Need Help with Basic Security Mode/Routines

Hi,
Somewhat new to the Smartthing community. Have all my devcies set up and am trying to set up some basic routines but finding the rutine menu pretty lacking or maybe i don’t fully understand the process. None of the modes seem to be able to access my door and window contacts.

So i have window and door contacts set up on all my doors and windows i also have a siren set up. I also have some Arlo Video Cameras that also do motion sensing.

Tring to figure out how to set up routines for the follwing all without location sensing. because due to battery life i dont keep my location GPS on on my phone.

Arm - Away (Monitor all doors, windows, turn on motion, lock all doors, close garage door - do all this after 3min after hitting “Arm”. Turn on alarm after something is sensed inside the home after 60 seconds.)
Disarm - Home (Would be nice if i could send a cherp to the siren if a door or wondow has been open for more than 2min. and just keep cherping until it is shut)
Arm - Night (monitor doors, window sensors, close garage doors, lock all doors. No Motion)
Vacation - same as “Arm” only add in some lighting changes in the evening to make it look like we are home.

If there is a thread already explaining this please direct me.

Thans.

There are plenty of threads on this forum to explain the difference of notion between the Security Home Monitor (aka SHM) states: Armed-Away/Armed-Home/Disarmed.
The basic is self-explained in the SHM settings on your phone.

Now comes the routines from the Automation section of the app that performs action and allow to setup your Smartthings in a given Mode. A mode is in fact a value for the mode variable that is shared across Devices and Smartapps so that they can adapt their behavior accordingly.

To customize the way you want, I foresee (if no one wrote it yet) that you will need to make a smartapp that would run a timer upon activation and then call the goodbye. Something like listening to the mode change you trigger from a routine and then 3min, launch itself the goodbye routine.

This you could make it by an adaptation of the NotifyMeWhen smartapp. Today, it sends a notification when something is opened. You could add the delay you need + send something to your siren instead/in addition to the notification. This would apply only when mode is “Home”.

Looks to be the “good-night” routine directly.

If think there are some smartapps for that, like Vacation Lighting Director. You can find that in your app +add smartapp, category Light & Switches.

Hope it helps

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Welcome! SmartThings is a very powerful, very flexible system, but as you’ve noticed it’s not always intuitive. :sunglasses:

First question is which controller do you have, the original smartthings hub or the new ADT/SmartThings security panel? Things work a bit differently for those two.

IMG_4380

Next, as @Philippe_Portes mentioned, it can be quite easy to get confused at first between mode and “smart home monitor armed states” (or ADT armed states) so see if the following FAQ helps any (this is a clickable link)

After you read that, if you’re still confused, come back and tell us which controller you have and exactly which brand and model of sensors you are trying to get to work with your routines. Then someone should be able to help you. :sunglasses:

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I’m just going to stick this here because it was really hard to find and it’s new information so it may be important for some people although I don’t know if it applies to your situation.

If you have the new ADT/SmartThings security panel, The arm/disarm concept for the ADT sensors works completely differently than smart home monitor does with the original smartthings hub. So that can make things even more confusing.

Assuming you have signed up for the ADT monitoring service, then…

The ADT panel has three armed states:

Disarm ( no alerts will be sent to ADT)

Arm Away ( events recognized by any of the ADT motion sensors or open/close sensors will be sent to ADT)

Arm Stay ( events recognized by the ADT motion sensors will be ignored, but events recognized by any of the ADT open/close sensors will be sent to ADT)

There is no custom notification option like there is with smart home monitor. And there are no zones.

Here’s the official support article, which is really hard to find. At present, if you just search for ADT you will get information about the hardware, but then you will get links to the SmartThings app which will give you information about smart home monitor instead of about the new ADT options. So I guess it just hasn’t been updated yet. But here’s the one and only page I saw which actually talks about the app for the ADT system.

Anyway, all of this is why it’s important for us to know which hub model you have and which sensors we are talking about in order to be able to help answer your questions.

If I’m wrong on how this works, hopefully someone who actually has the ADT system can correct this. :sunglasses:

@slagle @jody.albritton @tgauchat @ady624

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Great post, @JDRoberts

I’d like to add one more thing that is noteworthy, and I’m also hoping that bringing this up frequently will help get it documented (@jim? @unixbeast?) as an official Capability.

i.e., Unlike Smart Home Monitor, the ADT “Device” appears to be implemented to claim a (undocumented) Capability “Security System. That means that SmartApps can control it, but do so in an entirely different way than the (undocumented) methods used to control SHM. I wonder SHM will ever be modified to be in compliance with this new Capability!

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Also, Gaia help us, The new ADT/smart things security panel calls their armed states “modes” even though the word mode is already used for something completely different in the SmartThings home automation system. This is going to seriously confuse people when it comes to routines and the smart lighting feature. :disappointed_relieved:

@jim

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I pulled the trigger on the ADT panel/hub when they had the flash sale last week (I was still on a v1 hub and decided that was a good reason to finally tackle the migration). I now have a new SmartApp “ADT Notifications” which allows to send notification to specific people (Contact Book enabled) for all events from the ADT system.

So far things are working well. Thanks to webCoRE the migration was bearable (I also warned my wife about what I would need to do when we decided to buy the alarm panel to make her feel a little more secure)…

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