Thinking of coming over from Iris to SmartThings ADT starter pack

Devices & Integrations
1

I’ve read the forums and done my research to find a lot of my questions but still have some i could not find…

  1. Amazon reviews for ADT ST starter pack are terrible… I read them all and it seems like most are probably from people that do not understand how to set up the system? Thoughts…?

  2. All my Door Sensors, Motion Detectors, Keyfob and Panic Button are Iris version 1. From my understanding they will not work? If i order a ADT ST Keyfob will the Panic Button sound the alarm on the hub and additional Utilitech Siren when pushed?

  3. I will be using ADT ST Hub without the paid monitoring as i have with IRIS. As long as i have internet if my door sensors and/or motion detectors go off will it still text, call or alert me somehow on my phone?

  4. Do i have to use dual branded ADT/ST sensors for it to alert my phone if cloud is down and to sound my alarm locally if internet is down or will any compatible sensors do this? I noticed the ADT/ST sensors look really bulky…

  5. I have a Utilitech wireless 85d siren and Utilitech wireless water sensor. Will the siren sound when my alarm is triggered after grace period using ST sensors or does it need to be dual ST/ADT sensors? When my water detector detects water will it sound siren and alert my phone? I also have a Iris Garage Door Controller but could never keep it connected. Maybe it’ll work better with ST?

  6. I basically use Iris just for my alarm system. No real home automation… Should this system be a good set up for me with no programming of codes required? Hoping rules are already built in for everything I’d be using this for.?

TIA - Fred

2

The ADT Smartthings panel is essentially two systems in one. The alarm only works with the ADT Dualbranded sensors for alarm activity. Everything on the Alarm side is visible to the Smartthings side and you can use pretty much any standard Zwave/Zigbee sensor with it. You can augment this with a Smartapp called ADT Tools 2 to help the Smartthing side react to alarm activity. I would suggest using the panel with ADT tools 2 and will explain why as i answer your points below.

  1. Many people are confused by the product. A large part of that centers around the isolation of the ADT Alarm panel from the Smartthings panel. Most of the anger comes from folks that want to use their old Zwave/Zigbee sensors to trigger alarm actions. Unfortunately that isn’t possible. It is fine if you are starting from scratch and aren’t invested in a tone of sensors, but bothered allot of people. ADT Tools actually has some functionality that tries to minimize this problem. It allows you to use non Dual branded sensors to trigger smartthings actions that are controlled by the alarm state.

  2. You can use ADT Tools to trigger the siren when the ADT Alarm Panel has a alarm event. You would simply tell it to do so and then what action to take. The siren is one of the possible options. I will need to check to see if the keyfob is an option though. This may be a candidate for a feature update. I will correct this if it isn’t present.

  3. As long as internet is present you should get notification either by the ADT official app or from ADT Tools

  4. Since dual branded sensors are the only ones that interact directly with the alarm side they are a requirement for the most reliable setup. Anything else will have issues if there is a cloud issue. This isn’t just limited to Cloud outages though as if the cloud is having performance issues it is possible for Smarttapps to fail if the runtimes increase to much.

  5. This will require ADT Tools 2. Simply put it will be part of the action triggered by the sensors as youhave them selected and setup.

  6. Anything you get for the alarm side that is dual branded can be used for home automation. Obviously anything else you have connected with the Smartthings side of the system will work for HA. My suggestion would be to get door/window and motions sensors for anything that is critical for alarm activity. For other security need that aren’t as critical use what you already have with ADT Tools 2. Then just use what is left for HA.

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Thanks for the reply. What is ADT Tools ?

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It is a smartapp that add some functionality for Smartthings to work with ADT Alarm ’

The release thread is here and discusses all of it’s features

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5

The real power of the ST ADT hub is if you’re going to be using the ADT monitoring.

If you aren’t planning on using then you’re better just using the V3 hub and building you own setup. You don’t have any restriction on what devices you can use. Infact you can even migrate your IRIS devices over to ST including your Keypads, build your own Security setup or use the SHM add on, create your own monitoring rules using CoRE or WebCoRE. The possibilities are endless and you won’t need to use your IRIS setup.

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All my Iris door/window contacts and motion detectors are Iris V1 so they would not work on ST anyway. The reason I’d like to go with the ADT Hub and use the ADT/ST sensors is that they work locally even if Cloud or Smartthings app is down or not working. It’ll also work and sound sirens if internet is down but just won’t alert me on my phone unless i choose to pay for monitoring

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7

I am moving from Iris to the ADT Smartthings option (referred to as ADT Hub below).
I had mostly V1 devices so reuse wasn’t a concern for my situation. I have spent the last two weeks trying to achieve some sort of parity between the features I grew to love about Iris which is a frustrating venture to say the least especially because of my unfamiliarity with the smartthings rules/smartapps but I think with what i’ve found combining the ADT Tools 2 and IFTTT I am able to do most of what I could with Iris.

However, there was one thing that was super important to me which was receiving phone calls about my alarm going off without subscribing to any service. I was able to achieve that by doing the following:

Generate a phone call alert when my alarm activates using IFTTT and ADT Tools 2:
I paired my existing utilitech siren with my ADT Hub and then used ADT Tools 2 to trigger the siren when the ADT Hub alarm goes off - I utilized the IFTTT applet below to generate the call. Not perfect because it doesn’t do what Iris did with the ring down options to other phone numbers but better than no call.


There is also an applet for doing the same thing (phone call) with a non ADT water leak detector (but i think this one applet above suffices because it uses the status of the utilitech siren (on/off) to determine when to call)

I’d love to hear from other Iris users about the rules and smart apps they are using to achieve some sort of parity.

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The advantage of the ADT Panel is a complete alarm systems without any hackery. The fact you don’t have a simple way to do a keypad, or have entry exit delays with SHM make it a less then ideal solution. The ADT Alarm panel is a much better alarm system the SHM straight out of the box. You can do allot with Webcore and SHM and custom software, but if you just put the ADT Alarm panel against SHM the ADT Smarthings alarm panel kills it in pretty much every way with or without monitoring.