ADT shutting down and I am looking for a simple new system for alarm system and a few connected devices

Devices & Integrations
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I came over to ADT Smartthings from Iris when it retired.
Now I am in a bind again as i see the ADT Hub is shutting down in June. My setup is pretty simple. I just have a garage controller, 2 door sensors, motion detector, Halo+ smoke and carbon monoxide detector, siren, Nest and 2 water leak sensors linked up to my ADT Smartthings.

My only automation i have setup is for my alarm to auto arm and disarm when i am gone and return through which I have grown to love using ADT Tools. Everything else i just get alerts on my Smartthings app (water leak, smoke, security alarm detected etc…).

What would you recommended i get to replace the ADT Hub? I’d ideally like a keypad on the wall like i have now if possible. I do not have much or any knowledge on how to code. If i were to get the Ring security system should all my devices connect to it or would i just need new devices that aren’t the branded ADT ones such as the door sensors and motion detector and the rest of mine would work?

I have seen ppl talking about Hubitat. Would my current setup work with that and could i just buy a keypad somewhere to link to it. Also would i be able to auto arm and disarm like i am now with Ring or Hubitat?

I was also considering just getting a new Smartthings Hub. On the new Smartthings hubs does it still have/support Smart Home Monitor (SMH) for arming, disarming and arm home? If I could stick with Smartthings and just need to buy non branded ADT door and motion sensors that would be great if a new Smartthings hub would work like my ADT one does now.

Thanks so much for taking your time to read this. Please do suggest what you think the easiest option for me with my current setup and needs would be. Thank you, -Freddie

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It really depends on your requirements. Answer the following questions:

  1. do you want professional monitoring?
  2. does it need to work when you have no internet?
  3. does it need to work when you have no power?
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Hubitat is not a security system. it’s a Home Automation system. There’s no professional monitoring available with it. But everything does run locally and there are some keypads at work with it, so it might be a candidate for you. It’s very different than the ADT/smartthings dual logo system was, though. In particular, it doesn’t have a consumer friendly app and it requires a lot more technical knowledge.

Ring is a good inexpensive security system, very consumer friendly, has been ranking at the top of most review lists for the last year or so. Professional monitoring is available for only $10 a month. excellent keypad. Nice app. However, it’s not going to integrate with Halo or Nest, so I don’t know if that’s going to work for you.

A new “works as a smartthings hub“ hub, which would be from Aeotec, is in someways the least like your old ADT/smartthings panel because almost nothing runs locally. You can’t even arm and disarm it locally. So it’s not really a legitimate security system contender for most people, but as far as home automation goes it will do everything that your previous system did with the same devices except for the duo logo sensors, which you can’t use with anything else anyway. (And by the way, you won’t even get notifications on your own phone if the Internet is out.)

So it’s going to come down to the details of what you yourself need. Every system has pluses and minuses.

If you want a simple, inexpensive, easy to set up security system with good customer support and a good app, then ring is definitely a good candidate.

If you want all of the same home automation that you had before with the same devices except the dual logo sensors and you are OK with a system that just doesn’t do much if the Internet isn’t working, I would definitely consider the new smartthings option, which is the hub from Aeotec.

If you have a strong technical background and you are OK with a system that doesn’t have a slick app, Hubitat is another good contender for the Home Automation side.

Other security options to consider are abode and simplisafe. Or in your case even the new nest/ADT integration, although it’s very new and I haven’t heard too much about the details on it yet.

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As @JDRoberts and @Automated_House have said it really lies in your expectations/needs/priorities for the system.

You really need to define what you want out of the system and then i would start to eliminate options from there.

Hubitat is a great platform for local execution and has a similar app to StHM whch is Hubitat Security Monitor or HSM. HSM is in many ways more feature rich then StHM and adds many of the functions that ADT Tools added to the ADT Smartthings Alarm Panel. Since it is all local it would allow all of your alarm functionality to work even without the internet. The newest hub which you would end up with also works with the Ring gen2 sensors and gear so all of it can pair to the hub and work. HSM has native integration with the Ring keypad so that is taken care of as well. The Hubitat HSM is by far a more capeable alarm system then StHM has ever been.

