start. The issue is that ST is not seeing/discovering anything of my Z Wave devices in FP. I called FP Support and they said it is not possible. They mentioned that although FP can be discovered in other hubs (such as ST), that FP will not send their Z Wave configuration and thus support for them to the hubs.
I have the newer Qolsys panel, so maybe that acts differently. I just went into ST z-wave utilities and selected the “join/leave another z-wave network”. I put my Qolsys panel in include mode and joined ST. I can control my z-wave switches that are in the Qolsys panel through ST, but I can’t control ST items in the Qolsys.
Chris - Thank you for your post. I did the same thing but as you state, perhaps the issue here is that you have the newer control panel and mine is the older one. Question for you, after you selected “join/leave another Z Wave Network”, did you have to do anything else (such as pair) to have ST get the devices or were they all just read into ST after doing that? Again, thank you for your assistance!
Newbie here…but I’ll share how I got it to work. I also have the older Simon XT panel (Alarm.com)…and like you after getting the XT to show up as a Controller in Smartthings, I couldn’t add my existing zwave devices (dimmers/light switches) to the hub. So…I ended up deleting all the zwave devices from the XT panel and then added them instead to the Smartthings hub. Since the XT was still set up as a Controller, it automatically recognized the devices as I added them. Now I can control the devices from both the Smartthings AND the XT. My Echo Dot also recognizes the “groups” and such too. After a lot of head scratching…everything works great now.