Hi, if anyone could help with this I’d be very appreciative, I have a multipurpose sensor on my back door which I have set up so that Alexa says 'door open’and ‘door closed’ when I open and close the door, this works great. The issue I have is that I have a UPVC door with a panel at the bottom which i always worry that theives could kick in to gain access, (a friend of mine was burgled in this way). Is there a way that i can set up the vibration sensor to detect the door being bashed but not have Alexa announce the vibration every time the door opens, currently i have alexa saying ’ door open’and then she says ‘there is a disturbance at the back door’ right after due to the door detecting vibration as the door opens, i cant figure out the logic to make it so that if I open the door it doesnt trigger the vibration announcement. Please help!
I have setup the vibration on and off automation having setup virtual switches so that alexa can be triggered by them.
Unfortunately, the vibration sensor will always detect the door being opened as vibration before the open/close sensor has a chance to report that the door is open.
You would have to add a third device of some kind and test its state as a filter condition. That’s fairly simple if you yourself never come in through the back door and the new condition is “don’t report vibration if there is a person inside the house near the back door.” You could use a pressure mat or a motion sensor. But if you want to distinguish between good person coming in from outside and bad person kicking in the door you have to treat it like any perimeter security sensor and disarm the alert using either geopresence or a keyfob or pin pad.
If you are concerned about home invasion, I wouldn’t trust my life to SmartThings: I’d just buy a new door.
If you are concerned about burglars breaking in when you’re not home,
I wouldn’t worry about the door itself: I’d put a security camera with motion sensor on both sides of the door. But that’s just me, there are a lot of ways to handle it depending on the exact details of what you want to accomplish. But in any case it will need an additional device.
@JDRoberts, a WebCore piston or a Sharptools.io rule couldn’t solve this idea? I cannot think of the currently built in to create a double if. I mean to have a double if with a time frame, like if vibration, then, if open/close in 30 seconds, then announce Door opened, else announce Vibration detected.
Of course it has a delay, but need to have a way to differentiate Vibration only from Open/Close and Vibration. I think it is just a matter of the complex logic to define it. I am not adding here the option of open/close before but that should be considered too with the same logic.
The vibration sensor is an accelerometer. Just moving the door will trigger it. Even just turning the door handle may trigger it. You can try it with a delay, but then you might have closed the door again before the next check. I just think the physics are against you with that particular device. But you can try it and see.
I think I might just have it set to use the vibration sensor at night rather than the open and close since the vibration will detect anyway. Thanks for all the info
I think you could do it with webCore, albeit a bit complicated. You’d have to basically tell it to acknowledge the vibration when the door hasn’t been opened.
Thinking out loud, I think I’d set a variable for a short period of time to show that the door was opened (or not) and then after vibration is detected, wait for a bit and check the door open variable. Then act accordingly. It might take a bit of tinkering, but it should be doable.
Isn’t there a time for each event in WebCore, I know in a Groovy SmartApp you can use the event’s time to compare with another event’s time.