Do any of the community members in the UK have any recommendations for a home security system (alarm) that is compatible with ST. I note that the ADT one isn’t available anymore, although I believe it wasn’t all that well behaved anyway.
Im looking to be able to integrate with ST so that when the Location mode and SMH modes are set the security system automatically arms itself.
Its worth pointing out that the PIRs that come with it will need to be very pet friendly as I have a few cats (which are generally easy to exclude from being picked up as they are so small) but more importantly I also have a large sized dog (weighs over 40kg (about 90 pounds). I have found in the past that its rather difficult to get PIRs to not pick up animals of that size.
Konnected works well with Smartthings. There are people in the Konnected users group on facebook that have installed it in the UK. https://konnected.io/ & https://www.facebook.com/groups/konnected.io/ They have an option for converting an exisitng wired system or you can install a completely new wired system. If you are looking for something with wireless sensors this will not work for you.
Officially The security offering which includes smartthings in the UK is the one from Vodafone called V Home, but you have to get their version of the hub and there is a monthly contract.
But for that one you pretty much have to start with shopping from them, you can’t use the hub you already have and you can’t necessarily even transfer your existing devices. It’s just a whole different offering.
I’ve just checked their faq and they say everything works with existing SmartThings hub except the camera. But I can’t see how that wouldn’t be it looks just like the standard camera.
Just need to try it all when it arrives. If I can’t use my existing hub or transfer everything over to theirs without having to set them all up again they’ll be getting it back LOL.
Do you know if it’s easy to replace a hub. Are all my devices stored on device or in their cloud?
At the present time there’s no migration tool (they’ve discussed one for years, but it’s never happened). So you just have to start from scratch with pretty much everything if you go to a different hub. There may be an exception for web core pistons, to be honest I’m not sure on that. But you do have to add each device and any automations created with the official features individually again.
Their FAQ says that the individual devices that they sell will work with an existing smartthings hub. It does not say you can sign up for the V home monitoring service with an existing smartthings hub. There’s a difference between hardware compatibility and feature compatibility. But again, you’ll just have to try it and see.
I already own a Samsung SmartThings Hub that I didn’t buy from Vodafone. Are the devices you sell compatible with my Samsung SmartThings Hub?
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All of the devices are compatible, with the exception of the SmartThings Camera that is only compatible with the V-Home Hub.
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RBoy
(www.rboyapps.com - Making SmartThings Easy!)
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Not sure if EcoLink Motion Sensor are available in the UK but they definitely have a great pet detection settings for large and small pets; and they have an awesome battery life.
Using those (and many more sensors options) you can build your own security setup SmartThings using SHM or custom apps. However it can’t call anyone like ADT but can message you and take actions.
You can use third party monitoring systems for SmartThings.
@Rizlah
The UK alarm system market is a pile of smelly brown stuff compared to the US. However here are some options.
https://simplisafe.co.uk/
There is an integration to Smartthings listed in these forums. Some of their products like their doorbell and lock are not available in the UK and like all UK alarm systems it does not support linking to other brands
There is an unofficial solution for linking to Yale UK alarm systems also in these forums
Konnected for DSC panels only supports wired sensors.
Envisalink and Alarm Decoder do support DSC with wireless sensors and also have integrations for Smartthings
Note: DSC PowerSeries panels are older technology and no longer regarded as adequate by the UK alarm industry. I did eventually manage to find one reseller though.
The Vodafone solution is as far as I can see using a standard Smartthings v3 hub with a sticker on it. It maybe that you could buy a starter kit and through it away and use your existing hub. The Vodafone offering is literally rebadged Smartthings products - both hub and sensors but with the monitoring done via Vodafone.
The ADT Smartthings offering was only ever a US option. ADT in the UK is a totally different organisation and their offerings are pretty awful from a ‘smart’ home point of view.
Thanks for this. I’m quickly realising that smart alarms in the U.K. are way behind. Hopefully one day we’ll get some good products.
I did order the Vodafone one in the hope that I can connect it all to my existing ST hub. I’ll keep you all posted on how that goes. Hopefully the products they send are not locked to that specific rebadged hub they send. If they are it’ll all be going back.
I’ve received the Vodafone stuff and while the camera doesn’t connect to my existing hub the hub they sent is a ST Wi-Fi one which when added to my account allowed the camera to connect to it and be visible across my home in the account.
The whole process was very straight forward.
My only concern is that Vodafone seem to implement their own SHM system which at the minute doesn’t look like it synchs with the standard ST one. I’m unsure at this stage of webCoRe will be able to access the Vodafone implementation or not. I’ll update once I’ve had time to play.
I had hoped that it would be smart enough to just work, unfortunately this doesn’t seem to be the case, and of course in WebCoRe you cannot access that system as its separate to the ST standard one.
I have pistons setup that automatically change the status of the ST SHM based on mode and presence, which is doing exactly what I want it to do and works seamlessly, however this is not replicated across to the v-home version of SHM.
Have you seen anything anywhere that might help me out, or any suggestions that I could try.
My understanding is that it is possible to do what you are describing with the classic app. But the smart home manager feature in the classic app and the smartthings home monitor feature (note the slightly different names) look the same, but are actually two completely different sets of code. For example, setting the security.mode in the classic app should not affect the setting of the security.mode that you see in the new V3 app. Similarly, dismissing an alert in one of the apps will not dismiss it in the other app. This has confused a lot of people.
My understanding also is that it is not possible to use webcore to change the security.mode for the version in the new app. Only for the one in the classic app.
Has this changed? Do you have a webcore piston working to change the security.mode for the new V3 app? Because my understanding was that whether you were using the Vodafone version or just the regular smartthings version, you could not change the armed status for the new app with webcore.
no I can’t access the new app version in WebCoRe. I would like to be able to simply set the Vodafone one based on the code I have in WebCoRe though. I will be happy to dismiss alerts etc in the new app, id just like to be able to have the automation that I have in WebCoRe that sets the classic app SHM to be mirrored in the new app.
Basically when I leave the area or go bed my classic app sets the relevant armed status, when I get up in the morning, or come back into the house the reverse is true. If this simple feature could be mirrored to the new app this would make me a happy bunny.
It can’t be done because you aren’t accessing the same variables.
The new STHM is completely different code running on the new non groovy architecture. They have not enabled any external access to the security part. So at present you can’t even create a custom automation to change the new security.mode. You have to open the app and manually toggle it except I think there may be an option to set it based on clock time.
They might change this in the future, they only recently added the ability to automate unlocking a smart lock in the new app.
But for now, they don’t want you to automate changing the security.mode
So that would apply to the Vodafone system as well. It also applies to the ADT model in the US.
looks like I can just use the SHM in the classic app with all the devices, not sure it will notify Vodafone of the alert if the SHM in the new app isn’t set though, however I don’t really mind as I have my own alerting system setup in webcore using an external monitoring service, if they get an SMS or Phone call from my piston they know what to do
What I am currently investigating however is the camera recording clip, although in the classic SHM I said to record a one minute clip upon an alert being activated, I cannot seem to find where this clip is recorded. In the new app the clips are easy to find, however I can’t seem to find it in the classic app.
