Inactivity notification?

[dish]

I have several Z-Wave / Zigbee devices. They often always shown as online even when they ran out of battery or malfunctioned. My door sensor and motion sensor reports temperature in addition to open/close. Is there a way to get notified that the have no activity for 24 hours?

[Barkis (John C)]

They should show up as off-line devices in the app. Battery powered devices generally phone the mother ship periodically to report battery level…

Potentially, you could have any response from the device set a virtual switch (indicating device “alive”) and check it daily, say at midnight, and using that test to send you a notification or maybe set another “dead device” virtual switch you could observe at will. YMMV, of course!

[dish]

Many of my sensors use Edge driver and they don’t really go offline despite clearly they are offline.

I like your idea of virtual switch. How do I add one?

The other issue is I am relying on the periodic temperature update to indicate online status. But I don’t see how I can use it to trigger event. It is not a fixed threshold that I am comparing against.

[Barkis (John C)]

@Barkis

Potentially, you could have any response from the device set a virtual switch (indicating device “alive”) and check it daily, say at midnight, and using that test to send you a notification or maybe set another “dead device” virtual switch you could observe at will. YMMV, of course!

@dish

The other issue is I am relying on the periodic temperature update to indicate online status. But I don’t see how I can use it to trigger event. It is not a fixed threshold that I am comparing against.

Apparently I spoke too soon!

The last couple of days I’ve been experimenting with this & having no luck. As you correctly point out, you’re not comparing temperature with a threshold. I tried a comparison with a range of temperatures and found once the sensor reported I could set a virtual switch from the initial event. However all subsequent events, still within the same range, do not cause the event to reoccur.

Obviously, motion is required for that type sensor–which fails if you’re not home or never enter a room with the sensor during the time period.

So, nothing jumps out as workable to me using the stock Routine capability of the SmartThings app. Perhaps the Rules API could do this, but I haven’t spent any time in that area…

[Terri_Baker (TeBa)]

You could try something like this but I’m not sure how it will work if the device goes off line

[h0ckeysk8er (Bruce Pinsky)]

@Barkis

@Barkis

Potentially, you could have any response from the device set a virtual switch (indicating device “alive”) and check it daily, say at midnight, and using that test to send you a notification or maybe set another “dead device” virtual switch you could observe at will. YMMV, of course!

@dish

The other issue is I am relying on the periodic temperature update to indicate online status. But I don’t see how I can use it to trigger event. It is not a fixed threshold that I am comparing against.

Apparently I spoke too soon!

The last couple of days I’ve been experimenting with this & having no luck. As you correctly point out, you’re not comparing temperature with a threshold. I tried a comparison with a range of temperatures and found once the sensor reported I could set a virtual switch from the initial event. However all subsequent events, still within the same range, do not cause the event to reoccur.

Obviously, motion is required for that type sensor–which fails if you’re not home or never enter a room with the sensor during the time period.

So, nothing jumps out as workable to me using the stock Routine capability of the SmartThings app. Perhaps the Rules API could do this, but I haven’t spent any time in that area…

ST Routines don’t support the notion of “any change”, but rather state changes from one state to another. So, a range of temperatures will not produce a state change if it is still within the range.

You could use a 3rd party rules engine like Sharptools which has the option for “any change”. The tradeoff is that the routine will run in their cloud, not local on your hub.