Coming over from Iris, slowly. What do I need to do?

Okay so I am biting the bullet and taking the gamble on the ADT Smartthings system, I will add sensors slowly as confidence in the platform builds if it does…

I have the 2nd generation Iris contact sensors, motion sensor, 2 of the Utilitech Zwave sirens, and 1 3rd generation ZigBee smart plug. Not integrated to Iris but I also have a Ring video doorbell 2, and 2 Ring spotlight camera wired models and one Ring Floodlight camera.

I am assuming that I need to remove the Iris sensors, sirens, and smart plug from Iris in order to prep them for pairing to Smartthings. I would think at that point I can remove the Iris skill from Alexa and shut Iris down.

Once Alexa isn’t in the mix, I am thinking I need to set up the ADT Smartthings hub pair the sensors, and mount them. ADT Smartthings first, Iris second, pair the sirens. The next steps are where I run into questions.

#1. How do I set up self monitoring and alerts?
#2. How do I set up / integrate the ring devices?

Ring doorbell is simple, just follow the official directions:

The floodlight cameras have a partial integration for the motion and the light, but don’t appear to have fully integrated the camera features yet. But they are on the official “works with smartthings“ list, so you can contact support for more help.

Do you intend to use the custom smartapp “ADT tools“?

If so, the setup steps are a little different. @Mavrrick58 can explain.

Not sure, that’s why I am fishing…

Do I need to use ADT monitoring to use the ADT tools or is that just for the ADT Smartthings hub / setup?

I also wanted to comment on the “slowly” part…

Remember that your zwave network and your zigbee network each need Devices that act as repeaters in order to get signal around your house.

As you start removing devices that are repeaters from your iris hub and adding them to your smartthings hub you run a very real danger of having a weak mesh on both hubs. :disappointed_relieved:

At the same time, you don’t want to add too many new Z wave devices at once, or it can be very hard for the hub to build the routing tables.

In general, I personally won’t add more than 20 new zwave devices in 48 hours.

If you’re starting from scratch, you begin with the devices that can repeat that are closest to the hub and build out your backbone from there. Then you go back and add the battery operated devices. That will give you the cleanest routing.

But if you intend to have two hubs operating for awhile in your home, it gets much more complicated. If the only repeating device in your room is on hub A and the battery operated devices in the same room are still on hub B, there’s a very real danger of the battery operated devices being orphaned with no way to get their messages back to the hub.

So if it’s a house where people are living and you are trying to migrate slowly from one hub to another, I would tend to move a room at a time. I would also keep a couple of extra zwave pocketsockets for patches.

I would start by moving the room closest to the new hub. If that cripples the old system because they were essential repeating devices they got removed, then I would stick a zwave pocketsocket in that room and add it to the old hub, then run a zwave repair on the old network To pick up the patch device and get the network running as well as it can.

And I would continue in that way, never moving more than 20 zwave devices Every three days.

All of this applies only to zwave and zigbee devices. You can move your Wi-Fi and cloud integration devices in any order you want, as many as you want each time.

But to keep the Family Acceptance Factor (FaF) high, Moving slowly means you are likely to have two weak mesh networks for a while, so planning for that as you go and using a few patch devices can make a big difference. :sunglasses:

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I am planning on taking down Iris before pairing anything to ST.

The ADT ST hub will be installed on the wall fairly close to my main T-stat, about the middle point of the house, and an wasy uninterrupted walk from both front, and back doors, easy access to both power, and ethernet cabling.

This is slightly different from the Iris hub location as the Iris hub didn’t have a keypad.

I right now have only had to have a ZigBee repeater, which is why I got the smart plug, to keep my garage door sensors online. Everything else stays online without much trouble for the distances.

I only have 2 ZWave devices at this time, the Utilitech Zwave sirens. The thermostat, and Ring devices are WiFi, and the Iris contact sensors, motion sensor and smart plug, are all ZigBee, and have no connectivity issues excluding the contact sensors I have set up on my garage doors.

