Smart Leak Detection – Using the Utilitech Water Leak Detector with SmartThings home automation

As I’ve been moving all of my home automation projects over to the SmartThings environment, I’m expanding my number of devices and scenarios in order to take full advantage of the easy monitoring and alerts which are possible within the SmartThings ecosystem. The Problem Leak detectors are normally pretty simple devices; water conductivity completes an …

Smart Smoke Detection – Using First Alert ZSMOKE with SmartThings home automation

As I’ve switched my home automation from Vera to SmartThings I’ve also been expanding my network of z-wave devices at home. Since SmartThings does such a great job with different notification options I’ve also been looking more into monitoring our home for different kinds of damage or danger. One of the first tasks on the …

Home Automation: Motion sensors and lights with VERA scenes (micasaverde z-wave)

One of the more frustrating aspects of building z-wave scenes in VERA I’ve found over the years is when multiple points of automation are touching the same switches or sensors. Thankfully there is usually a way to workaround it by using apps like VERA Countdown timer.