Just recently installed a 3 camera Arlo pro system. Am using ArloPilot to integrate with Smartthings for mode changes that arm/disarm my cameras. Works great!! Was hoping to use the Arlo base station siren to trigger when door sensors are opened when Smarthings is in a specific mode (night/away). Doesn’t look like this will work, or at best be very reliable. So I’m in the market for a stand alone siren. There are TONS of choices out there, so I"m not sure what will best fit my needs. I’m looking for one that I can use with WebCore to setup some pistons that will arm the siren when Smartthings mode changes to away or night and that disarms when Smartthings mode changes to home. Would also love to be able to use my Google Home Mini to say something like “Hey google, disarm siren” for times when I need to let the cat out or otherwise open a door during the night. Any suggestions?
Any of the zwave options on the official compatibility list will work fine with one of @krlaframboise 's DTHs. It just depends which features you want. Some offer multiple sound choices, sound also have strobe lights, some have more parameters for setting volume or sounding time.
The Zooz gen 1 siren, not on the official list, is usually the least expensive of the well built basic ones at around $28. But no configurable features
The Dome or Neo are just a little more with more options, and are on the official list.
The Fortrezz is always very popular for those who also want a strobe light.
So it just depends what you’re looking for.
I just bought the dome, which is pretty inexpensive, it’s small, its loud and it has flashing LEDs.
Some of the chime sounds are cheesy like Fur Elise, etc, and I wish they had included more short different sounding “Dings” instead of those.
But overall I’m really happy with it and it works as expected. If you have the volume at max on the alarm you can hear a little distortion in the speaker, but it’s very loud so that’s what’s important to me.
You can also lower the chime volume to low or medium, separate from the alarm for motion or door sensors.
I really like the Aeotec Siren (Gen 5). I have 2 of them. They are pricey, but have always worked for me.
Thanks!! I’ve been checking out both the Dome and Aeotec.
Zooz recently came out with a siren that looks interesting too:
Cool, thanks. There is a lot of siren options I need to sift through.
Got my Arlo’s integrated with Smartthings as motion sensors and they are working as expected. A bit of extra security by having some outside lights turn on when my Arlo’s sense motion (essentially turning them into motion lights) as well as some specific indoor lights turn on after a delay. Would hope that would be enough to deter someone that might be snooping around outside my house at night. Just need to decide on a siren that would go off if someone decided to breach a door. This would give me a simple DIY home security system that I’d be happy with.
I have my dome set up so that it dings when motion is detected outside along with lights coming on.
And when smart home monitor is armed and tripped it will give 30 seconds of warning beeps before the full siren goes off. You can decide if you want the delay before the siren or not, or how long you want it. I use the delay incase the wife or I accidently set it off. Everything works great.
Probably any siren would do the job, but if you want to use custom sounds or text to speech you’d need something other than the dome.
I need something exactly like this. If you do accidentally set it off, how do you disarm and then rearm? I currently have things set to be automatically armed when in away and night modes. Say my wife opens a door in the middle of the night to let the cat out and the siren is tripped. Would love for her to be able to use our Google Home Mini to say “Hey Google, Disarm Siren” or something along those lines. And then do the same to arm it again. She likes the functionality of Smartthings and how we have things setup, but doesn’t touch the app. So voice control would be awesome!!
@BigTerp
Why do you feel the Arlo siren is not reliable. Could it be possible that Arlopilot isn’t changeing a mode so it isn’t where you think it should be to sound the siren. You should be able to trigger that as a additional one. There are several others that are good as well. I have heard good things about the Dome siren. The Zooz has also been brought up many times as well.
If security is something you want to really be concerned about you may want to look at swapping out the smartthings hub with a ADT Smartthings Panel. They are pretty cheap right now, and has steep discounts on dual branded sensors at Best buy at the moment, And is a true alarm system. SHM kind of does it, but has some significant limitations that often require some very interesting work around to make work without allot of false alerts. The ADT Panel is first an alarm system with most if not all of the functions you would expect from an alarm. Think Entry, Exit Delays and a real keypad among others. You also get the option for professional monitoring from ADT if you want it. There are a few smarttapps that can further expand how the ADT integration works with the Smartthings side.
I Suggest 3 apps now:
- ADT Tools 2
- ArloPilot
- Lock Manager
ADT Tools would expand your ability to trigger actions based on the alarm activity. There are many things it does one of the most important is provide a method for other apps to interact with the alarm status. I actually call a routine everynight to arm my alarm and this is the app that enables it.