I have a few cameras that won’t integrate to ST sadly, they are IP cameras, Iris OC821s, there is a third party app I know of that will give me SMS alerts to my phone with the motion detection and record to my Google Drive account so I am covered there…

I am figuring I will have Ring covering both front, and back yards and all access points 100%. The side yards, and windows left uncovered by ring will be covered by the OC821s, and the Iris contact sensors. I will use the ADT Smartthings door and window sensors at the front and back doors, and the ADT motion sensor in the bedroom not covered by the Ring cameras / motion sensors. The Iris motion sensor can monitor the garage internals should someone be able to bypass Ring and open a garage door, or worse, my wife start piling junk out there again…

The floodlight cam has a wide enough field of view, and will be set back enough any approach to the rear of the house and the entry points there will be covered, including access to the side yards from the rear.

The ring spotlight cams will be mounted one above the garage to monitor the driveway and any approach to the side yard there, and attempts to access the property from the driveway side of things, a second one will cover the area that the doorbell can’t, covering the front bedroom, and the remainder of the front yard. Honestly if my doorbell wasn’t hidden so far back, it would be a lot easier to have just had the ring video doorbell just cover the whole front yard excluding the driveway, HOWEVER, the added benefit of the spotlight camera is aside from lighting, the siren…

After my research, for right or wrong, I have decided that I will be going ZWave with my switches and outlets. Starting off with the switch for the front door light. My intent is to allow the Ring camera motion sensor to pick up motion, turn the ring camera lights on, and delay a few seconds and turn on the front door light.

Moving forward, I am planning on adding door / window sensors to every available opening in the house, including replacing the Iris sensors if I opt long run to go with ADT monitoring. Again depends on what they do…

I will have a lot of rewiring to do including drywall work, and permits / electrician work to replace my single light on / off switches with lighting on / off switches AND fan speed controllers.

Long term this isn’t just about security, but at this point it is. Had I only wanted easy, DIY home security I would have gone 100% ring and been done with it. But I want security AND Home Automation.

I want to be able to set rules that say if the house is over X degrees, turn the AC on, and turn the ceiling fans on whatever speed in whichever rooms I desire. So say kick the fans on first at 70 deg in the master bedroom, living room, and kitchen, once it hits 73 turn the AC on to 73 degrees, and depending on the time, turn the fan off in the master, and maybe turn it on in say the studio.

I have top notch smoke CO detectors, and would rather not replace them prematurely, especially since the smart ones almost never have a hard wired option, so instead, I was thinking about using Alexa Guard as a listener for smoke alarms as well as glass breakage. Not sure how it will integrate with ST but it would be nice to send an alert and trigger the sirens if it detects either of those when armed.

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One big question before you get started do you want to use your existing iris gear for any security or do you have enough dual branded sensors for all of your entry exit points.

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For now, I will be using a mix of 2nd gen iris and ADT ST sensors. Long term, all ADT ST…

That doesnt leave a lot of sensors but will cover with motion sensors on the cameras… for now.

Ok so you may have a need to use the location Alarm State integration in ADT Tools. So what I would do is this.

Before you add the ADT hub to your location in Smartthings install Smart Home Monitor. This needs to be done in the classic app. Review the remaining Smartapps in both the classic and new app for apps that are avaliable by default and install any that look useful. Once that is done go ahead and uninstall Smart Home Monitor from the classic app. The reason you do this with the Old Smart Home Monitor app is that it creates a value on the location in Smartthings. That value is used to manage some special stuff in ADT Tools for regular sensors for security stuff and can enable some integration with additional services.

Now add your new ADT Smartthings panel to the location as normal and install all your gear as you want. I would differ to JD’s suggestion for installing the zwave and Zigbee gear. When setting up the ADT sensors just make sure you go through the security dashboard to complete the setup of the sensors with the security system.

You can install ADT tools at any time. You will need it to enable the Alarm to trigger Smartthings actions like turning on the external sirens, lights actions, and messaging for notification. I would suggest you check the ADT Tools Wiki at thingsthataresmart.com for suggestions on how to configure it for your use case.

I would suggest you use the first ADT sensors you get for your main entry and exit points

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If you are having a issue with something unique to your setup let me known.

Also remeber to setup seperate alert actions between the ADT sensors and the regular HA sensors.

Also one of the more recent folks experience when installing ADT Tools is the app fails to configure after enabling the option to create the virtual buttons. If you use ADT tools to nbn create the virtual buttons you will want to turn that off immediately after it creates them before doing anything else.

I went ahead and bit the bullet. I found an ebayer selling the door and window sensors for $10.00 and he had enough for my needs.

