New to SmartThings - Advice/help needed!

I am new to Smartthings and home automation, however, I am reasonably technical but can’t seem to figure this out….

I have read that there are apps that can put together complex conditions like IFTTT and others, however, I am a bit lost on where to start. I am not clear if my Smartthings V3 hub has all the integrations necessary to accomplish the list above? Or do I try and do this via Alexa by adding the Smartthings Skill? Or are the actions below not possible due to the fact that either 1) the integrations don’t exist or 2) the integrations exist but not for the functions that I am trying to do or the triggers that I want to use? Should I try and use Alex Routines or the new Smartthings App?

Here is my technology landscape, I have the following “stuff”

Amazon Echo dot
Amazon Smart Plugs
Ring Doorbell
Blink Cameras
Nest Thermostat
Sonos
August Pro Smart Lock
Sengled LED Zigbee Lights
Smartthings v3 hub

The following two things happen when I approach the front door of my house

  1. My Ring doorbell’s motion sensor detects I am standing in front of it and sends an alert
  2. My August Pro smart lock detects I am approaching and unlocks the door.
  3. I open the door and August Pro door sense knows that it is now open

I would like the following two groups of things to either happen automatically or by telling Alex that I am “home now”

Group 1 – most important
Set Ring doorbell to disarmed mode
Set Blink cameras at my house to disarmed mode
Set Alexa Guard to Home mode
Turn Sengled Lights on

Group 2 – nice to have
Set Nest thermostat set to Home Mode
Turn on Amazon Smart Plugs
Start music playing on Sonos

When I leave the house I would like the following two groups of things to either happen automatically or by telling Alex that I am “leaving now”

Group 1 – most important
Set Ring doorbell to away mode
Set Blink cameras at my house to armed mode
Set Alexa Guard to Away mode
Turn Sengled Lights off

Group 2 – nice to have
Set Nest thermostat set to Away Mode
Turn off Amazon Smart Plugs
Stop music playing on Sonos

I would appreciate if some people could weigh in on the best way I can accomplish this!

MANY THANKS!
Gando

I would start by looking at this post which tells you the various tools available in SmartThings. That should help you understand how to group actions, run them and use the plethora of integration available on this community to achieve what you need.

Thanks. I have removed everything from my Wink account. I am ready to go, however, in reading as well as looking at the app etc I do not understand how to create the above automations. For example I dont see how I can direct Alexa to set guard to home when I return. I also dont see how I can use the motion sensor in Ring to detect that I am home. Or use the door sense technology with August to confirm that not only is the door unlocked but it has also been open. And finally how to set my blink cameras to be disarmed.

Any suggestions for the how I go about this would be welcomed!

First thing is to get familiar with enablIng (installing) all of the Apps and Authorizations. Ring devices can be added which will expose the motion events to SmartThings.

Amazon Alexa has an integration that will expose your ST devices to the Alexa App

Your locks will be exposed to ST once you add them. @RBoy has an awesome App that allows you more customizable alerts.

webCoRE is an awesome Rule Engine that works great with ST.

EchoSpeaks is an awesome App that allows you to do all sorts of cool things with your Alexa devices.

You have plenty of time to take it all in.

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Welcome! It can definitely be confusing! :thinking:

Some of the devices you list do not have smartthings integrations, so you are going to have to use the Alexa routines to get to those. You’ll have two options in that case: either just use an echo voice command, or go deeper into it and add a virtual switch in smartthings that allows you to trigger an echo routine without speaking to it. You don’t have to do that second option, it’s just available if you choose to use it.

If you have the Alexa app on your phone, it has its own GeoPresence feature, so you can use that as a trigger for some echo routines, but not all.

So, yeah, it’s complicated, and the best thing is just to look at one use case at a time and figure out how to do that one. There isn’t really a general “best practices” for this because it comes down to each individual device model and what’s available for it.

SmartThings Integration for the devices you listed

Amazon Smart Plugs

No smartthings integration for these, except by using the virtual switch method.

Ring Doorbell

There’s some integration for some models. But I don’t know if you can change modes or not, that’s a new feature on the Ring side.

Blink Cameras

@rboy is an expert on these and will know what is possible.

(He has created a suite of custom code for smartthings which adds a lot of additional integration and is very popular. There is a one time lifetime access fee of $40 which covers all of the code that he has. So if he mentions “Rboy apps” that’s the paid library. He’s also a very active member of this community and helps out with a lot of free advice, so you can generally trust that he will suggest the free built-in options first if they will work. But it’s always possible that someone else has come up with some other method that doesn’t require a license fee and he just doesn’t know about it yet. This is a very creative community. :revolving_hearts:)

Nest Thermostat

There’s no official smartthings/nest integration. There used to be some community created integrations, but Google changed their account structure last year and these no longer work. if you previously had your nest thermostat working with Ifttt and it is still working, you can use that, but otherwise I think you’re out of luck on that one.

Sonos

There is an official SmartThings/Sonos integration, but it has changed many times over the years and to be honest I’m not sure what features are currently available. Hopefully someone else who is more knowledgeable will chime in.

August Pro Smart Lock

Great lock, good smartthings integration for basic features, or use the paid Rboyapps for advanced features not available through the official integration.

Sengled LED Zigbee Lights

They should work fine with smartthings out of the box.

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Your Use Cases

I believe you can do everything in your arrival group one just through an echo routine With a voice command as you described. You can definitely add the Sengled lights controlled by SmartThings to an echo routine once you’ve authorized the smartthings skill. Most of the others would depend on echo routine functionality. I don’t know what’s possible with the blink cameras, @rboy might. :sunglasses:

So really the only thing smartthings would be adding to that scenario would be the Sengled lights.

For your arrival group 2, you’re going to be completely dependent on echo routines unless there something with Sonos. Those devices don’t integrate with smartthings.

Departure is going to be pretty much the same as arrival, you run into the same integration issues.

I hope that helped a little. :sunglasses:

I would first start with getting your device integrated with SmartThings, either using the built in integrations from the ST app or using integrations. Once all your devices show up in your list of things in the ST app, now you can start working on creating Automations and Scenes (groups). So once Ring sensors or your Alexa Echo shows up in SmartThings, now you can controls them.

The Automations tool in SmartThings is quite flexible and can create basic automations very easily. You can have it control your devices (which is why it’s important to get your devices into SmartThings first). If you’re looking for customized notifications for your devices like @rontalley was you here’s one SmartApp which allows you to do that: [RELEASE] Door Chimes and Notifications for Doorbells and Sensors

For Blink specifically, the only way to currently integrate is to use the IFTTT integration. You can find step by step instructions here on how to integrate your Blink devices. Once they’re integrated and show, like above, now you can create Automations and SmartApps to use those devices: [RELEASE] Blink Camera IFTTT Integration

Same with August and all your other devices. If you’re using an August Pro with zwave you can check out this device handler which will integrate the built in door sensor as a separate device in SmartThings so you can use them with apps and automations: [RELEASE] Universal Enhanced Z-Wave Lock Device Handler

If you’re using the August WiFi version you would need to integrate it directly using the ST app native C2C integration (New ST app -> + -> Devices -> Search for August)

Are the new Ring “modes” exposed to SmartThings through the official integration?

Thanks very much for your detailed responses. I will do more research and come back with questions. In the meantime if anyone else has any guidance to share please feel free to provide your input as well.

MANY THANKS!

Gando

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