New to ST, need something similar to Vera Alerts

SmartApps & Automations Automation Ideas
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Hi. As the title says - I need a replacement for Vera Alerts.
I have a wall mounted tablet that notifies me of things happening via TTS. For example “Garage door open” or, "There is a water leak in the basement"
Then the more complex part is I also created logic to evaluate if the condition is still true after a set time. For example every hour that the garage door remains open “Garage door is open longer than one hour”. This will repeat until the door is closed and it will reset.

I probably need a couple of products/apps/code to make this happen, but nothing is jumping out at me through google.

It does not need to be an exact replacement but I do like the verbal notifications and I like to be reminded as I may miss the first notification.

Thanks!

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Take a look at these smartapps.

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3

Thank you. This is very helpful.
I got something going in CoRE. But LANnouncer does not work on my tablet (version issue). I stumbled upon a post that mentioned using SharpTools with Tasker. But I cannot figure out how to integrate CoRE with Sharptools.

I suppose I can root and flash the tablet but I was wondering if I could get Sharptools working. Google gave me nothing so I’m thinking no.

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You can contact the developer of sharptools directly through that website:

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How do you want to integrate CoRE with SharpTools?

SharpTools can subscribe to events and react to them. For example, if CoRE turns a switch on (physical or virtual), SharpTools can react to that and trigger an event in Tasker like speaking a message.

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6

I would build a piston in CoRE: IF garage door is open > 1 hour THEN somehow invoke Sharptools to trigger event in Tasker

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The main “Garage Door Open” and “There is a water leak in the basement” examples can be handled natively within SharpTools.

For the advanced part, you can either do this directly in SharpTools+Tasker or if you want the logic shared across multiple SmartApps, you could do it in CoRE.

SharpTools + Tasker
In SharpTools, you could subscribe to the door attribute of the garage door and then handle the logic in Tasker to determine how long the Garage has been open and when to show a notification. One approach would be to log the timestamp of when the open event is received and then check on a timed schedule how long the door has been open.

CoRE + SharpTools + Tasker
You could create a Virtual Device and change that device with CoRE which SharpTools can subscribe to and react to. So CoRE would watch for the garage door being open for too long and would trigger a “Garage Door Alarm” virtual switch or something similar.

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@ady624 does CoRE interact with any other SmartApps today? Since there’s no cross-SmartApp API, I’ve seen most people proxy the requests through devices, but curious if you’ve come across any innovative approaches.

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8

Yes, it interacts with AskAlexa, EchoSistant, all via location events.

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Can you provide more details?

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LANNouncer supports Lollipop, Android 5.0 and later. Lollipop came out in 2014, 2.5 years ago. You really shouldn’t be using anything older than that with any internet connectivity.

Update the OS on your tablet; go to XDA Developers if you need to for hints how. And then modern software will work and you will be safe.

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11

Subscribing to an app via location event (if the app is sending events) is the same as subscribing to an event for a device… Adi first used it with CoRE, then @MichaelS and EchoSistant started using it to communicate between apps.

The sender needs to sendlocationevent with a name of the event … and the receiving app needs to subscribe to the location event… We can take this on PM if you want to know more…

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PM sent. Not sure broadcasting messages against the location is the most secure thing to do, but depending on the intended use I suppose the risks would be minimal enough.

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You are correct… SmartThings engineers and I had a discussion about this and it actually breaks the security model of Smartthings as the platform was specifically designed NOT to transfer information between SmartApps. However… as the platform has grown the need for this has become more apparent. Unfortunately, while Smartthings doesn’t recommend it they don’t provide an alternative. Adrian and I discussed encryption within the location data for WebCore integration, but whatever is transferred is open text for all apps to read, so be careful. In reality, rouge apps have a difficult time of getting installed into the environment so there is security through obscurity.

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