It’s one of my favorite integrations. I think Echo is probably my favorite (and everyone else’s). I love not having to turn on and off my alarm when I arrive home and go to sleep every day now 
I’m actually considering purchasing echo…
Hopefully that integration will be easier now that I learned the steps here.
If I have the Simplisafe’s $25/mo plan, do I need 2 sets of sensors? Or can Simplisafe piggyback off the ST sensors?
2 sets of sensors. SimpliSafe uses it’s wireless protocols to talk to one another and does not support zWave or Zigbee.
So you cant have the ST sensors talk to the ST hub and then have the ST hub talk to Simplisafe. Correct?
Correct. The two systems are separate in every way. This smartapp acts like the mobile app to report overall system status to ST and for ST to set modes in SS.
As others have said they are totally separate systems. You will not be able to use your SimpliSafe door/window sensors with SmartThings or vice versa. This ‘intergration’ really only allows reporting of alarm status (armed, triggered, fire, etc)
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Is there another system (either another SimpliSafe or another SmartThings) which allows me to have a single set of sensors?
smartthings has a new monitoring program you can sign up for, but I personally would never consider HA stuff to be security stuff.
Simplisafe may not be the most secure system in the world, but it was designed with security solely in mind. The cell connected base station, with backup power, hidden away pinging the monitoring co is why it works.
ST is designed as a complex system to turn my lights off, and start the coffee… granted it has obviously evolved, and could be a highly secure system, but the core concept to me is very different.
Please search the forums as this topic has discussed in many different threads. To summarize, there isn’t a single hardware/software solution that provides the flexibility that Smartthings offers and the reliability a traditional security company offers. If both are important to you, then you must use double pieces of hardware.
On a separate, but related question - is anyone else using Pollster with SimpliSafe to poll the alarm status and having issues with the polling? Mine works on and off, and hasn’t polled the last 3 days. I look at the logs, and Pollster will work for a few hours and then nothing for a few days. I’ve tried to reinstall the SmartApp, but no dice.
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This has nothing to do with Sinplisafe or this smartapp, but rather ST’s scheduling issues.
Is there a way to link Simplisafe to the Dashboard/“Smart Home Monitor” Security buttons? On that page there are three buttons, ARM (AWAY), ARM (STAY), DISARM. It’d be nice if these would sync with Simplisafe.
It seems like the smartapp here only works with Modes, which seems different.
I couldn’t find any way to tie these things together, but maybe I’m missing something?
You’re not missing anything. SmartThings has not exposed any ways for us to tie into their Smart Home Monitor. I suspect that there never will be either, as they are trying to develop their own paid monitoring solution
Lame. However I was able to figure out a way to do this – in another thread someone posted how you can listen for these events.
Here is my script:
https://gist.github.com/eviljim/c8a907b4b6936b6f4176
It’s one way sync – if you update your Smart Home Monitor it will in turn update SimpliSafe.
If you update SimpliSafe some other way, they will be out of sync.
I am not sure if there is a way for it to listen to the SimpliSafe device for updates. Most interesting to me would be listening for changes detected when the SS device polls for updates – this way if I lock or unlock from a keypad, it would (eventually) update SmartThings too.
I THINK I know how to update the Smart Home Monitor state (maybe), I was just not sure how to listen for SimpliSafe device updates if that’s even possible.
(Alternatively I could shove something into the device to do it from there, I guess.)
I guess I could poll the device for updates too, but that would add even more latency for noticing an update (waiting for both the SS device AND this to both have polled, in that order).
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OK, figured out two-way sync and updated the code on github.
Seems to be working well for me. If I change things via the SimpliSafe device, my SHM settings get updated.
The automatic polling in the SimpliSafe device didn’t seem to be working, so I wasn’t seeing updates done via pin pads, etc. If you see similar problems, the SmartApp “Pollster” can be set up to make sure your device polls for updates every so often. If you do that, after you change the SimpliSafe settings you’ll see SmartThings SHM and the SimpliSafe device update their state to mirror your actual SimpliSafe setting.
Thank you! This is awesome. I’ve been having issues with Pollster for the last 2 weeks or so, where it’ll poll SimpliSafe just fine, and then it’ll stop for no reason. Seems to be a common issue these days according to the Pollster thread. I constantly have to restart the SmartApp so that polling starts again. Anyways, just wanted to make you aware that Pollster may not be the most reliable way of getting updated status - but when it works, it’s great. I’m still looking for a more reliable way to get status updates from SS.
Yeah, I noticed that too (even only having used Pollster for, like, 4 hours), but wasn’t sure if it was because I was messing around with a lot of things trying to get my script to work.
I am not too surprised after spending time wondering what was wrong my some delayed execution code I added to my SimpliSafe device, searching for help, and finding it basically undocumented that it basically doesn’t work most of the time. Agh.
(What I was adding to the device was scheduling another poll for update around 45 seconds after you send a command. The reason is sometimes it’ll send the command and get set to a state like “pending off” or similar. Polling again in ~45 seconds gets the real status.)
I was thinking of hacking up a way to make updates work without polling – I think it’d be possible to do with IFTTT and a small hack to the SimpliSafe device. IFTTT doesn’t support sending poll to a device, but it DOES support sending strobe. Since the current device doesn’t do anything on strobe, I could just hack that to do an update.
So basically, SimpliSafe sends email alert (via their “Instant Smart Alarm Settings”) to me which makes an IFTTT recipe run which calls strobe on SimpliSafe which makes the hacked SimpliSafe smartthings device update the SimpliSafe status.
Someone got the Nest Protect device which relies on polling to work native to the device type:
It’s been working well without the need to use Pollster.
Jim, this is awesome and is just what everyone has been asking for. Thank you for this!
One issue, when my system is set to ‘away’ SHM shows it as disarmed. Any ideas?