What I Chose to Replace My Iris System

Fellow Iris users,

Like many of you, I’m currently in the boat of needing to replace my Iris home automation and security gear with another platform. As a 1st-gen Iris owner, many of you will already know that for me, I have to replace virtually -all- of my equipment.

I spent some time and evaluated some options for home automation hubs and kits that would be appropriate replacements for my Iris gear. I broke down what I would do in various situations depending on what generation of Iris components I owned and what my priorities were. I have put all of this information together in a post on my blog:

I hope this well be helpful to you as you consider your own choices for new home automation equipment. Of course, I arrived at SmartThings in two categories. :slightly_smiling_face:

Best regards,

-Skyler

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Nice writeup. Like you I had an Iris system with all 1st gen components. I also had a Smoke/CO sensor, Schlage deadbolts, water leak detector and garage control, all of which were not reimbursed. My gift card from Lowes was over $700, so I had plenty of money to play with. However, I wanted one common system and chose the Smartthings with the 2018 hub.

I decided that a camera was not really needed for Smartthings but still wanted one, so I got a Wyze camera on Amazon for $25 and it’s working great. I just want to know how bad things are in the house if the alarms are tripped before I call for police/fire.

My current Smartthings includes:
4 of their latest Door sensors (one configured for the garage overhead)
3 Smartbuttons to turn on and off the various lights in the house (Philips or Cree bulbs as well as smart outlets)
Dome Siren
First alert Smoke/CO from the old system
Schlage Deadbolts (2) from the old system
Water leak detector from the old system
Alexa! Oh how I love this. I used it with Iris too but now I have more capability.
A very little bit of work in the Classic IDE app based on solutions I found

Although it’s not as easy to program as Iris was (which it really wasn’t), I listed out what the Iris system did and attacked each of the requirements one at a time.

What I really like about Smartthings is the presence sensing of the mobile phones to enable or disable the alarm automatically.

What I have Alexa doing is to alert me to door openings, when the front door opens she says “Front Door”…similar for the Garage and back door. I have it playing on both of my Alexas.

Alexa can also lock the locks, turn on and off the alarm (through using some tricks with a virtual switch) as well as handling all of the lights. Because of all of the features I am using I rarely have to go into the App.

The one thing I don’t have right now is garage door automation since the Iris garage door controller essentially failed on me. I don’t really need it through the app but I am installing a Chamberlin control to allow me to control it through their app. I will be able to use the Chamberlin app or Smartthings to see the state of the door since I have a Smartthings sensor on it.

I’m really liking Smartthings so far.

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Thanks, Mike. Yeah, you had way more 1st-gen gear than I did, so that’s a bummer, especially considering you have to actually go replace whatever equipment you plan to change over. At least you got a big reimbursement. :grin:

What resolution is the Wyze and does it have night vision?

That’s cool about the door messages; I might have to investigate how to do that.

I’m pretty excited about SmartThings, as well; I did that write up over the last couple of days, kind of stepped back and looked at it when I was done and then went shopping. I found a new SmartThings Home Monitoring Kit with the water sensor for only $110 shipped that someone had listed on Amazon, so I snatched that up. I’m excited for it to arrive. :slight_smile:

Best regards,
-Skyler
https://skylerh.com

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That feature is available only with the classic app, not with the new app, and they have already told us that the classic App will be going away eventually. :disappointed_relieved:

https://support.smartthings.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000114006-New-SmartThings-app-FAQ

This appears to be a change in design philosophy regarding security features, as the old app also allowed you to automate the unlocking of smart locks and the new app does not.

They made this change when the new app was first released almost a year ago and never added it back, so it doesn’t look like they are going to.

Just something to be aware of if that particular feature is important to you.

(This change in design philosophy is a big issue for me because I am a quad and my very first use case for Home Automation was a totally hands-free smart lock. I had this for three years with the classic app, then it went away with the new app. )

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That one is super easy if you want it to happen every time. :sunglasses: It’s an official feature which is part of echo routines (not smartthings routines) . And it recognizes the SmartThings contact and motion sensors as triggers.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=G202200080

If you’re a power user, even better is that it will trigger for a virtual sensor, which means any event at all that smartthings can recognize can now be used to trigger an echo routine. :sunglasses: And you can set conditions on it like time of day or location mode or other filters. You put the logic on the SmartThings side and only trigger the virtual sensor when you want the echo routine to run.

See the community FAQ (the topic title is a clickable link).

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The Wyze is both HD and SD, whichever you want and can store to a 32 GB SD card or up to 14 days online for free but this is limited in that it will only do 12 second triggered clips every 5 minutes or so. No big deal for me since I can always review the SD card. It could be better, but for $25 vs $200+ for the nicer cameras it really is all that I need, and no subscription.

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Great info @JDRoberts. I’ll have to read through about setting up virtual sensors. I wonder if IFTTT is another way to handle the locks now that the new app doesn’t support that feature?

Yep, I understand your frustration given your situation. For now I am mostly on the classic app and am hoping that some of the features not in the new app are on their way as some are quite essential.

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Yeah @Mike12 that sounds awesome for $25.

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That’s a good thought, although my concern would be that once the classic app is discontinued Samsung will then remove the ability to control SmartThings locks from IFTTT to match the new design philosophy. That’s how it works for quite a few IFTTT channels from other hub brands, you can get to light switches but not to locks.

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