Neighbor needs to petsit, ways for him to disarm/arm my system?

Neighbor needs to petsit for me, what’s the best way for him to disarm/arm my system? I have a minimote with one button programmed to arm and one to disarm and I plan on giving it to him. I tested it and it works on my sidewalk/driveway. What are some other options for him to control my security system?

have him text you, and you can do it from China. Less convenient for him.

or make him a user in your system - risky, if he wants to look around and accidentally deletes something.

Minimote is pretty simple and you’ve already got it going. The top method as backup, seem like a good idea.

You did disable the siren, right? Just have it notify you. If the siren’s off then the house goes into alarm, no big deal.

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Good idea on disabling the siren.

Do you have a z-wave door lock? You could buy the keyfob presence detector and have him carry it.

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I have a similar thing and I just bought a Guest presence detector. This is then attached to the guest key and I have a guest mode that triggers on and off their arrival. Seems to work pretty well. The only issue is if they’ve had the key for a while and the battery has died!

Can you give more details about your setup? It sounds like a good solution. Is your guest presence sensor just a regular ST presence sensor? My neighbor lives right next door, would that be too close for him that ST would think he’s there all the time and thus leaving my house disarmed? My garage door also has a contact sensor so he’d need to disarm my system before he opens the garage to enter the house.

If you need that option to be more secure, I wrote a SmartApp you could try…

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That sounds awesome. Will definitely try it out!

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Thanks… It may be a little stale cuz never got enough interest (even though it definitely “worked”). I don’t mind debugging if it suddenly has issues now or if might need me to consider a new feature.

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I wonder if a text to IFTTT would work. Notifies you and him that house is in pet mode. Turns off and notifies you when he leaves.

Hmm…not sure, my presence sensors activate when I’m in a vague area of the house so maybe it is too close.

Yeah it’s a standard SmartThings presence sensor. I use CoRE to say that when a guest arrives and the home is in holiday mode then disarm security system and set to guest mode. Then when guest leaves run a routine called “Go On Holiday”; the same routine I run when we leave for holiday in the first place. As the guest arrival only runs when the house is in holiday mode it stops it being an issue if they come round some other time.

Most automations I have made run in guest mode and home mode so the guest can use the house. This works nicely as they don’t have to do anything- just make sure they bring the presence sensor but as it’s on the key ring this is not an issue.

If the distance thing is an issue though the minimote idea would work well, they’d just have to press buttons rather than do nothing that way but it’s not a big issue.

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We just gave our pet sitter one of our presence FOB’s to use while we were gone. So house assumed it was one of us coming and going. Was nothing to change. As a backup programmed new code into schlage lock for him. I also set system to text me every time lock actuated. If all else failed we all have phones. Someone could toggle what was needed. As an added bonus of him using the FOB allowed us to know if and when he came and left. If it is was too long, called family to do a bonus visit for dog.

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