Setting Up Basic Alarm Function in SHM... Newbie help needed

SmartApps & Automations
1

I’m trying to transition my system from Lowe’s Iris to ST, and am stuck trying to get some of the basic alarm functions working.

  • How do I prevent the system from immediately sounding the siren when a door is opened and SHM is in Stay mode? (We forget this pretty much daily…)
  • If there’s no delay, how do you prevent the alarm from sounding when you come back home and open the door? I realize that a keypad isn’t directly supported, but know I can set up a DHT for the Lowe’s v2 keypad. But if you put that outside the doors, can’t people just sit and guess your keycode all day?

I realize there used to be a SmartApp called SmartAlarm that added the delay, but since that’s not supported it doesn’t sound like a real solution. Apologies if I’m missing something basic here, I’ve only had my ST hub for a few days. Thanks!

2

There is ABSOLUTELY NO DELAY to date on triggering an alert if a sensor opens; there is NO delay. Quite frankly, as an alarm system do NOT trust ST. :cry: The 'Net latency and semi-frequent, and sometimes prolonged, ST outages, simply makes it unreliable for this purpose. However, you want a hobby, keep on playing!!! :slight_smile:

J

3

Are there workarounds for a lack of delay? Seems like that makes it virtually worthless as an alarm system.

How bad is the reliability? My understanding was that the frequent outages were largely addressed in the last few months.

4

There is no native delay feature currently available in SHM, but it is something we added to the development pipeline. You can make the geofence larger which would change the SHM earlier.

In terms of platform stability, we believe the largest headaches are behind us after the past few updates. That said, we are still working on some big changes to further increase the cloud reliability.

3 Likes
5

Thank you. Unfortunately, the geofence approach doesn’t prevent the alarm from sounding when we open the door to go out (for turning off “Stay” mode), which what we always forget with our current system. But it’s great to hear that this on the roadmap. (And I can’t say how impressed I am to have Smartthings Staff provide a direct response in the forums - that’s awesome, and much appreciated!)

6

It sounds like you aren’t using the phone or presence sensor to automatically arm/disarm?

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7

Wouldn’t presence only work for Away mode arming/disarming? I agree it’s nice for that, but the problem is the siren constantly going off in Stay mode. Someone is always forgetting to type in the code, so without a delay it just doesn’t work for us.
Also, presence doesn’t work when you give your phone to your daughter for the day so she can play Pokemon Go, but that’s just poor judgement on my part, not a ST issue :wink:

2 Likes
8

Oh I see, you have it armed while you’re in the house. Not sure what to do in that case. Maybe have a motion sensor bear that door that disarms it when in armed(stay)? Or a Minimote to arm and disarm.

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9

If its only one door you could remove that door from Stay Mode. But perhaps you do still want that particular door alarmed even when you are home. If so, then I’m not sure there is a solution. Or at least not an easy one.