I have ADT Pulse with over 100 Z Wave nodes and would like to get Smartthings as a parallel hub to automate certain events - the first thing I want to achieve is (not offered by ADT Pulse) is ‘group’ two Zee Wave devices like so…
Device 1. Z Wave Motion Sensing Light Dimmer by Jasco
Device 2. Z Wave Power Receptacle
When I enter the room which has the motion sensor switch (set to turn on when sensing motion) - Can I program Smartthings to turn on the power receptacle which has a lamp connected to it when the motion light switch comes on?
Thanks in advance for helping me to decide on smart things.
SmartThings by itself can do this, but it doesn’t play nice with other zwave controllers, so I’m afraid you may not get the results that you want. ( in particular, it may not always be notified of the first light coming on) If you want to remove your Lighting devices from control of your ADT pulse system and put them on SmartThings instead, that would work for those devices.
So you can set it up as a parallel system with its own devices. Setting it up as a secondary to your ADT system has a lot of other challenges.
SmartThings strongly discourages adding the Hub to another Z-Wave network. We cannot offer support for disconnected Z-Wave devices or the inability to add devices through the Hub as a result of including the Hub into another Z-Wave network.
There are some community members who have successfully added a SmartThings hub as a secondary, but they all seem to have the newest generation of the ADT controller. See the following thread for more discussion:
Sounds like what you are looking for is Z-Wave association between the motion sensor and the power receptacle.
Unfortunately, the ADT Pulse hub does not let you directly set associations within association groups. To accomplish this, I setup the SmartThings hub as a secondary Z-Wave controller (per the link provided above). After all of the Z-Wave devices are brought into SmartThings, you use the Z-Wave Tweaker device handler to set the Z-Wave association groups.
Look at the product specifications page for the various Z-Wave devices you have to see what association groups they support. Only the “driving device” needs to support the association groups (not the receiving device). I’m using the newer Jasco/GE Z-Wave plus switches and power receptacles throughout my house (30 in total). For these devices, the following association groups are supported:
Group 1: Lifeline - Up to 5 members: You enter the Z-Wave node IDs which will get “notification” when things change. For me, I have the ADT Pulse hub (node 1) and the SmartThings hub (node 28)…note, these have to be a Hexadecimal number. This gives “faster” and “more reliable” updates to SmartThings when the ADT Pulse hub does something…or vice versa. It’s not 100% though. Also, both hubs are notified “faster” and “more reliable” with a manual switch activation.
Group 2: On Notification - Up to 5 members: When the device is activated, it sends an activation signal to another device. (I think it’s group 2). I have this setup so that, for example, when I turn on the “up lighting” in my living room it also turns on the ceiling fan.
Group 3: Double Tap Association - Up to 5 members: When you “double tap” the switch up or down, it sends an on or off command to these devices.
I successfully use both the ADT Pulse hub and the SmartThings hub (as a secondary controller) for automation. ADT Pulse is good at some things, and SmartThings is good at others (with CoRE or WebCoRE installed).
I hope this helps.
Awesome input - Thanks…
Help me further if you can
So this is how I will proceed:
- Get a smarthings hub as a secondary hub - will follow your instructions to add it to my ecosystem.
- Buy a Jasco Smart Motion Dimmer sensor light switch - SKU26933.
- Buy a Jasco in wall smart outlet - SKU14288
When I enter the room (2) will pick up motion and light the bulbs connected to it. Also the smart things will turn on (3) where I will have a lamp attached.Easy Peasy or not
Although typically when it comes to just grouping lights, in smartthings I would use the official “smart lighting“ feature rather than Z wave direct association, because it is both simpler to set up and also more flexible, you bring up a very good point that when there Is both a primary and a secondary controller you may get better results if you use zwave direct association.
In particular, the problem I mentioned where the secondary doesn’t get notified if a device is turned on manually won’t be an issue because the group command goes directly from the master switch to the other device. So that’s a good call for this particular situation.
If anyone in the future finds this thread and is just looking for a way to tie two lights together without having another zwave controller involved, there is a how to article in the community – created wiki that explains how to use the official feature to group lights. Note that that method will also let you use, for example, a Z wave switch with a zigbee plug in module. The protocols don’t matter because in that method the requests go through the hub. In contrast, zwave association can only be used with 2 zwave devices which are physically fairly close together (within one hop).
http://thingsthataresmart.wiki/index.php?title=How_to_Group_Lights_Together
I could not add the Hub to ADT Pulse - following the instructions.
