Good point. I figured since it was zwave it would most likely be compatible but I forgot about the frequency. I’m really most interested in their panic button, touch panels and smart film. I guess we will wait and see. I’ll email them again and ask what frequency they use for zwave.
After working out in the yard this week, I thought of another use. I’m going to SmartThing the chicken coop when we get it later this summer. I’ll put a multi sensor in there so I can monitor the activity of the chickens (via vibrations) and use the temperature portion of the sensor to trigger either a ventalation fan or a lamp to keep the chickens comfy and supplying me with breakfast. Of course, the fan and light will be on solar panels.
My first project is to create the Happy Married Man App. It will aide in keeping my wife happy. I can use current things now, but plan on making my own for some applications. The parts are as follows:
1.)Toilet seat alarm
2.)Take the trash out alarm
3.)Fold the clothes alarm
4.)Send flowers alarm (Smartsense Multi gets kicked across the room)
Plus many more as needed 
@sirtaran, you are a gentleman and a scholar. And a genius
@dan_bramos, a very unique use case. My parents have a chicken coop, I think I may just have to pitch them your idea!
I like the chicken coop idea! That’s really smart. Are you going to try and wire up the multi-sensor with the solar panel as well?
Oh, man! I didn’t even think about that! I’ll absolutely do that. What’s the voltage requirement for the multi sensor? I might as well start drawing the schematic now.
3v. It’s 2 AAAA batteries at 1.5v each.
I’ve a few simple things I’m hoping to start with. I always find if I go too whole hog with technology, the rest of the family gets a little twitchy with the bugs I introduce.
1: Presence sensors for cars, and notifications to me when the door opens and none of the registered cars are at the house. I’d love to know if someone was entering the house and our vehicles weren’t there.
2: Barbecue Pit sensor. I’d love to hook the Smartthings up to a couple of BBQ Pit temperature probes so that I could set target ranges and be notified wherever I’m at that the barbecue has gotten out of range (can’t mess up the pulled pork)
3: We have a hot fence for our horses, I’d love to get a sensor that measures conductivity and then tells me whether the fenceline has broken anywhere
4: I’m hoping to hook this all up to an SMS gateway so that when I do get an alarm of some sort, I can notify my wife who refuses to get a smartphone as she’s afraid she’ll break it working with horses
5: I’ve had thoughts about putting sensors on the liquor cabinet doors. I have kids after all.
6: I love the idea of a mailbox sensor of some sort; the driveway is 100 yards long and it’d be cool to have the system let me know when it had arrived
7: If someone gets up in the middle of the night and enter the stairwell, it’d be cool for some low intensity lights to come on downstairs in the hallway
8: We have a power generator that runs once a week as a system check. I’d love to hook a smartthing up to it that would tell me if it had been greater than a week since the last time it started. I have no idea where to get started there but I figure it’s probably easily doable.
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We have notifications for presence (used for cars for a lot of us) and notifications for door opening. If no one is home the house can put itself in “away” mode. So if no one is home and the door opens OR motion sensor goes off, we can text you/push notification. If someone comes home, than the house can put itself into “home” mode and those notifications wont bug you. Works out of the box
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Doesn’t work out of the box, but I’ve built a SmartThings based one. More info in this thread.
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Super cool idea. Not out of the box, but 100% possible! I could build a mockup with the Arduino and ThingShield for you.
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Works out of the box with a pre-built SmartApp!
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Also works out of the box with a pre-built SmartApp
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Also ALSO works out of the box with a pre-built SmartApp
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Also ALSO ALSO works out the box with a pre-built SmartApp
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Depends on how it works, but could totally be possible. Could work out of the box depending on its setup/configuration.
For #8, I wonder if you could hook up a Zwave device to be powered by the generator? It might be a bit of a waste, but even something as simple as an outlet. Once it’s powered on the Hub sees the device and reports that it’s active and on. This could presumably trigger and action like sending a text saying: Generator Test Complete.
Alternately, there would be an 8 day count down timer running as a SmartApp. Instead of the device triggering a text it could ‘reset’ this timer. As along as the generator starts up every 7 days, the timer would never get to zero. If the timer ever gets to zero, it would trigger a text. That probably isn’t a out of the box app though.
