Home Security Monitoring?

I am hoping this forum is the correct place for this question.
I have Smartthings and I use a few Arlo cameras with it. This has been working well so far however I have not been able to figure out what to do (and what other people are doing) about nighttime when you sleep. I get the alerts from the Arlo cameras and other alerts from Smartthings on my phone. But at night, I go to sleep and I turn my phone off. Even if I keep my phone on, I am not sure I would instantly hear and be awoken by a notification. In addition, when I turn the phone off, I am not sure how or if the phone ā€œpresenceā€ is being detected.
So what are the options for monitoring while asleep? Is there something that everyone is doing with these setups that I am just missing somehow? I cant be the only person who goes to sleep or turns their phone off at night.
I know a few companies make some sort of alarm siren that works with Smartthings, is that pretty much the only way to go?
Thanks.

1 Like

You could use a zwave siren, a Sonos speaker, an old android tablet or phone, etc. Most things that make noise can be configured to work for notificationsā€¦ it just depends on what stuff you have or are interested in buying.

Sonos, for example, can speak the notifications. A siren can only make alarm sounds.

Presence should stay constant until you turn on your phone and leave every with it. If you have problems, youā€™ll have to use some more logic or come up with an alternative presence solution. I put my phone in Do Not Disturb mode instead of turning it off.

Thanks for the reply.
So lets say i have an extra tablets laying around. What do i need to do to make this into something that can wake me up if my camera detects motion while I sleep and while my phone is off?

Or you could use Amazonā€™s Alexa or Google Home if you have them

I use the Aeon Labs Doorbell to play preset mp3s so I know exactly what set the alarm off. My mp3s are prefixed with a siren sound so that Iā€™m awake enough to hear the message when it starts talking.

I have both siren/strobe and speakers. The speakers come on during the alarm making the very realistic sounds of some mad barking dogs! Sounds AWESOME :smile:

FYI the Samsung speakers interface is buggy with audio notifications yet the Sonos rocks! go figureā€¦

Alexa and GH canā€™t be used as a siren or receive push notifications as yet. They can only control other things

Is this specific to the UK? Just curious because I can push notification to my GH in the US.

I have got my tablet connected to a sound system that covers the full ground floor of my house. Iā€™ve got the tablet to ā€˜speakā€™ notifications which come through the system.

I also have Logitech harmony and itā€™s set up so that even if the sound system is off, any sensors that are triggered when the system is armed will turn on the sound system and start shouting the alerts.

My current alert is something along the lines of "INTRUDER alert, INTRUDER alerts etc etc.

Itā€™s pretty funky and I can see it being effective

Oh, youā€™re right about GH. Itā€™s just Alexa that canā€™t have any

Take a look here:

Then youā€™ll need some way to trigger and generate the spoken alerts. CoRE would work for this. Itā€™s also possible the built-in routines will do it, but Iā€™ve never tried because I just use CoRE

If you have an android smartphone you can use an app called tasker to filter your notifications. When going to sleep I set my phone to silent so no calls/notifications will wake me up, I then use tasker to detect notifications from smartthings that reference ā€œalarmā€ and when that is detected tasker reads the notification at full volume and emits an alarm sound from my phone.

You could also install a smart lightbulb or outlet in your bedroom, connect it to your hub and have a light turn on when the alarm is triggered. I guess it depends on how heavy of a sleeper you are :slight_smile:

Iā€™m using multiple Sonos Play 1ā€™s and the Big Talker smart app to play sounds/speech notifications. Big Talker lets you configure when it talks according to the mode. So once I set my mode to ā€˜Armedā€™ all of my Big Talker routines kick in.