SmartThings Community

Pre Sale questions

#1

Hi Everyone,

Apologies if this is the wrong area but I couldn’t see an area for Pre sale questions.

I’m new to the world of smart things so i’ve no idea on it’s capabilities before I take the plunge and purchase. I have various bits of smart home tech in my house and was wanting to know if ST would be applicable for my home. A breif idea of what I want is ST to be the control for pretty everything and not have to rely on 4 or 5 different apps but also start adding some functionality with geo-fencing.

Tech List:
Nest Thermostat
Yale Smarthome Alarm
Yale Conexis L1 Door Lock
Arlo Pro Camera
Exterior Mood Lighting.

My first question is from a security point of view and if smart things would work with the tech. Both my wife and I have iPhones and would like to take advantage of geo-fencing, we already use this for Nest and Arlo.

  1. Would ST be able to arm our yale alarm system, arm Arlo cameras and set the nest to away based on our phone locations? Then do the opposite when we return into the geo-fencing location and disarm everything?

  2. Could this also unlock the Yale Conexis L1 when we enter the area? Not 100% sure on this one just yet due to the size of the geo-fence area. Wouldn’t like my front door unlocking when we’re far away.

  3. Would the Arlo, Nest and Yale app be required on our phones still or could we let the ST app handle everything?

  4. If nest works with ST does this offer the same experience as the official app? E.g. Ability to control heating temp, schedules and hot water?

  5. Similar question to above for Arlo, does this show previous recordings as well as things like battery status and live view?

Exterior lighting is currently served by a PIR sensor on the side of the house that activates at dusk and stays on for 8 hours. My plan was to add a Fibaro z Wave relay into this and have ST control the lights to come on at dusk and switch off at a certain time.

  1. Does ST calculate and adjust the dusk time daily throughout the year?

Apologies for the mass of questions I just want to be sure it will do what I want it to do before I go and add yet more pointless tech (something the wife would say) and another hub to hub city in the tech cupboard.

Many Thanks,
GT

#2

You would get a better response if you search for threads specific to that product. People who are using can better assist and answer your questions directly in there. I will give you a few references to some threads for a few things that you can click on and repost your questions in those threads. The answer to almost all your questions is Yes in some shape or form. :slight_smile:

Could this also unlock the Yale Conexis L1 when we enter the area? Not 100% sure on this one just yet due to the size of the geo-fence area. Wouldn’t like my front door unlocking when we’re far away.

Another Smart Lock SmartApp

Would the Arlo, Nest and Yale app be required on our phones still or could we let the ST app handle everything?

In some cases the native apps still need to be installed. A bigger reason that you would want the apps installed is in the event that the SmartThings hub goes offline or their is an outage in the cloud. You would still be able to operate your devices with these apps as a backup.

If nest works with ST does this offer the same experience as the official app? E.g. Ability to control heating temp, schedules and hot water?

Similar question to above for Arlo, does this show previous recordings as well as things like battery status and live view?

https://community.smartthings.com/search?context=topic&context_id=83228&q=Arlo%20integration&skip_context=true

Exterior lighting is currently served by a PIR sensor on the side of the house that activates at dusk and stays on for 8 hours. My plan was to add a Fibaro z Wave relay into this and have ST control the lights to come on at dusk and switch off at a certain time.

https://community.smartthings.com/search?context=topic&context_id=83228&q=Smart%20Lighting&skip_context=true

Does ST calculate and adjust the dusk time daily throughout the year?

Yes, Sunset and Sunrise is based on your Location defined in SmartThings.

#3

Are you in the US or the UK? The available devices vary by region, as do some of the integrations.

Since I believe the Yale conexis model is only available in the UK, I’m going to assume that you are there for now.

Unfortunately, at the present time smartthings can only integrate with Yale’s Z wave or zigbee locks. It does not integrate with the Yale alarm system or with the Yale conexis lock, which use a different communications protocol. So no joy there. :disappointed_relieved:

https://www.yale.co.uk/en/yale/couk/news/2016/articles/yale-launch-new-conexis-l1-smart-door-lock/

#4

I was under the impression it was Z-Wave and worked with the various SmartApps:

EDIT: Or is that posting incorrect in the thread and it’s only Bluetooth enabled?

Did a little further research. It looks like it is Z-Wave certified now and a separate module is available according to this post. Did I read your reply correctly or did I misinterpret what you were saying to the OP?

(www.rboyapps.com - Make your home your butler!) #5

It has a z-wave version + other versions.

#6

But does that model work with the Yale smarthome alarm system?

My understanding was that only the lock with the “yale module,” not the “Z wave module” would integrate with Yale smart home alarm system, and therefore would not work with SmartThings.

#7

My recent experience with ST is that it is cool and I was able to increase the safety level of my home adding ST as an additional tool but not the main one.

I find that controlling my thermostat (Ecobee) is a lot better on the native app than ST and once it’s set up there is almost no need to use the app in the first place, I hardly touch it other than checking home IQ data. The only good thing about integrating the thermostat in ST is the ability to turn it off automatically in case of emergency, such as your smoke & CO detector getting triggered (see below).

I find that geofencing with ST is very unreliable so I would not use that to automatically lock my house or anything important.

Also unless it solves a real problem like needing to let the babysitter bring in the kids home, I would not use smart locks at all. If security is a concern (seems to be), I would not trust smart locks just yet.

Regarding Arlo, I would advise to read users comments as many are not happy with it due to the recording lag from motion detection, many systems are for sale on ebay. Personally I opted for an independent system that records 24/7 and sends motion push notifications through the app and is not connected to ST at all, no need to be. If you want something cloud, you should check out Blink.

On smoke alarms, I have integrated my existing wired regular smoke and CO alarms to ST for $43, see my post here:

#8

OK, there are some UK community members who have achieved a partial integration with the Yale system, but it will be considerably more complex than just adding the devices to your smart things account.

Take a look at the following thread (this is a clickable link) and then you can ask further questions of the people there as well.

#9

Thanks everyone for the reply. All seems very complicated even for a techie like me.

Think I might just stick with how things are at the mo and not bother with ST.

#10

You can go a very simplified approach and use ST (SmartThings) for as little as you want staying away from a complex setup as much as possible (plug n play approach) or as you can see, ST has a million different directions that you have the ability to go in allowing you to take advantage of flexibility and functions that other hubs just can’t do.

For some of the devices you mentioned, you would have to use specific custom SmartApps (non official integrations) that all of us use. We we’re all newbies here at one point in time, so I understand how his all looks overwhelming right now, but you are hearing from a lot of experienced users who also went through the same thing at some point in time.

With that said, some of your stuff will be as simple as a plug n play type setup.

There are a ton of getting started and other reference material to help digest a lot of this so you can go from left to right instead of skipping right in to this whole integration conversation, which will help you to understand verbiage and terminology that we are all using in this thread to make it sounds a little more english. @JDRoberts can you throw some links over the wall? :grinning: There are many people out here in the community who are non technical, who are successfully running ST in their homes.