The only difference I see is that my ADT Pulse Hub is a older version than yours. I called ADT and asked them if they can upgrade my ADT Hub and they told me that there is no difference between the two versions as both have the same software.
Since I have 160 nodes to will be a huge task to replace the ADT Hub.
Will appreciate any input.
When you add the SmartThings hub to ADT Pulse, the SmartThings hub will not appear in the ADT Pulse device list.
If the pairing is successful, the ADT Pulse hub will assign a Z-Wave device address to the SmartThings hub, and it will have the same home address as the ADT Pulse system. You can check this in the SmartThings IDE.
If your SmartThings Z-Wave address is something other than 1, then it has been successfully added to the ADT Pulse hub Z-Wave network. Then, go into the SmartThings Smart Phone App --> Things --> “+ Add a Thing” and let it search. It will take some time for all of the devices to be brought over.
After you have the devices brought over into SmartThings, use the Z-Wave Tweaker device handler to set the various lifeline and other associations. What I do for all of the switches (and any other device that supports more than 1 Z-Wave address for lifelines) is to set the lifeline address to address 1 (the ADT Pulse hub Z-Wave address) and the Z-Wave address of the SmartThings hub.
Make sure (using the Z-Wave Tweaker device handler) that you don’t have Z-Wave addresses in the associations or lifelines that do not exist. The functionality will still work, but the Z-Wave communication / response time is slower as the device will try multiple sends to a node that does not exist (time delay and more traffic clogging the Z-Wave network).
(Remember when looking at and/or manually manipulating device IDs in SmartThings is that they are in hexadecimal. ADT Pulse is decimal.)
Jr,
I am stuck on step 1 - ‘If the pairing is successful, the ADT Pulse hub will assign a Z-Wave device address to the SmartThings hub, and it will have the same home address as the ADT Pulse system. You can check this in the SmartThings IDE’.
Checking the Smartthings IDE I don’t see the home ID of ADT (I assume this in ADT Portal under Systems > Site Settings > Site ID).
I found another interesting issue - in the Smartthings IOS App if I go - Add hub to an existing Z Wave Network and then hit the red Join Button - after a few seconds the app shows that smart things has joined a Z wave network - EVEN WHEN THE ADT SYSTEM IS NOT IN PAIR MODE ???
As you know, in the IDE site all you get is Join/Leave Z Wave network for 8 seconds with no indication what happened once you click that…
Some people have reported that the version of Ihub ADT matters - not sure if I need to change the ADT hub but that will be a huge task.
I have to get through the first step so that I tango to next - really appreciate your input.
I’m not sure if it’s works on a different version of the ADT Pulse hub…I only have the 1 version in my house that I have this working with.
The site ID that appears in the ADT Pulse portal has nothing to do with the Z-Wave Home ID that you see in the SmartThings hub. If the SmartThings hub has joined the ADT Pulse Z-Wave network, the Home ID in the SmartThings IDE will change. (I don’t remember how to get the Z-Wave Home ID from the ADT Pulse system).
Check in the IDE --> My Hubs
Go down to the “Z-Wave” section.
What is “Node ID”? If it’s 1, then the SmartThings hub has not joined the ADT Pulse Z-Wave network. If it’s something other than 1, then the ADT Pulse has assigned the SmartThings hub a Z-Wave address.
Again - the ADT Pulse hub will not show the SmartThings hub.
If the SmartThings hub has a node ID other than 1, now go into the smart phone app and “add new devices”. Let it run…it will take a while (I have 30 devices and it takes about 7 to 10 minutes to complete). You should start seeing the ADT Pulse paired Z-Wave devices coming over.
It appears as though the SmartThings hub “scans” the Z-Wave network for devices. The Z-Wave devices paired to the ADT Pulse hub will show as “new” devices to the SmartThings hub.
You do not have to “unpair” the Z-Wave devices from the ADT Pulse hub.
I checked the Samrtthings hub on IDE and it shows Node 1 so that means ADT is not pairing it.
I have called a ADT rep out to see if they can swap my Hub but I doubt it they will do it without charging me a bunch as I have 160 nodes and they will have to reprogram All.
I find it strange that on IDE when I click on my Hubs it sys no hubs available and go to the smart things app and claim your hub but when I click on My Locations I see the hub and when I click on the location I can get into the hub - not sure if this makes a difference but I thought to put it out just in case.