Hey all,
I’m sorry if this is a very dumb question, I just got my hub on Sunday and am loving it. Today I put up the Visonic MCT-340 Door Sensor and realized, “Duh, I need a something to make it chime/make noise”. In my head I have almost convinced myself that I could buy one of the numerous Z-Wave sirens on the market and they would communicate because they share the same Samsung ST hub, is this true? Any tips or words of advice are very, very appreciated. Thank you in advance!
Sure. Smartthings is a multiprotocol platform. The sensor would send a message to the hub, the hub would send a message to the siren. There are a number of different ways to do it depending on exactly which model of hub you have and which of the two versions of the SmartThings mobile app you are using. 
2 Likes
so wait you can use a zigbee contact door sensor to trigger a zwave siren?
You can use any sensor that’s paired to SmartThings as a trigger for a siren. The wireless protocol the sensor uses doesn’t matter, as long as it works with SmartThings, because as JD said:
2 Likes
thank you, just thought zigbee and zwave doesn’t work with each other or shouldn’t have both. too bad there no zigbee siren.
It’s correct that zigbee and zwave devices cannot talk directly to each other, but it doesn’t matter in a SmartThings set up because the hub can talk to both of them.
The SmartThings Hub Contains two radios, one for Z wave and one for Zigbee. So it can send and receive to both zwave and Zigbee devices.
In the case you describe, the zigbee motion sensor sends a message to the hub “something is moving nearby.” Because you set up an “automation”, that is, a rule for what should happen when that particular sensor detects motion, the SmartThings Hub will then Send a zwave message to the siren to turn on.
The Motion sensor and the siren never have to talk to directly to each other. So it doesn’t matter what communucation protocol they use as long as each can talk with the hub.
3 Likes
you can have both, just make sure you’re attentive to creating a strong mesh network for each type of device.
2 Likes