Arlopilot would allow you to integration actions based on the alarm status. It actually works with SHM so that may be something you would want even if you don’t change to the panel
Lock Manager will allow you to use Keypads to control the alarm. This could be nice so you can have keypads at remote entry points away from the alarm. This can also be used with SHM as well.
I dont use google, but the Ask Alexa can do this (it’s not fun to install, but it’s worth it).
I’m not sure if the standard smartthings skill for alexa allows for control of smart home monitor.
You can always just click disarm on your phone when the intrusion notification comes. And if you have the delay on, you’ll get a few mild beeps before it goes crazy. You’ll have to rearm it after you close the door.
Alternatively, you can probably set up something with webcore allowing Google home to fire a piston that can disarm SHM (and rearm) without having to use your phone. I haven’t played around enough with webcore to tell you exactly how to do that, but the possibilities of what you can do are endless.
One thing I’m sure you can do is simply tell Google to turn off the siren. It won’t disarm your system and might leave it armed and ready to go after silencing.
The issue with using the Arlo siren in conjunction with Smartthings is the cloud to cloud delay. I currently use ArloPilot to manage my cameras in Smartthings by arming/disarming my cameras based on Smartthings mode. Works great. I then use the native Arlo app to view any recordings. Zero recording delay this way, and I’ve read that when using Smartthings to manage Arlo cameras there can be a significant lag from motion detection to actual recording. That is exactly what I want to avoid.
Since I’ve added my Arlo system (cameras and base station) to Smartthings the standard way (in addition to ArloPilot), all three cameras as well as the base station show up as things. I use the cameras as motion sensors to fire certain automations and pistons I’ve setup. I admit, I haven’t played with it enough to see if I can use the base station siren to fire if say my front door sensor is opened while the cameras are armed. My biggest concern is to not get things jumbled with Smartthings and Arlo and cause recording issues.
Sounds good. I like the idea of the warning beeps like you have setup, which makes the dome siren attractive. Yes, WebCore is amazing. I’ve setup quite a few fairly complicated pistons. I’ll have to play around with it some more to see if I can figure something out to work the way I want. Thanks!!
Cloud to cloud delays are certainly not optimal so i understand that concern. The reason i bring it up is because I kind of have this setup. I use the ADT Smartthings panel with 5 arlo cameras(2 pro 2’s and 3 Arlo Q) and a fork of Arlopilot to allow ADT integration. I don’t use SHM, but ADT Tools with the ADT Smartthings panel and it will trigger the Arlo Siren with the alarm is triggered. though it wasn’t instantaneous it was just a moment behind, and certainly not enough for someone to take more then a step into my house.
Recording from the arlo cameras shouldn’t be dependent on smartthings unless you make it so. You should always let the cameras do their thing, and only use Smartthings to trigger actions if the cameras wouldn’t do it on their own like use a sensor outside of the cameras view to trigger recording. The best thing you can do to prevent lag on the cameras is to have them plugged into power. If you have the Arlo pro 2 or the Arlo Q cameras they have a 3 second look back to make sure you capture motion activity and such. That is only turned on for the Arlo Pro 2’s if they are connected to power and not on battery.
One thing i am not clear on is what if any sirens run locally on V2 hubs. That may be something that could be good to know as well to reduce lag for it going off if that is a concern.
Thanks. That all makes sense. I have 3 Arlo Pro’s (not the 2’s), and experience zero recording lag with the way I currently have things running. The only thing Smartthings (via ArloPilot) does to “control” my cameras is arm/disarm them based on modes. This has worked great so far. I use the cameras as motion senors within Smartthings and this also seems to function fine. Since my hub is showing up in Smartthings as a siren, I should be able to use at just as that. It also is integrated into Google Home so voice controls should also work to turn it off if needed. I’ll just have to play around with it to see what I can get figured out.
I think I was getting myself confused with terminology and how others were integrating their Arlo’s with Smartthings. I was fearful of the lag, inconsistency, etc. with how Smartthings handled the cameras, not so much the siren. But if I leave things the way they are (ArloPilot controlling my cameras) I shouldn’t have to worry with any of those issues and still be able to use the Arlo siren in conjuction with SMH. A little lag with the siren isn’t really concerning for me.
Thanks for the help!!