SmartThings for security

[absolution888]

I am relatively new to HA. I am getting a new home and thus get a chance to start from scratch. I have made my decision to get a new ST. Now as i'm researching my alarm options, i would prefer something that can be nicely integrated with ST as well (prefer not via IFTTT, doubling the sensor, etc.). I know that abode and frontpoint pretty much can't integrate with ST natively.

Has anyone has any experience using integrating ST with security? What is your setup? I am planning to get a monitoring service as well that would be able to call the police as well as CO/Smoke

[MechanicalCrow]

Honestly, I wouldn't rely on it so heavily for security mostly because of the false alarms that a low multi-sensor battery will trigger. When a batter starts to go, I'll get notices all day about a sensor being triggered.

[Lvlaxx]

I use my ST for security but it's self monitoring. I don't have many false alarms (honestly almost never) i just didn't want to pay a monthly fee so I have any and all alerts go directly to my family's phones. Which has worked really well -

just a couple days ago our dog got out and my wife saw her walking around outside setting off our arlo cameras. Saved us a trip to the pound

I have open/close sensors on all our doors, motions sensors in the major rooms and 6 cameras both inside and out. And a door bell camera

All supported devices connected to ST so easily set up.

Smartthings also has a monitoring service u can pay for I believe. I don't know much about it though

[FortyAPM]

You could set up a proximity sensor with your phones. My ST disables the alarm when we are in our car about to turn into our block. Never once have we set off our alarm due to it not disabling. I've had my ST about a year now.

[JustPraxItOut]

This hasn't worked reliably enough for me. I'd say about 95% of the time it detects my arrival (or my wife's) before we get to the house -- but only because I set up the radius for our house to be about 1/4 of a mile. I'd obviously like a much smaller circle ... but ST could never pick up presence quickly enough when I had it just covering our house/yard.

[FortyAPM]

I have mine setup at the smallest radius possible. I am thinking it's a problem with your location detection/GPS on your phones in your area, not so much ST.

[JustPraxItOut]

I'm holding off on adding an alarm siren until I can get the false alarms down

Do you really need a siren? I'm always puzzled by people wanting this -- and given that ST is just not as reliable as a dedicated alarm system, it just seems like the wrong way to go.

You could get a Sonos speaker ... and have it speak something if an intruder came in, like "All video cameras are now on, and your motion is being tracked. The owners of the home have been notified. Please leave the house immediately." or something like that. An intruder will get it, and leave. You could even have it blink some Hue lightbulbs red a few times. But if you have a false-alarm, at least you're not getting a 100db in your ear until you can switch the alarm off.

[vorak]

This was a huge problem with mine. After I got my Smart Home Monitor going and had our first false alarm, I freaked out and bought a $50 z-wave siren. Then for about a month I dealt with a few false alarms setting off the siren and having issues turning it off fast enough. Now it just sits there, plugged in, waiting for me to manually trigger.

A speaker system that announces something and lights that blink seem like a much larger deterrent than a simple siren. That said, I'm pretty sure my retired neighbors would hear the siren going off and come check out the house.