I know this has been discussed in the past in other threads, but all “roads were a dead end”. I have been unable to find an outdoor siren that is compatible with Smartthings. If any one has purchased one recently, please point me in the right direction.
Note the location where I will be using the siren is actually in an unheated building which in the winter gets very cold. As an alternative to an outdoor siren, I would be willing to try an indoor siren which has an operating temp down to 14F or lower.
What country are you in? The device selection does matter. Also, can it be plug-in or does it have to be battery? Plug-in devices generally do a lot better in the cold.
Is this the same outbuilding where you put a hub last year? You had to buy heated enclosure box for it, as I remember.
You could do the same thing with a plug-in siren, but of course the enclosure itself is pretty expensive.
There are two plug-in sensors that work well with smartthings. They aren’t waterproof, which is where they are not rated for outdoors, and they are only rated to operate down to a hard freeze. But inside a shed inside an enclosure box they should be OK.
So that’s the Zipato/Philio PSE02 or the Aeotec Siren 6.
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Another alternative might be to find a dumb siren which will sound as soon as the power is cut and then plug it into a smart pocketsocket. So when you turn off the pocketsocket the siren sounds and when you turn it back on it goes off again. These are intended as alarms for essential equipment, but they can work well for easy integration to a smart system. They are often marketed as freezer outage alarms or “ Power failure alarms.“ The ones intended for commercial use will typically be louder.
It is, in fact, the same building where I have the hub encased in a heated enclosure. It works quite well and keeps the hub in the 40F-50F range if I remember correctly.
I live in NH and I know in the winter that building gets much colder than 32F for what can be weeks at a time because I monitored it last winter.
I thought about putting an indoor siren like the ones you listed in a heated enclosure. It might even fit in the same one as the hub. However, I thought it might not work well as either the the sound would get muffled more than I would like, or it would damage the heated box. Of course, hopefully the siren will not be going off that often, so maybe I should give that more thought.
I hadn’t thought about a “dumb siren” setup. That might work well OK. I have a whole house generator so power outages are not an issue.
So unless someone comes up with an outdoor siren, I will see if I can get one of these options to work well.
@kcw@JDRoberts
The following is an outdoor Zigbee siren. Being Zigbee it will work in the US as well as anywhere else. It comes with a 5V DC power supply and has battery backup. If the power supply plug is not suitable for your country then the fact it is a standard 5V DC transformer with a standard mini jack connector will make it very easy to find a compatible alternative. (Something I would have to do here in the UK.)
As a Zigbee device it will should pair with no problems to Smartthings although I don’t know how good the default DTH drivers in Smartthings will handle a siren. @JDRoberts may have more information about this.
The Open Park siren doesn’t say which zigbee profile it is using, but since it is sold with other devices using ZHA, that should be OK.
That said, it is considerably quieter than the other models we’ve been discussing, closer to a doorbell than your usual siren. Its maximum is 93 decibels. In contrast, the Aeotec goes to 105 dB, and the Zipato goes all the way to 115 dB (The same as an American residential smoke alarm.) Since this is going to be inside a shed away from the main building, that might make a difference to you. It also appears to only have one sound, as opposed to the Aeotec and the Zipato which both give you a choice of several.
In good news, it is spec’d to operate down to about 14°F. so it is a truly outdoor device.
It’s definitely worth considering. It will probably just look like an on/off switch to smartthings. I didn’t see any advanced features in the product description.
(By the way, all the stuff in the product description about channel management and not interfering will not apply: you have to have a hub which also does that, and smartthings does not.)
NIce finds. Thanks for the info. The OpenPark ones seems like a good fit. Will have to see if they have tested with Smartthings and if they will ship to the US at a reasonable cost.
OpenPark and Wolf-guard were a bust. Both European companies and have no online purchase presence. Wolf-guard never responded to my email and OpenPark was only interested if I was interested in being a US distributor.
Zipato did not have very good reviews on Amazon at least relative to Smartthings integration so I skipped it.
Ended up getting the Aeotec. It works very nicely in my heated enclosure. The siren is a lot smaller than I expected so it easily fit with room to spare even with the hub already in it. Although the enclosure dampens the sound somewhat , it was more than loud enough for my purposes.
You do have to install a custom DTH [RELEASE] Aeotec Siren 6, and will likely want to change the default siren sound and volume to get the loudest possible siren sound.
