Arrival Sensor or other suggestion?

Theoretically, smartthings should be able to do exactly that. It’s pretty straightforward, most of the official features have the option to do things differently if everyone is away or if one person comes home. There are several different ways to handle that, but the basic idea is definitely supported.

The biggest issue with SmartThings at the present time is reliability. When it works well, it is absolutely my favorite home automation system. But since last November I have yet to go 10 days without an impactful SmartThings failure.

If you are considering it for home security issues, you should also know that from time to time they push out hub updates which will take your system off-line temporarily. They try to give us a few days notice for these, but you cannot refuse or postpone them. Usually the hub is down for anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour or so. It will typically come back just fine for most people but there are always a few people who find that the system doesn’t come back without some physical resetting. You can usually get everything back to normal again in a day or so, but again, not what people usually expect from a security system.

So: can you set up a rule that will have things report differently if you are home or away? Absolutely. Will that rule operate as expected 99 days out of 100? At the present time, probably not.

So it just depends on your own specific needs and expectations. The company is very well aware of the reliability issues and is trying to make improvements in that area. But they’re just not there yet.

The following FAQ discusses more about the presence options if you’re interested in details:

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