Yeah, I could probably figure out how to do this with a smart phone, but for multiple reasons I don’t want to.
I’m back home after major surgery and I need 24 hour nurses for a while and I need a “caregiver alert” that makes a noise that I can trigger from my Apple Watch.
There are lots of versions of this that are dumb and work, where you press a button, but I want something smarter.
I can use my Apple Watch to turn on something like a smart plug that SmartThings then recognizes and go that route. That would be fine.
But I’d really like to have one that works with Apple Home and Alexa as well, so matter would be ideal.
It could be matter over thread, matter over Wi-Fi, or matter over bridge: I don’t mind adding another hub for this purpose.
I’d like the decibel level to be between 65 dB and 70 dB. Loud enough to be heard over a television, but not smoke alarm loud.
and ideally, I’d like it to last between 30 seconds and two minutes. Not just a 10 second alarm.
anybody have any suggestions? I’m healing OK after the surgery, but I’m still pretty foggy and I can’t really do my own research at the moment.
How about TAustin’s Alexa Multi-Trigger? When you flip the virtual switch in SmartThings, have an Alexa Routine turn up the volume to the desired loudness on the appropriate Alexa device and either play one of the built in alert sounds or make an announcement, or both.
Sorry, I should’ve specified, but I can’t use an Alexa device either.
These are 24 hour nurses so they’re sleeping here overnight and I’m not supposed to have anything in the room which might monitor them. So no smart phone and no smart voice assistant.
I have also used a Sonos speaker (no mic or assistant built in) to make announcements and sound alarms.
But, if you can’t put anything smart in the same room, that pretty much eliminates most all of the things I can think of (flashing smart lights, sound or announcements on speakers) besides a very loud alarm speaker in an adjacent or nearby room that hopefully can be heard.
Feeling a little better tonight, and I got an idea.
I think I’ll use one of my own old projects and try to find a plug-in power failure dumb alarm with an adjustable volume setting, then plug it into a smart plug. Turning off the smart plug will make the power failure alarm sound.
I tried one which I previously linked to, which was good in every way, except it only had an obnoxious siren sound. So I’m still looking. If I can find one with a nicer sound, I should be able to combine it with any matter plug and be able to trigger it from my Apple watch or echo or SmartThings.
Some things I liked about this particular model:
. it does repeat, for as long as the battery lasts, which could be as much as 12 hours.
. After one minute, it switches from just the sound to sound plus a flashing light.
. It has a cancel alarm button on the unit, so the nurse can turn it off right away if they want
. It has a green LED to show that it is working which switches to a red LED when it’s going off. Since people will sometimes move it from one outlet to another, I like the confirmation light.
. And as I mentioned, adjustable noise level.
But unfortunately, none of the siren tones are tolerable.
Glad to see you back, @JDRoberts , and I hope you’re doing better after the surgery.
I’m currently using another device that might be worth considering for this use case: the Woox R7051 Smart Indoor Siren, also known as a Tuya TS0219 Zigbee siren.
It is not a Matter device, so it does not solve the Apple Home / Alexa / Matter part directly. But if SmartThings is allowed to be part of the automation chain, I think it could be a very good fit for this kind of caregiver alert.
A few reasons why I think it matches your requirements quite well:
it is a dedicated sounder, not a phone, speaker, camera, microphone, or voice assistant
it is compact and battery-backed
it can run from USB power but continues on battery if power is lost
it supports adjustable duration, so it can run for more than just a few seconds
it supports volume control
it has visual LED/strobe feedback as well as sound
it acts as a Zigbee router
it can be triggered from SmartThings routines like a normal alarm/siren device
With the dedicated Edge driver, it exposes things like alarm duration, siren volume, siren level, strobe settings, LED brightness, battery voltage, and AC connected/disconnected state.
So for example, you could set it up as a controlled indoor alert rather than a full “security siren”: something like 30–60 seconds, moderate volume, and optional strobe. That seems close to the kind of “loud enough to get attention, but not smoke-alarm obnoxious” use case you described.
I wrote up the device and driver here:
Again, it is not Matter, so it may not be the perfect cross-platform answer. But as a SmartThings-controlled caregiver alert sounder without monitoring capability, I think it is a pretty strong option.
It turns out that the power failure alert device I had picked out is not a good match because although it has a chime sound, the chime is only for when the alert has been turned off and it is back to ready status. All of the alerts themselves are obnoxious sirens.
Another candidate is the Tapo H100 or H110. They have like 20 different (alarm) sounds, most of them sound like different door bells, phone ring tones. Volume can be adjusted. Cloud-to-cloud integration.
