Z Wave Door-Open Chime support (Philio?)

Devices & Integrations Connected Things
1

I have seen a few old posts about a door chime (bing when a door/window opens). We really want that because we have small children and want to know if a door opens (not an alarm, a chime).

I have seen mention of the Philio Z-Wave siren that supports multiple sounds and has a door chime http://philio-tech.com/products/PSE02.pdf.

Is this device supported by SmartThings now? If not, are there any other devices that would do the same thing (ut not e a home made device) or a better choice?
Thanks!
Brad

2

If you just want a chime when a door opens, that’s easy. Use a regular contact sensor, then have another device make a sound at that time. I have a zigbee contact sensor on my gate, when it opens SmartThings sends a text to my phone, I get notification. (It also pings on my apple watch). You could also have it call a Skype number and use that ringtone.

Other people use a speaker to play a sound or a voice notification using the generic DLNA renderer.

The doorbell challenge is getting the noise when the door hasn’t opened.

Anyway, take a look at the doorbell FAQ for many more ideas.

3

I’m not sure whether anyone has the philio tech siren working with SmartThings, but several commity members report success with the very similar Aeotec siren, which is officially supported. Note that although it does have a choice of several sounds, including a chime, you can’t switch between them based on events, you have to pick one during set up. But that might work fine for your purpose.

2016 Update

If you are in the US, Aeon labs has now released their doorbell and community members have created a custom device handler for it. This allows for a choice of tones (or even custom mp3s) triggered by various smartthings events, including a contact sensor, and the tones can be changed on the fly so you could have one tone if the back door opened and another town if someone stood out a pressure mat at the front door, etc.

The doorbell typically costs between $49 and $79.

4

Thank you for the reply. I did see mention of the Aeotec but it appears to have shipped without the chime, just sirens. Is that not true? If not, any other devices I can buy to get a simple chime?
There is lots of talk in the community forum, just nothing that specifically helps on what to buy to achieve this.

5

It works with the chime (see both forum reports and Amazon reviews), it’s just that people didn’t understand how it worked, and they thought they would be able to switch back-and-forth between siren and chime after it was installed. Instead, you have to pick which sound you want when you first set it up and then it just uses that one. But that works fine for many situations.

If you do want to have different sounds for different situations, you can use the DNLA method with a speaker device instead or the Aeon doorbell.

6

I must say I am a bit confused. I just want a chime to sound when a door/window opens, that is an out of the box solution (buy X device) not a build-it-yourself solution.

Most posts are 1-2 years old, with no followup whether in 2015 there are new options or issues were fixed.

The only 2 devices I can find referenced are:

  1. the Philio Z-Wave siren
  • Cannot find anything that says it is officially supported or works with ST
  • For sure has a door chime I am looking for
  1. the Aeotec Siren
  • People keep saying there is a chime sound, but all I find is 5 sirens. http://aeotec.com/z-wave-siren which is the product website has 5 play buttons to hear them, and they are all sirens not chimes. From what I can get from the internet, it was going to have a chime but didnt make the final product.

So really what I am asking is this:

  1. Would the Philio siren work with ST?
  2. Does the Aeotec Siren have a chime sound?
  3. If no to #1 and #2, is there any other siren or device that will do a simple chime (and buy not make)?

Thanks for the specific pointers!
Brad

7

Ok, first, you’re right, the Aeotec siren was originally announced to have chimes but the version that’s currently shipping has 5 “alerts” and they’ve announced there will be a separate device “soon,” a doorbell, that will have the chime sounds. (updated 2016: The doorbell device is now available and allows for changing sounds on the fly. See my post about for links.)

And I agree it’s annoying that there isn’t already a chime device that just does this.

However, this is an easy problem to solve with out of the box options, no custom programming or hardware builds required. Here are two different approaches, I’m sure there are others as well.

A. USE A CUSTOM TEXT TONE OR PUSH NOTIFICATION

As I mentioned, SmartThings already has the option to have the open/close sensor trigger a text, and then you can play any notification sound you have on your phone/tablet on receiving that. That’s what I use for notification that my front gate has been opened. This is out of the box functionality. I know if you have an apple phone it will also “ring” on your tablet if you want, so you could dedicate a tablet as the chime device as well.

You can also use a “push notification” which doesn’t require a phone contract. So again the tablet becomes your chime.

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Again, these options already exist in the standard SmartThings mobile app.

So you put a networked open/close sensor on the door, set the notification rules in the ST app, choose the ring tones on your device, and you’re done.

B. USE A NONNETWORKED CHIME PLUS A NETWORKED SENSOR

Another easy alternative is to buy a nonnetworked $15 babyproofing door alarm (these come with many different sounds), and put it on the door along with a networked open/close sensor. Have the alarm make the sound in the house and have the networked sensor trigger whatever else you want, including a light going on or a phone notification.

This one puts two devices on the door, but the alarm is cheaper than a tablet in the previous method.

Or if you’re willing to spend about $50 for the nonnetworked device you can get the three part kind that stores like Subway use. These let you put the part that plays the chime anywhere you want. There are many of these sold for stores and offices, usually called “entry alerts” or “visitor alerts.” The following is just one typical example:

Again, with this method the device that plays the sound is NOT connected to your SmartThings network, you add a second networked door sensor so ST also knows the door is open.

If you want to shop locally you’ll probably find the childproof ones at stores selling that type of product, including Toys R Us, and the entry alert kind at places like Staples. Or Home Depot may have both kinds.

Anyway, either of these two methods could be implemented today and require no hardware modification or special code.

As for your two questions:

  1. I don’t know if the Philo siren will work with ST or not, or what the chime sounds like. Hopefully if someone has experience with it they’ll let us know.

