Using Core to notify when Devices go Offline?

SmartApps & Automations Automation Ideas
1

I went out of town for a couple weeks and monitored the house while away. Everything went better than expected. I only had one device go offline. The downside was that it was a door lock. Good thing it was the garage lock. Three others went offline only because the house sitter flipped a switch.

Question is, how can I use core to notify me when a device goes offline or unavailable. I have researched the topic, but am unable to understand how to make it work with what it said. Can anybody help me out on this? Thanks in advance!

Edit: I have lights, sensors, locks, and outlets on my system.

2

You don’t need core for this. There are a number of different wellness check smartapps thar already exist that will do this very well.

I think the most popular is “simple device viewer.”

It will install like any other custom smartapp, and has a ton of features. :sunglasses:

2 Likes
3

I just installed this. It works to show me everything. I would like something that is a little more hands off though. I don’t want to have to go look to see if something is offline. I would like to notified when it is offline. Maybe I don’t have this app set up right? It goes off last event, I don’t use everything in a couple days. Sometimes longer. So that doesn’t really work for me

4

It has the option to notify you when there hasn’t been any activity on the device for whatever period of time you set. Most devices report in at least once a day, some more often than that. So “last event” won’t be just when you last used it. It’s a good stand in for off-line.

Because these are mesh devices, there isn’t the equivalent of an off-line report like you would get from Wi-Fi device. The devices are just supposed to check in occasionally, and the absence of a check in will then represent being off-line.

For more questions about it ask in the authors thread, and people there will be able to tell you specifics.

Note this in particular:

Receive Push and/or SMS notifications based on temperature, battery level, and/or time since last event.

5

I am learning so much here! So if I understand correctly, I set it to notify me if 2 days and no event. That should effectively notify me of a device goes offline for 2 days? Is that correct?

6

Yes, for most devices.

The only exception I can think of right now is smoke detectors, which are sometimes set to check in only once a week in order to extend their battery life. But that’s an unusual device class.