Capability Tamper Alert

Lots of devices have tamper alarm functionality of some kind. There’s been a lot of discussion about this both internally and in the community, but I think it’s best to keep it simple:

attributes:

tamper — [“clear”, “detected”]

(Based on smoke detector capability.) This event would be expected to have a detailed account of the tamper alert as the descriptionText, and notifications triggered by this event would use that.

commands:

resetTamperAlert()

For devices that don’t tell us when the “tampering event” is over. Usually wouldn’t be a real device command, it would just change the state of the ‘tamper’ attribute.


And yes, we can work this capability into an automatic notification system like was done for Battery.

I would also like to see an option to use the accelerometer on the SmartSense Multi to tell me if it’s fallen off the door.

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Beat me to requesting it! I look forward to updating my Quirky contact sensor device type to support this :smiley:

Great recommended new Capability, thanks!

The problem with ST’s current architecture is there is no way to have parent-child or any sort of grouping of Capabilities with inherited or polymorphically compatible properties / characteristics.

Tamper is likely a good example case of an Urgent Alert, per @garyd9’s Topic:

But ST only lets you be one or the other, not both.

I’m guessing that even if the code of the Platform would make this easy enough to squeeze in (i.e., some form of inheritance, grouping, polymorphism), the overall impact makes that a long-term feature request at best.

In the meantime, if we want a single SmartApp to catch all important alerts, it should allow input of Devices with capability.urgentAlert, and a separate input of those with capability.tamper (two Device preference lists), and eliminate duplicates if necessary.

Perhaps, because it’s called “tamper”, no one will compare it with a siren.

I’m all in favor of expanding the capabilities in ways that will allow devices to communicate with smartapps. Call it “tamper” or “urgentAlert”. Either one works, and based on @duncan’s description, a “tamper” capability could be used for other type of alerts if needed. I was just trying to be generic in naming and usage description.

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“A rose by any other name…”

Zwave changed their “Alarm” terminology to “Notification” in v3 in part to acknowledge that notifications might come from devices with fairly long sleep intervals.

Was this capability ever implemented?

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Hey… It’s only been 5 months!

This capability has been added and documented.

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Took 12 months … but no use looking a gift horse in the ummm… calendar?!? :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:.

Thanks for the update @jody.albritton!

How do I setup an alert for a tamper condition? I see that my Ecolink garage door tilt sensor reports when the cover is removed, but I don’t see where I create a rule to alert me when this condition occurs.