SmartThings + Scout Professional Monitoring Now Available

Today SmartThings announced that they will be offering an optional, month-to-month, professional monitoring plan for $19.99/month. There are no contracts or commitments for this plan. To learn more and sign-up for professional monitoring for your SmartThings, visit https://smartthings.scoutalarm.com/.

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$20/month for professional monitoring via Scout … not bad; but not as competitive as sub-$10/month non-brand-name services which will hopefully start to consider integrating SmartThings into their supported platforms.

Of course, it’s not worth anything if SmartThings has insufficient average reliability (helped as more functions are covered in local processing, though that’s still a bumpy road…).

Is the Scout Contracted monitoring considered “UL Certified” in order to help maximize home insurance discounts? Discounts are very inconsistent across the country… I’ve heard it ranges from 2% to 10%, but quite difficult to get a firm quote and the exact requirements! Crazy…

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Is the Scout Contracted monitoring considered “UL Certified” in order to help maximize home insurance discounts?

I couldn’t find it listed in the support page but Scout advertises themselves as UL certified on their own marketing pages Home page, scroll down

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They normally use the COPS service, which is UL listed. I don’t know if that’s the same one they’re using for this offering.

You can get a certificate for your insurance company. Note that it will say “burglary” because they don’t do fire monitoring, just intrusion alerts (contact and motion sensors). Some Insurance companies will only give a discount if it also includes fire monitoring. But there may be some that do.

(I just realized that if you use the officially-compatible Samsung camera that should meet the requirement of those insurance companies that want a branded camera as part of the security package, so that’s interesting.)

I wonder what in SHM would constitute an alarm? Is it just under the “Security” section? Or will leaks and smoke alerts be leveraged as well? Wondering if I can take advantage of my Nest protects to trigger central dispatch? @tyler1 Anyone know???

I use Simplisafe now which uses COPS as well, and I have double sensors and pay $24.99. This might be an opportunity to save $5.00 a month and get rid of all of the hardware. I realize Simplisafe is far more reliable but I put more value into my security cameras as a theft deterrent and if I can get my smoke and co covered, I might make the switch. COPS will call the fire department on my behalf with Simplisafe so they do have that capability.

Only “intrusion” alerts are monitored, which is motion and contact sensors in the first SHM group. No fire, CO2, or flood monitoring.

Thanks, but where are you reading that?

It’s in the Scout FAQ.

http://support.scoutalarm.com/article/158-general-scout-monitoring-questions

Scout covers only Security/intrusion alarms at this time. Scout does not currently monitor or dispatch for fire/CO (Smoke), Leaks, or Custom alarms. However, we look forward to monitoring other devices in the near future. If you download a PDF certificate for insurance purposes, it will state your home is covered for “Burglary.”

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As Usual, your right! Both companies should be really clear and consistent with their documentation and they are not. Smartthings does not have all of this information on their site. Their documentation should be identical.

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Here is my idea. Forget the remote monitoring stuff. Instead create and ecosystem of trusted people who have access to specific alerts. Neighbors, armed neighbors would be a lot more responsive and hence effective.

I have tried to quasi do this but the the the lame single phone number text notifications limits this.

What we need is an app that we can assign users and rights to.

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Now that ST has a source of revenue generation, can we expect things to get better in 2016?

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That would be great.

Meanwhile, you may be able to use IFTTT so that a single text from SmartThings sends multiple texts from IFTTT as you can use the same trigger for multiple recipes. Just a possible workaround to consider for now.

They didn’t mention anything about a 3g dongle for cellular connection so I’m guessing it isn’t included. I personally wouldn’t pay that much money for an alarm that can be circumvented just by killing the main power to the house (most people do not have battery backup on their router, switches, access points, etc and a lot of ISPs require power any way).

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Wow, did you see the negative comments received on The SmartThings Facebook Page Announcement for 24/7 professional home monitoring service with Scout Alarm?

IMHO, it does reflect many of our current thoughts on the reliability of using SmartThings V2 as a Home Alarm system.

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I seriously don’t see how this is a viable product offering. I’ve been trying to use the Smart Home Monitor for a while now as an alarm system (with an Aeon siren) and my experience has been less than idea. Disregarding the latency and reliability issues with the Smarthings service and ongoing issues with presence sensors, the key thing missing for me is the lack of any delay for tripping the alarm when you arrive or leave your house.

Having to disable the alarm system before we open the garage door is a HUGE hit on usability and significantly lowers the Wife Acceptance™ factor for Smarthings.

I’ve been tempted to turn off the siren overall (which makes the system 99% useless) due to my lack of faith in the reliability and functionality of the Smart Home Monitor … I can’t imagine paying $20/mo for it.

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This is just beyond my understanding. Charging someone for added features to the SHM giving the current state of things, is as bad as putting your savings into a Ponzi scheme.

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I wonder how many false alarms Scout gives you before they start billing you extra for them. I have ten since September, and that’s well over the limit given my previous experience with alarm monitoring companies. And don’t get me started on how the county sheriff would feel about ten rolls to my house for no good reason.

Unfortunately this is just another indicator that SmartThings will continue to plod along with their set plans, regardless of whether or not things actually work.

Where I live you will only get 1 false alarm with the police then they’ll fine you and stop coming to your home after that. I wouldn’t trust this system to prevent that.

I don’t think there will be one person on this forum that thinks this is a good idea and will work out well. However, I think this might be more of an indication that Samsung is probably putting pressure on the ST folks to produce revenue and I am sure this is factoring into that decision. I am sure Scout is giving a cut of referrals to ST. Not defending it, just trying to understand the logic behind it a little.

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I think ST just does this on purpose, or this is some very bad karma. Just announces new paid subscription for security… ST cloud goes offline.
I believe there is a meme for that sort of situation.