probably this is a mistake but would be a great deal if it’s real. Lutron caseta smart plug with pico for $5.
@j3ffreyw1lson and @DavidCreed good to see some people from Burlington. I am also from Burlington and I can’t believe how difficult it is to find good zwave products for a reasonable price in Canada. I usually end up buying from Amazon.ca but on occasion, if my brother is coming up from Chicago, I will order from Amazon.com and have him bring it. The price difference is crazy sometimes.
Bought the Amazon Fire 8HD when it was on sale for $49.99 US. Nice little table which I am going to mount on the wall and use for my security revamp with Konnected. It also works well with ActionTiles once it is setup.
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What does evryone recommend for a good exterior security cam to use with Smartthings that won’t break the bank.
Thanks
Hey there, new to the ST world from Mississaugan😀
I’m used to Amazon for purchasing, sometimes eBay when they offer cheaper deals. I find aartech fairly expensive even comparing to Amazon prices. But recently I notice a price hike for Aeotec products. I just want a decent priced multi purpose motion sensor… Any suggestions fellows? I know there’s monoprice/zooz 4 in 1 motion sensor but I see a lot of people complaining battery reading and connection issues. Plus Aeotec multi 6 has local processing now…
Another great product is Sengled element LEDs, they’re almost half the price of hue bulbs (yes I’m talking about CAD) but offer incredible quality. I have 2 element plus white ambient LEDs and they work really well with ST.
Welcome to SmartThings!
These Sylvania Lightify Zigbee motion sensors are great for the price. Often sub-$40, just not at the time of this writing. That’s Amazon pricing for you. They are actually Centralite in Sylvania clothing. Nice and small, mount in a corner, on a flat surface or mount free because they have a big enough bum to just sit there. That’s how mine is. They report motion and temp. They will pair as “Thing” with the SmartThings hub, and then in the SmartThings IDE, you change the device handler to “SmartSense Motion Sensor”, and then they work perfect. SmartThings built-in rules for sunset do not work reliably, so I use Stringify to handle only activating lights after sunset, the offset and amount of time on. You could also use WebCore, but it’s not as simple to configure as Stringify.
My preference are the Hue motion sensors that work with their bridge and measure light level too, but Philips has raised prices across the board, so they’re less attractive and their motion sensors are not as sensitive or as fast at reacting.
Sengled Element are a great deal. I have Element Plus bulbs for a ceiling fan where I didn’t want to invest in full automation because there just isn’t a great solution at a reasonable price yet. Not here in Canada anyway. Sengled are Zigbee HA only and so for me, that’s a compromise. I don’t mind that compromise, since I have the Element Plus and can still fully control them at the dimmer if I lose internet or cloud access. Not so with SmartThings and regular Zigbee bulbs. Element Plus are unique in that sense. I’m bullish that our lighting must all be fully controllable at the main switch (including basic dimming), even if the internet or cloud are offline. Hue can do that from both the app and the wall dimmers, and I can also do that from HomeKit with both Hue lights and my Insteon setup via Homebridge, plus all wall switches and dimmers continue to fully function.
Have fun, but unless you’re single, remember not to over-automate without a fallback position when the Internet or cloud is down. Your family will thank you.
Thanks for the insight into the Sylvania motion sensors. I just purchased another zooz 4-1 because I like the light/lux information. It makes it easy to have the lights come on when they need to and not just at certain times or between certain times. I was looking into the Sengled bulbs and wondered if they were good or not. I have some hues but they are more costly. Will the Sengled bulbs work with the hues bridge also? We definitely need to get better pricing on this stuff and more places to buy. Oh, one other motion sensor that I use is the iris motion sensors. They are nice and small but the battery is a different type. You can sometimes get them for about $38 CDN.
The Sylvania and Iris are both Centralite, so essentially the same motion sensor, just different outer case. BTW, the Sylvania Lightify are back down below $40 right now.
Sengled bulbs are Zigbee HA (Home Automation) protocol, so they will not work with the Hue Bridge that requires Zigbee LL (Light Link) protocol. In the future, more bulbs, bridges, hubs and devices will support the Zigbee 3.0 prototcol which will allow legacy device to join Zigbee 3.0 networks and Zigbee 3.0 devices will also be able to join legacy networks. So you won’t have to know so much about this stuff, it’ll just work.
For budget lights that work with the Hue Bridge, look for Ikea Trådfri bulbs that are batch 1721 or higher. It’s usually stamped on the box. This is confirmed (for the most part) by the Home Assistant community members, and by a Hue developer I trust. I have personally paired one of the newer Trådfri Multi-colour bulbs with my Hue Bridge and it worked perfectly. You just have to put the bulb into pairing mode to make it show up. That is done with Trådfri bulbs by turning them off & on quickly 6 times in a row.
