I was looking to give the whole home automation thing a try when I wanted a simple chime to play when a door was open and stop when it closes. I was thinking I would start from this and gradually automate more and more, but I am shocked to find even this simple case doesn’t work reliably. About 10% of the time the chime doesn’t turn off and just keeps playing after the door is closed.
Given a simple on/off switch can’t work reliably what hope is there for anything more sophisticated?
I’m using the standard open closed sensor and an Aeon labs siren (with tape over the speaker to make it a bit quieter). There doesn’t appear to be an z-wave door chime on the market at present.
As much as we want it to be 100%, SmartThings is nothing close to that yet. I adjusted my expectations a while ago and gave up on certain projects. However, there is still quite a lot you can do.
My rule of thumb is assume it WILL fail and fail at the worse time. Thus, select your projects with that in mind.