I think I’m going to have to block ebay… probably Amazon as well. I keep buying too much stuff! Just picked up a Honeywell Themostat for (relatively) cheap. Now I’ve got (in addition to my smarthings that will be coming with my hubs… soon?? I hope…):
Intermatic outlet x2 -> These will be used with some relays I’m going to hack up to act as garage door openers.
Intermatic screwing Zwave light bulb control -> Gonna add a new light to the front of my garage and put this in it to turn on when the garages open and it’s dark out.
GE/Jasco outlet -> Right now I’m planning to add this to the bath room for my wife’s curling iron. No more worrying that she left it turned on when we leave the house.
GE/Jasco 3Way Dimmer x2 -> One for my upstairs hall way, one for my dinning room.
GE/Jasco On/off switch -> For the Kitchen. It has a florescent bulb, so can’t have a dimmer there.
Kwikset door handle -> I’ve already got this installed as it’s nice for the kids to be able to get in the house using the keypad. I also really like the ‘auto lock’ feature. 30 seconds after the door is unlocked (by key, keypad or (presumably) z-wave the door automatically re-locks.)
@Chris - Are you the one who picked up the Door handle from eBay for cheaper? Which seller did you use? Any issues?
Yes I did… in fact just finished writing up a review of it over in that thread. My review ended up being REALLY long so rather than repeat the whole thing here, just check it out there:
http://build.smartthings.com/forums/topic/kwikset-door-handlelock/
The Cliff notes version: 4.5 out of 5 stars as a door lock with keypad. Very happy with it, but can’t test the Zwave functions yet. Some minor things but nothing that would prevent me from buying again.
Unfortunately the seller only had the one. He isn’t a dealer or anything.
I will be using my smartthings hub for…
#1 LimitlessLED Lighting: 3x wifi bridges - gives me 12 zones White/Warm adjustable Whites, and 3 Zones of color changing RGBs.
#2 National Control Devices contact sensor board - gives me 48 zones of 18x wired window sensors, 6x smoke alarms and 12x wired door contact sensors, 12x wired motion sensors.
#3 Clipsal CBus - 50x controllable wall light switches and wall sockets, 5x Motion sensors, 10x outside lighting groups.
#4 Fujitsu Aircon/Heat pump system: 2x 18kW units. 1x Downstairs, 1x Upstairs. will connect to the Smarthings temp sensors for each room.
#5 Limitless Designs 100Amp Single DIN rail Smart Meters - gives accurate kWh minute by minute usage on 40 single phase channels to every room.
#6 Ethernet Wired IP 1080p security cameras - 2x PTZ movable, 4x high powered Infrared IP cameras. used for motion detection.
#7 Smartthings - Presence sense for each car. Auto open the garage door.
Hamish,
Will you be publishing all of those to the SmartThing “app store” (or whatever they’re going to call it) so in the spirit everything “just works” or are these something each user will have to piece together? I decided to go with SmartThings specifically becase I’m NOT a programmer or engineer of any sort and am encourged by the “just works” concept.
My original question was asking what folks would do with JUST the items from SmartThings, but logically it’s moved to include off the shelf stuff as well. To me it’s important that even our kids can be administrators of thier on rooms on the app.
Wow. Some really inventive ideas here. Love hearing all the different ways people are using the tech. Can’t wait for an Australian release.
FWIW, . . . SmartSense Multi as doorbell press detector:
I found I can stick a SmartSense Multi (without the paired open/close magnet) into my doorbell chime and configured a tool to TXT me if the doorbell has been pressed.
It doesn’t seem completely reliable at detecting doorbell chime vibrations, but I think these things helped:
(1) use a real doorbell chime with tone bars rather than some electronically-produced chime sound (but a good loud old one with metal base rather than new plastic might transmit vibration even better),
(2) I used a new chime (louder sound than from the old one that had paint on the bars),
(3) use a fresh Smartthings 2-sided stickytape for strong bond to the chime base (I picked a spot between the tone bars) rather than regular two-sided stickytape with thicker vibration-absorbing material.
So far it seems to be working well every time I’ve tested it.
Did you ever figure out how to hack the keurig to where it will work with a switch such as wemo, aeon, etc…?
Did you ever build that Hotwire fence alarm?
I would suggest motion detectors on windows for teenagers.
I’m also here for the answer on the Keurig. Of course I’m going to have to push buttons to brew coffee, but I’d like to have it ready by the time I get downstairs.
I’m also thankful for the ideas…I’m new to this, and wondering how to make my iPhone a presence tag?