How to trigger Hue lights whenever an alarm.com event is triggered?

I need a solution that will flash or change my Hue lights to certain colors whenever an alarm.com event is triggered.

For example, when my Nest Protect detects smoke or carbon monoxide, it flashes all my Hue lights red automatically, and also returns to its last color state when it detects that the smoke or carbon monoxide have dissipated.

Is there a way to add this basic functionality through other services like SmartThings or IFTTT?

Hue lights do not use Z-wave for communication and would not be directly compatible with an alarm panel, and they are not compatible directly with Alarm.com, at least as of this post.

I guess to really be of best help what are the expected goals of this? What events are you looking to use?

You probably wouldn’t want to use Alarm.com to trigger the lights in this case, but probably keep this local, using something like Smartthings to monitor the state of Z-wave devices etc., that can be triggered by the alarm panel.

Thanks. I’m no expert on SmarThings. Just browsing on the site, it looks like all I’d need is a $99 hub from SmarThings, right?: https://shop.smartthings.com/products/samsung-smartthings-hub

In your experience, will this hub replace my current Hue Lights hub, or will it simply accentuate it? My Nest Thermostat, Nest Protect, Amazon Echo Dot, and IFTTT are currently communicating with the Hue Lights. Alarm.com is the only piece in my system that lacks this ability to trigger the Hue Lights based on alarm.com events. So I’m simply looking for the cheapest middleware solution that will allow any of my existing devices to trigger the Hue Lights based on these alarm.com triggers. (I also have FiOS internet in the off-chance that Verizon has some sort of Hue/Alarm.com integration.)

Just buy the SmarThings and I’m good to go, or am I missing something else I’d need to purchase? Thanks.

Alarm.com is the only piece in my system that lacks this ability to trigger the Hue Lights based on alarm.com events. So I’m simply looking for the cheapest middleware solution that will allow any of my existing devices to trigger the Hue Lights based on these alarm.com triggers.

To clarify from above: adding Smartthings or another Z-wave hub won’t give the ability to use Alarm.com events as any sort of direct trigger. There is a bit more to it. You would need to have a rule created in Alarm.com so that the panel affects the state of a compatible Z-wave device, then have the other Hub (Smartthings for example) trigger IFTTT or something based on the state of that Z-wave device. It is a bit cumbersome.

Again I would be curious to know which triggers you are referring to. Depending on the specific use case and expectations, it is pretty easy to use Alarm.com to trigger IFTTT. You can set up email triggers in IFTTT to search emails for specific content, so you can have many different email triggers listening for custom Alarm.com email notifications you create and send to that email address. From there you can perform Hue actions.

Obviously there will be some latency, usually at least 15 -30 seconds so it would depend on what you are trying to accomplish.

For example, Night time arming: email trigger searching for “(your system description) armed stay” and an action of dimming the Hue bulbs or turning them blue, etc. before turning off.

Or I know I always keep my notification sounds on silent on my phone because I get an enormous amount, so a custom Alarm notification sound: email trigger searching for “(your system description) reported an alarm” and an action of Android Device - Play a Specific Song, “Inner Circle - Bad Boys”