So, once it all comes in, am I left with questions as to documentation still? That’s been my big thing, no real documentation that I can find. But I digress…

At this point I will be setting up the following…

  • ADT ST Hub
  • 1 @ ADT ST motion sensor
  • 17 @ ADT ST Door and Window Detectors. 2 configured on hinges to act as tilt sensors for my garage doors.
  • Ring Video Doorbell 2
  • 2 @ Ring Spotlight Camera Wired.
  • Ring Floodlight Camera
  • 2 @ Utilitech Indoor sirens.
  • Honeywell WiFi Smart Thermostat
  • Iris ZigBee SmartPlug
  • 2 @ Iris 2nd gen contact sensors to monitor open / close of my hand tool cabinets in my workshop.
  • Iris 2nd gen motion sensor. Not to trigger alerts, but logging, again in the garage workshop.
  • Iris OC8210 camera. This will be connected via IFTTT. Garage sensors either door or motion sensors to send a signal to Spectral (the app that allows me to keep using the Iris cam) and record what is going on… This is as I have mentioned before for “cat protection”, my wife keeps letting my cat into the garage workshop and locking her in there accidentally.

NOTE: I am not doing away with my Iris gear however. The Arcus project is spooling up, and may allow my Iris stuff to be reusable. I am just going to box the rest of it up for when I finally build a dedicated shed workshop in the back yard after the remodeling job to the house is done. It should be noted that the new workshop building will have 2 entry doors, and 4 windows, so a need for a total of 6 contact sensors, and another one of the carried over Iris OC821 cameras.

So I installed Smartthings Classic, and the Smart Home Monitor is installed in it by default…

I am new to this, how do I browse / add any additional apps?

Most of everything I want to add says I can’t add it at this time, I.E. it needs the hardware added it looks like…

So with my incoming ADT ST hub, and sensors, let me see if I get this straight.

Step #1. Do what I have done which is get the Smart Home Monitor / Classic app installed. Check.

Step #2. Remove the 2nd generation Iris sensors, smart plug and the sirens from within Iris. Potentially decommission the remainder of the system although I suspect I am going to have to factory reset everything once Arcus goes live, but that isn’t a concern for here…

Step #3. For good measure, replace the batteries in the Iris stuff coming over.

Step #4. Install and configure ADT ST hub

Step #5. Pair, and isntall the ADT sensors.

Step #6. Pair and configure as required the Ring Cameras.

Step #7. Pair and configure the Utilitech Sirens. Assuming somewhere in here I need to add ADTTools?

Step #8. Pair and configure Honeywell WiFi Smart Thermostat.

Step #9. Configure rules, scenes, actions whatever Smartthings calls them, for monitoring, scheduling etc…

Step #10. Enable Smartthings Alexa skill and configure.

Step #11. Open a beer and enjoy.

First let me say if you are going to have 17 ADT Dual Branded sensors you can probably skip the Smart Home Monitor item. The reason you would want to be concerned with it is if you were going to be heavily dependent on sensors that are not dual branded for a period of time or you wanted to use integrations that are Smart Home Monitor aware and not aware of the ADT Smartthings panel. Action Tiles is one of those integrations. With that said it doesn’t hurt anything to install SHM and then uninstall it just so the value is created on the location and you have the option later.

It shows up on the screen, but isn’t actually installed. In the classic app you should have 4 options across the bottom. Select the “Automation” option. Then across the top you should have “Routines” and “SmartApps”. Click on Smart apps. now you can scroll down and click on the option for “+ Add a Smartapp”. You should be able to find Smart Home Monitor in either the “Smartthings Recommends” or “Saftey and Security” sections. Make sure you run through the setup for it

This list will change once you add the ADT Smartthings panel so if you scroll through that list and you see any other smartapp you may want to try i would suggest installing it in case it goes away after you add your ADT Smartthings Panel. A really useful smartapp is Smart Lighting. The rule engine in the new Smartthings app is pretty powerful to. I actually use both apps. Some devices are a little flacky in the new app, but allot have been improved to provide the support they can in the new app.

If the problem is device availability to setup the smartapp you can setup virtual devices in the IDE, but that may be a little more then you want to do. Keep in mind this is just a nice to have to get you started and not a requirement for the other apps.

ADT Tools can be installed at any time. There really is no requirement to do it at any step in your list. It really comes down to when do you want to setup the integration for the Alarm panel to extend to your other potential security devices like the additional sirens you have, lights that ma be used, cameras if supported, and custom notifications.