So, with all the end of the (ST) world chatter going on in other topics, I thought I would post this personal success story I had today.
So I was at Lowes today and I decided to try out an Iris Door/Window Indoor Sensor I saw on the shelf. I have not done any contact sensors yet, so I mostly got it to explore possibilities. It was the cheaper of the 2 Iris branded contact sensors they had, so of course I bought the cheaper one.
When I got home, I did some research on it and found out that the sensor I bought was 1st Gen. Other threads on the forum said there wasn’t any integration with 1st Gen, just 2nd Gen. Undeterred, I paired it to my Iris Hub and mounted it to my front door.
Now that I had my new toy, time to start playing with it and seeing how it could interact with anything. I found rules for sending either a push notification or an email when the sensor was open or closed.
Eureka! Email is connected to the Internet. I have my avenue of Integration!
Fire up IFTTT and a Gmail Recipe to look for subject lines and tada. I can now turn on and off a Virtual Sensor and use a webCoRE piston to lock my front door once the Virtual Sensor is closed. All based from an outdated sensor that has no ST integration.
Yes, it is a minor victory for those established vets that have been in the trenches for several years. But for me, the joy is in the discovery and finding a solution, even if it is inelegant.
Though that’s a lot of moving parts to string together for a door sensor, I get that the “win” was as much finding a way where none was prophesied, as the integration itself. Hopefully it will be reliable enough to use in your front door lock routine.
As for the reliable part, it was bought to see what capabilities it had and to generate thoughts and ideas as to what to do with it. If it fails miserably at some point, there are many other ways to lock a door
Ouch, best bet is to wait til Lowe’s marks 2nd gen sensors down, happens semi-regularly. Can still get them cheaper than either of those prices that way. And they pair right with ST.
I literally had no idea what I was going to do with the sensor when I bought it. Got it merely for the discovery of options. And connecting it to ST, even with this kludge of a method, sparks ideas.
You didn’t integrate with the sensor. You created an indirect integration with your iris hub through IFTTT. Which is fine, that works well if you’re OK with having to run two hubs, and with having a sensor that cannot run locally with SmartThings and that may introduce some additional lag because of IFTTT.
But most people who start from the SmartThings side and have never bought an Iris hub don’t want to have to buy one just in order to use a door sensor when there are so many other options available which will give them direct integration.
So, the answer is still no, there is no direct integration with a gen one iris sensor and the smartthings hub.
But if you already have an iris hub and you’re OK with running it at the same time as you are running a SmartThings hub, sure, go ahead and use IFTTT to act as a “man in the middle” between them if you like.
It’s all about what works for you. Choice is good.
All true, oh wise one. But in the words of a great Jedi Master, “You’ll find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view”. So I’ll sit here and bask in my happy point of view for the time being
@bbt06001 Well, to be honest, I don’t blame Lowes for killing IRIS. I have had 2 of their hub die on me for no reason and stopped dealing with them for replacements. So no hub, no 1st gen contact Sensor. Unless someone else gets the access to them.
The workaround will stop working once the Iris cloud stops working, because that’s what completes this step from the first post:
Now that I had my new toy, time to start playing with it and seeing how it could interact with anything. I found rules for sending either a push notification or an email when the sensor was open or closed.
The gen 1 sensor is sending a message to the Lowe’s Iris Hub which is then sending a message to the Lowe’s iris cloud to send the email to IFTTT.
Once the Lowe’s Iris cloud shuts down, that option will disappear.