MySmartBlinds automation kit is $89CAD on amazon.ca, which is a much better deal than amazon.com. I’m going to give it a try.
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I’m told by my friend, you will love it. There’s a bridge that will allow integration on the way, and a roller shade version as well.
Does this actually work with Smartthings? Also I have been told that this does not role/pull up the blinds and that it only turns the slats open or close.
Will work with ST when the bridge is available. Closes/Opens the blinds. Does not raise/lower.
Hello from the same part of the world!
The problem that I have found is that because devices and sensors are so expensive here (relative to the US), is that I was making product selection decisions based solely on price.
The fact is that z-wave plus devices are better than z-wave devices and zwave devices are better than zigbee devices. It’s not that I don’t have zigbee devices. However, the newer z-wave plus devices/sensors are better and sometimes more expensive. (A LOT more expensive here!)
I agree that you should look for products with the Z-Wave Plus logo because they are certified with the added security layer. However saying that Z-Wave is better than Zigbee is a matter of opinion. Kind of like saying that an apple is better than an orange. 
It is true that the available Zigbee sensors do not have as many features as many of the Z-Wave sensors. But that’s not to say that just because it’s a Z-Wave sensor it has a lot of features, in fact, Centralite makes a really crappy Z-Wave motion sensor too (in my opinion of course).
My favourite motion sensors are the Fibaro
Yeah I’d love to have some z-wave devices to try. Currently I’m using only wifi products and ZigBee devices.
And to @SmartHomePrimer, I did order a Sylvania motion sensor months ago but I returned it after 2 days because the temperature was not reported automatically (I did change the device type to smart sense motion) so I ran for st one instead and it’s awesome.
Now I only want a motion sensor that has the capability to monitor motion and light and temperature. In this case only zooz 4 in 1 and Aeotec multi 6 are left…I also heard the hue motion sensor to connect directly to st, but seems like it’s not reliable enough.
To @pcgirl65, I’ve had 2 Sengled element plus and they work like a charm! They’re really responsive, almost instant response time I’d say. And the fact that you can adjust colour temperature at 22 dollars is just amazing. And surprisingly they’re even 2 dollars cheaper on Amazon than on Sengled official site (22.49 vs 24.49).
I’m planning to extend Sengled investment to my hallway lights. Another thing I agree with @SmartHomePrimer is that offline operation is one thing to consider, I’m thinking of a remote that can run locally since all my hue lights and Sengled lights run locally. Any good suggestions?
I should have qualified my statement that “z-wave is better than zigbee”.
Yes, you are quite correct.
However, one point to make is that in order to make a better quality mesh
network, it is better to stick with one protocol through out your house
rather than have 2. (Although ST can, and does accommodate 2).
So after I wrote that previous post recommending local control, I learned about Hubitat from another thread. I ordered one of these and it’s what I’m slowly migrating to. More about it here. It currently supports a number of Zigbee and Z-Wave sensors, including Hue Motion Sensors. Hue Bridge integration is currently in closed beta testing and expected soon.
Here’s a nice review that was just posted by another owner after one month with the hub.
It’s fine to run both Z-Wave and Zigbee devices in the same home. Lots of people doing that. Your point about a good quality mesh network is well taken. It is important if you have a large home. Many AC powered Zigbee devices, such as light bulbs will help repeat the signal, but not all of them do a “quality” job of it.
@SmartHomePrimer did you order the US version and have it shipped to Canada? How are you liking it so far?
There isn’t a US vs Canadian version at this point. Your order is in USD and you pay for priority shipping from Scottsdale, AZ. So at the current pre-release price of $99 US + $20 US for shipping, you’ll pay around $152 CAD for it. Took about a week to get. I was not charged duty, but another user in BC said they were charge $25. Ships via USPS to Canada Post
I love it so far. It’s early stages so there’s more to do and more coming at break neck speed, thanks largely in part to the Groovy code. It’s making the task of porting SmartApps and DH a lot easier for the brilliant developers that are helping to grow the platform.
Interface is web only at this point, because the focus is automation, not control from your phone. I’m told a mobile interface of some sort is coming at some point. Those that had SmartTiles licenses have been able to use that, locally. Those with ActionTiles have a workarround, but you still need ST for that to function at this point. I have to say it’s so much easier to configure on a web UI vs a phone or tablet.
I am super impressed with the product, the support, the renewed enthusiasm of community members that came over from ST, and the hard work that the devs are putting into some very complex code like webCoRE, etc. There are some great features like the built-in Rule Machine, so you can have local processing of automation rules, Lutron Pico support (with the addition of a SmartBridge Pro) and multiple Caséta SmartBridge Pro support, so if for example you have over 50 Caséta devices, you don’t need to move up to RadioRA2 Select, you can just add another SmartBridge Pro and they’ll both be controllable by Hubitat.