  2. the Aeotec siren has the #5 alert sound which is less grating, but no chime. They’ve moved the chime to the not-yet-released doorbell, but we don’t yet know exactly how that will work.

8

I appreciate the detailed response. I have 5 doors so not sure a per door chime is the best but its at least an idea. We were also trying to not rely on a phone (for the chime at least) but thanks again for the suggestions. I’ll have to think about it and see if ST is currently for me.
By the way, how do devices that are zwave get supported? Is that something I could do (I am a developer) or do I need to wait for ST to support a device? Specifically I am curious on how a device like the Philo siren could get to work with ST.
Thanks again, appreciate the reply.

9

The first thing is to mention the device in the Suggest a Device topic. :blush: No guarantees, but at least that gets read.

Smartthings is certified for the “basic class” (that’s Z wave term), and has added some support for some of the additional classes. But it does not support all Zwave classes.

So there are two possible situations for zwave certified devices:

  1. it’s a device class using zwave command classes that SmartThings already supports, but with some tweakable parameters.

In that case, it might work out of the box, or the device handler might need to be adjusted to allow for setting the parameters.

The fibaro multisensor is a very popular device which Falls into this category. Straight out-of-the-box, it will pair as a motion sensor, but you will not get the reports of temperature or Lux readings even though the device is trying to send them.

So community members have created a custom device handler (formerly called “smart device type”) to handle those additional report. It works very well.

So as long as smart things can handle the command classes that the device is using, it’s just a matter of customizing the device handler, and there are lots of community members Who will be glad to help with that if one doesn’t already exist. You just start a new topic in the “connected things” category with the device name as the topic header and ask for help.

  1. it’s a device class, or uses zwave commands, that SmartThings does not recognize.

In that case, you’re out of luck. All you can do is ask support when they are going to add it.

This is the current situation with the Aeon labs zwave lightbulb, A brand-new device. No one has it working yet. Smartthings is supposed to be getting one soon for their engineers to look at, and since Aeon devices are very popular they will probably add whatever needs to be added pretty soon. But no guarantees.

Some commands are quite difficult to support, and smartthings neither supports them nor intends to add that at least not for the current generation. A good example of those is scene replication, which is needed for some button remotes. SmartThings just doesn’t work with those and there’s no way to change that.

I couldn’t tell from the initial documentation whether the Philio will run into any of these issues or not. Sometimes it’s easy to tell, such as when a device uses scene replication and does not support association. But sometimes it’s quite hard to tell, and that includes some of the devices that rely on notification.

So I can’t really tell you now whether it will be possible to develop a custom device handler for the Philio or not. If you buy it from a place with a good return policy it would be worth trying to see what happens. Once you have the device we can see what device class SmartThings assigns the device to and what the logs show the device is sending.

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If you can find a place to buy the U.S. version with a good return policy, it looks like it would be worth trying to see if it works with the standard zwave siren device handler (that’s what the Aeon siren uses). Make sure you get one with US zwave though, it looks like most of their sales are for the European frequency.

12

I have a Zipato Siren here in the UK, it looks identical to the Philio Siren so I think it’s a rebadge. It works under the Aeon Siren device handler as a siren and the preferences for sound 1-5 and volume 1-3 are available but do not work. It seems that only on/off works, considering I paid £16 I wasn’t too fussed as it does that job perfectly but with it having extra features it would be great to tap into them as use it as a door chime etc. I’ve not got any real coding experience but I do have the device to test with if someone wants to take a crack at it.

13

I agree, it is somewhat frustrating that there is not an out of box solution. The Iphone ring tone is ok but I don’t always have my phone next to me and wouldnt want the same sounds played when my door opens while I am home and when a a door opens when I am away or if there is a leak, etc. This was the main reason I purchased the SmartThings system (we have a pool and a toddler), I guess I should have done more research on chime support before purchasing.

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i wrote a device type for this so you can use all the tones, this device type works well with Rule Machine as you can add a function for each alert shoulnd using the expert features on the device and then just use rule machine to complete the automation. the door chime however i a bit poor, its only 2 quick tones

https://github.com/fuzzysb/SmartThings/blob/master/DeviceTypes/fuzzysb/Zipato%20PH-PSE02-EU/zipato-PH-PSE02-EU.groovy

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JD - The custom text tone sounds like a good solution to my problem. I cannot however which SmartThings SmartApp you are referring to. Would you please advise?

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Hi, I tried using your custom handler but it doesn’t work for me. Then I realized mine is the PH-PSE02.US, not the EU. (US version) Are there any tweaks I would need to make to your custom handler code to get this to work?

Thanks!

17

You would set up the custom tone on your phone/tablet depending on the options available for your operating system.

there are many different smart apps that let you send a text as notification. There is one in the marketplace called “notify when” which is particularly popular, but this is also a basic feature in smart home monitor.

So you just set up smart things to send a text–you use your phones existing capabilities to use a custom tone for that.

18

The device doesn’t provide a chime feature, but the device handler below has a beep feature that turns it on for a specified number of milliseconds so it basically chimes. You have complete control over how long the beeps are, how loud, which of the 5 sounds to use, how many of them to play and at what interval. The beeps can be scheduled which allows you to play beeps at regular intervals for more than 40 seconds.

It also provides a delayed alarm feature so you can do things like beep for 60 seconds before sounding the alarm. The custom commands can be executed by any SmartApp that supports the Speech or Music Player capabilities.

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19

The beep feature on the Aeon Siren is rather loud even on the lowest setting so if all you want to do is play a sound when the door is open, I recommend going with the Aeon Doorbell with the device handler that @JDRoberts posted. It stores 100 mp3s so you can create mp3s that say things like “the back door is open”.

The physical doorbell button doesn’t have to make noise and can be used for something else like changing modes or running a routine.

Edit: I didn’t realize how old this topic was…

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