Though I developed ADT Tools I have found very little need to develop an app for Hubitat. The only thing i have taken a serious stab at was to create a driver something that was wifi based and didn’t have a integration yet. Similar to Smartthings there are some built in Smartapps that will do allot of great functionality. So in many cases you may be fine with those for almost all of your needs. Just make sure to check the supported hardware list before you buy gear to ensure it is supported.

With that said what is the problem with Hubitat. Well simply put the UI is horrendous. There is no better way to get past that. It is web based and the phone app though functional just isnt that great. Once you get familiar with them though it can be somewhat easy to overlook. They do have the ability to do dashboards which can ofsett the bad UI a bit from a usability perspective, but still is lacking.

With that said i will take all the other good over the bad UI. YMMV on that though.

Ring from everything I can find seems to be a pretty good setup and is a great option if you already have Ring gear already. That is actually why in my case everything but the main brains of the alarm are Ring gear. I have the Ring keypad, the Ring Motion Sensors and just got my last batch of Ring Contact sensors in for my door/windows. In my mind one big bonus to ring and hubitat is they use Z-Wave Gen 7 gear/700 chipset. It has a ruff start on the Hubitat C7 hub but seems very stable now with newer zwave gear.

I still may go ahead and order the Ring alarm kit with the least hardware just to get the alarm brains. Though i haven’t tried it my understanding is that there is a integration with Hubitat for the Ring alarm that bring the full alarm into Hubitat over the local network. That is a option if you want to keep the alarm and the HA environments seperate. If i change my mind and decide in need a monitored solution i will go this route.

Hubitat also has the ability to link to Noonlight for monitoring though i can’t speak to that.

One last thing about Hubitat is that the community there seems to be pretty great and is very active. If yo do get stumped folks there will help you.

You also always have dedicated security systems as JD mentioned like Adobe and Simply safe that may do some level of home automation.

It is really about what your expectations are.

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I will add this.

To make hubitat with the Ring gear be as close as possible to a alarm system I did do a few things out of HSM.

  1. Used the notification app to send out alerts if any of the sensors involved with security have their tamper alert triggered.
  2. I setup HSM to monitor the battery levels with a custom alert.
  3. I used the Notification App to do audioable alerts to my google homes when the doors open or close like the ADT alrm
  4. I used Rule machine to trigger a ding dong sound similar to the ADT alarm panel through my Aeotec Siren 6.

I have been running it for some time side by side with the ADT Smartthings panel it it was working great. I have now fully disconnected the ADT Smartthings Alarm Panel.

***Edit One more thing i just remembered. I also added an app called “Device Activity Check”. The reason for this was that if for some reason a sensor stops talking to the hub for then a little over an hour i get alerts. This should be thought of something like a loss of supervision alert from the ADT Hub. This was a custom app though. All of the rest above are standard apps provided with the hub.

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Another thing to consider at least for the time is that you can also run Hubitat alongside Smartthings even without a Smartthings hub. That is my current setup. You can load a App developed for Hubitat called HubConnect 2.0rc2 that will allow the two environments to talk to each other and enroll many devices from each side to each other. It is pretty slick how it keeps the systems in sync. I am using this to allow some cloud integrations that Smartthings have to get over to Hubitat.

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We went thru a little weather event in Texas recently. Day and a half of rolling blackouts followed by over two days with no power.

So I got repeated experiences of how SmartThings reacts to power outages.

If your phone retains cellular connectivity, you will get a notification from the SmartThings app when your hub is disconnected and reconnected.

I wasn’t real focused on it so can’t say what the delay was from when power went down or up to when the notification popped. Maybe 10 minutes?

Hub V2 if that matters.

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Correct, you will get one notification when the cloud loses communication with the hub, and another when the hub comes back into communication with the cloud.

But while the Internet is down, you won’t get any notifications from your in home devices even if your phone is on the same Wi-Fi as the hub.

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Ah. Misunderstood your statement in the post.

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