I currently have a a Schlage Connect Z-Wave deadbolt lock, Lutron SmartBridge and Caseta dimmers, and a Wink hub. With the Wink hub I can set a robot to turn on my hall lights when the front door unlocks. But in order to do that, I have to pair the Lutron dimmers directly with the Wink hub, and not the SmartBridge, as the Wink hub is not capable of linking to the SmartBridge. That means I lose HomeKit/Siri support, as I can only use Siri to control dimmers paired to the SmartBridge.
I’m wondering if I can replace the Wink hub with the SmartThings hub to be able to do the same thing without losing HomeKit support. I know the SmartThings hubs cannot directly control the Lutron Caseta dimmers, but some research has led me to believe that I can use IFTTT to control the lights by communicating with Lutron SmartBridge instead. By using the SmartThings IFTTT channel as a trigger to sense when the door unlocks, I can then trigger the lights to come on via the Lutron channel.
My questions are as follows:
Can I use the SmartThings IFTTT channel as a trigger to detect when the door has been unlocked, then in turn instruct the SmartBridge to turn on my lights?
Is the SmartThings IFTTT channel subject to the regular 15 minute polling delay or is it one of the channels that reacts quicker? Realistically what kind of lag can I expect? Ideally I’d like the lights to turn on within a few seconds. ~10 seconds would be acceptable, minutes obviously would not.
Yes, lock being unlocked can be an “if” in the SmartThings IFTTT channel.
As for the lag, that seems to vary from person to person. You just have to test it and see. I use IFTTT a lot with echo, and my typical lag for the smart things channel is eight seconds. Noticeable, but acceptable to me for the use cases I use it for.
However, other community members doing exactly the same thing I am doing have reported lag of a minute or more. I don’t know if that’s regional or just random.
I have only run into the really long lag for a few specific channels, such as email.
You could use geopresence to turn on the lights which would do them a bit earlier than the door actually unlocking if that was any help. I use the IFTTT Geopresence to turn on my entry light for example. (I used to use the SmartThings arrival sensor, but it malfunctioned after a recent platform update and now thinks it is permanently present regardless of where it actually is.)
I thought about using geofencing, but I don’t like it being dependent on my phone being on me or the battery not being dead, which it often is by the time I get home from work. Also, I’d have to set it up on other phones in my household as well, and it wouldn’t work for other people (say, my parents) I allow occasional access. Sensing the door unlocking seemed like the best approach from that respect.
I’d love to just try it, but I currently don’t own a SmartThings hub. I’m still within the return window for the Wink hub, so I wouldn’t have a problem taking it back and ordering a SmartThings hub if I was reasonably confident that this would do what I’m hoping it does.
There is one community member who has routed the Wink hub and is using the lutron antenna in it to operate the caseta lights locally while also using SmartThings, but I don’t think that solves your HomeKit issue.
You can test the IFTTT lag on other channels for now, including wink and the SmartBridge, just to see what you see.