I regularly forget to arm the smart home monitor at night or disarm it in the morning.
The option to have it auto-arm when away is excellent. I absolutely love the feature. But there isn’t really an equivalent for night time arming and morning disarming.
I set up a scheduled arm/disarm, but my schedule changes so often that I find myself setting the alarm off after it has auto-armed at night since I might still be up and moving about when it arms.
Basically, the only thing I can figure out to try is using motion sensors to detect when I have gone to bed and/or gotten up in the morning.
Is Jawbone the only activity monitor that works with smartthings? Could I use a pebble or a fitbit to detect when I’m awake/asleep?
Are there any other creative ways of auto-arming/disarming the alarm system for night mode?
If your phone charging state follows your awake/asleep habits (i.e. it’s plugged in while you’re asleep, and unplugged while you’re awake), you could create a virtual switch for charging state and use an IFTTT trigger to turn it off and on. Something like if phone is plugged in between 9pm and 11pm then arm the alarm, and if phone is unplugged betweeen 5am and 8 am, disarm. I’m using a combination of my phone and my wife’s phone charging to trigger Night mode, and when one unplugs in the morning it sets Home mode. Been working great for the past 3 weeks.
I always tell Alexa good night and she triggers the routine. Its nice cause it turns off all lights and checks the doors. I disarm at 6:00am, but hoping to improve that.
As I’ve mentioned before, I have a motion sensor on the side of the nightstand pointing towards the bed that I can trigger with a hand wave as I get in or out of bed. I use that to change the mode. I have to remember to do it, but it’s a natural habit to build.
I have done this 2 ways.
I used tasker, sharptools on the phone with a virtual momentary button in smartthings. Trigger on plugged in for good night. Then trigger phone unplugged for good morning. Worked well as long as I am the last one to bed.
Right now we are testing / using an alternate method for goodnight. I took an old phone and set it up on our headboard. I set up a custom screen using smarttiles with 3 buttons using the whole screen, Good night, ceiling light, ceiling fan. Then we can trigger it from the bedroom once there. Then everything locks up and turns off.
I had also experimented with using gentle alarm (my alarm app) to trigger Good Night (alarm on) good morning (alarm dismissed. )
I am in the process of trying to change how and when good morning triggers depending on if I or my wife will be up first. My week days off she would be up first. I have it hooked to Google calendar so smartthings knows when we work by virtual Switches being on or off. Been working alot lately so haven’t finished it up yet.
I have set up my change to Night mode with Motion Sensors and Rule Machine (note: No longer available for new installs. Check out CoRE if you do not already have Rule Machine.)
I have a “In bed” routine that I trigger by Alexa every night that turns all of the lights off in the house. I have a motion sensor in the bedroom, if no motion is detected for 1 hour then turn on Smart home monitor but the bedroom sensor is not included in the security sensors. If motion is detected after 5 am, run the routine “Good morning” and disarm smart home monitor. Works great for me!
I have a number of motion sensors throughout my house to control and automate lights.
I use a “Things Quiet Down” routine that looks at the motion sensors in portions of the house that we won’t be in after going to bed.
I know it wouldn’t work for everyone but it works pretty well for use since the dog sleeps in the same room as my wife and I…
I will also be installing a Enerwave SC7 in the bedroom that can be used to set scenes and run routines which could be done with a button press when we are ready to go to bed in the evening.
Motion Detection - if there is no motion downstairs for an extended period of time after a certain time, it runs Goodnight.
I also have a Flic (https://flic.io/) attached to each nightstand that when single pressed activates the routine as well. The Flic runs through IFTTT and I have an old iPhone that is in a dock downstairs that we use to control our Sonos. So, it is always on and the Flic softawre is installed there. I’m hoping that when bluetooth is finally activated on the hub, it might be able to work directly. But, IFTTT has been very reliable.
So, I can either manually do it or have it automatically happen if I forget. The cats tend to prevent it from automatically activating, so I’ve just gotten in the habit of pressing the button as I get in bed.
Your sensor must not detect movement in the bed. I have a sensor and rolling over triggers a motion event. First night I had it the motion trigger light was pretty bright.
It did take some trial and error but my motion sensor is on the floor, assuming that no motion needs to be tracked up high. Perfect location was under my bed based on the shape of the room
I’m using Rule Machine (or CoRE) to look at devices that are commonly on when we’re awake at night (certain lights, TV, motion detector, etc.) and when they’ve been inactive for a certain period of time, the house goes into Sleep mode which is associated with SHM. I then monitor those same devices for activity while in Sleep mode and if any of them turn on, I change the house back into Night mode which disables SHM. My house has four main modes; Home (daytime and home), Away (daytime or nighttime), Night (home and nighttime), and Sleep (home, asleep, and nighttime). All of these modes are associated with SHM.
I’m in the Alexa->virtual switch->Goodnight routine camp. Use a fixed time for the good morning routine since our 2 year old wakes up at the same time every day. I also have a contact sensor on our bedroom door that disarms and re-arms SHM when in night mode in case we need to get our 4 month old, let the dog out, midnight snack, etc.
destructure00, thanks for the post. I setup IFTTT and figured out how to make a virtual switch and make IFTTT set smartthings to night when I plugin my phone, but how are you able to only set it between certain times?
