I just got the SmartThings ADT pack and I’m trying to figure out how to, if possible, individually arm and disarm certain sensors in the house for different modes. For example, while I’m home I’d like all door and window sensors on besides the dining room because I use that door often for the dog.
I’ve tried searching for answers here but nothing really addresses this and their support basically just suggests looking at the website for answers.
It is not possible for the ADT sensors that can trigger the ADT alerts. They are all treated as a single group. There’s only one page I know of that discusses that, it’s the one where it talks about how to arm and disarm in the SmartThings mobile app.
Thanks for that! They whole support for the ADT system is pretty iffy right now.
Is the normal SmartThings hub able to do that?
It’s able to set up home automation rules for one sensor at a time, but the whole reason the ADT product was introduced is because the original hub is not able to do many of the other security related things. There’s no entrance/exit delay, there’s no cellular backup for contacting the monitoring center, the other sensors can’t be used for triggering ADT alerts, there’s no way to arm or disarm the system unless the Internet is available, and some other stuff.
Up until the ADT system was released The usual community recommendation was to get a separate purpose built security system and just use SmartThings for non-security purposes. In fact, the company’s own product usage guidelines say the same thing: don’t use the system for security or anything critical.
https://www.smartthings.com/guidelines
You can find lots of discussions in the forum about those issues.
The new nest security system has a really nice feature exactly for situations like yours, where there’s a button on each sensor that you can press to temporarily disable it. So it’s perfect for letting the dog out late at night. However, it doesn’t yet offer professional monitoring.
I’m not sure if Abode let’s you disarm an individual sensor or not, @SBDOBRESCU might know as he uses both that and SmartThings.
Simplisafe, another security system which is popular in the community, lets you disable an individual sensor but it’s like a 12 step process to do so and you have to do it from the main panel or from a laptop. So it’s OK if you want to disable it for a whole day or a week when you have guests or something, but it doesn’t really meet the dog walking requirement. In fact this is one of the reasons that nest, which just came out about a month ago, has the button on the individual sensors, a lot of people wanted that feature but not many systems had it. 
The professionally monitored security systems generally don’t like it because they think people will turn a sensor off and forget to turn it back on again and then blame the monitoring company if there’s an intrusion that doesn’t get reported.
Quite a few of the home automation systems, including smartthings, do allow control of individual sensors because that’s what you need if you want to do something like have a closet light come on when the closet door’s opened but you don’t want to have the light come on because the closet in another room was opened! You get much more precise control of the sensor triggers but then they aren’t as worried about what happens if you change the settings and forget to change them back.
The new ADT/SmartThings security panel addresses this by offering two kinds of sensors, one that can trigger calls to the ADT monitoring sensor but they cannot be turned off, and the original SmartThings sensors which can only be used for home automation not for calling the monitoring center. That solves the closet light issue, but not the dog walking issue.
Nest is taking a different approach by putting the button on each sensor and making it a temporary disable so it will turn itself back on automatically eventually.
More expensive home monitoring systems offer zone management where you can quickly turn zones on and off, but they just haven’t been offered in most of the low-cost security systems.
We will have to see if the nest approach is popular with consumers. If it is, I expect other systems may eventually add some variation of it, but it might take a year or two and require buying new sensors then. We’ll just have to see.
Wow, great reply. I really like the Nest system, especially because I could just keep everything within same app, but the price is pretty steep and it’s also new.
The easy button disarm and each sensor also being a motion sensor is great, as well as the hub/motion sensor/siren. I’m just wondering if the sensors work with other systems. I’m pretty sold on the Nest Secure but I always think about the price tag…
They don’t work with any other systems except some of the ones that are officially certified as “works with nest” as they are using a proprietary protocol. They don’t work with SmartThings if that’s what you were wondering.
IMO, the ADT hub is garbage compared to Hub V2. The only thing it offers is the ability to have a delayed entry/exit and a physical location to arm/disarm that can be monitored by ADT vs Scout.
That’s the good part. Now for the bad:
I bought one during Cyber Monday that came this week and I’m returning it. SmartThings totally missed an opportunity to not only bring new users but to give existing users something they’ve been wanting for a long time. (A physical Keypad and Delayed Entry/Exit.)
Sorry ST, but you struck out here.
Yeah I returned the ADT one. Learning that ONLY ADT sensors work with it a big letdown. Integrating thermostats, outlets, etc into the keypad would’ve been great.
Ordered the Nest after a long chat with them. The system is exactly what we wanted and having all smart stuff in one app is nice. Pricy at start, but having a system with everything we want is worth it.
Replying to this old thread incase somebody is thinking about purchasing an ADT hub. The hub does support automations and at the moment is available for really cheap. It is true that only adt/ST branded sensors can trigger an alarm. But the sensors are really cheap by now as well. You can however use all the adt/st and st only sensor to run your automations.
You are replying to a post from two years ago. A lot has changed in that time and there are many active threads on the ADT/SmartThings system That go into lots of detail on the current features.
It’s usually best to just let the really old threads lie fallow and comment as needed on whatever threads are showing current activity. That keeps everybody from getting confused.
Thanks!
Threads Marked FAQ are typically kept up to date, but you’ll be able to tell that from the posting dates.
Here are the two current ADT threads. I recommend that anyone looking for information on this model in 2019 start with these:
FAQ
Discussion thread. Here’s where you will find lots of people who are currently using the system
ADT partnership: ST-ADT touchscreen hub and devices (discussion thread)