SmartThings - Alarm Decoder Official App

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SmartThings - Alarm Decoder Official App

Postby s2928 » Mon Jan 02, 2017 3:58 pm

I just installed the official app for SmartThings and i am very pleased with the ability to arm and disarm my alarm from within the SmartThing app.

There are a few things that are not clear to me regarding the "Zone Sensor" feature. Any clarification / insights appreciated.

1. I am not sure as to whether the zones in the smart app correspond to the zones in my home system, or whether i can map the zones in the app to the zones in my house.

2. I have triggered alarm zones in my house while viewing the zones in the app, but nothing seems to happen. Should i see the icons in the app change?

3. Perhaps most important, what are the use cases for the Zone Sensor feature?

Thanks.
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Re: SmartThings - Alarm Decoder Official App

Postby R305 » Tue Jan 03, 2017 9:43 am

Hi S,

I'll just jump in here since I also recently installed the smartthings app for AD2Pi. From your questions:

1. The zones sensors in the app do not necessarily correspond to the zones of your alarm. You can assign your zone 1 to sensor #1, zone 2 to sensor #2 and so on, but you don't have to. For example, I don't plant to make use of my bedroom window for automation, so I did not map that zone to any of the sensors.

2. I have the same issue, but just assumed I did something wrong. It is on my list of things to troubleshoot. In the AD smartapp, I can see the zones trip in the little, red circles of the Alarm screen. But when I assign a zone to a sensor it does not seem to activate. Will let you know if I make any progress on this when I get around to this issue.

3. Well, my use cases are mostly to alert me if a teenager has left the garage door or front door open. There is a smartapp template already on the smartthings website you can use for this. So, instead of buying another smartthings multisensor to put on the door ($50), I can map that zone to one of the sensors in the AD2Pi app. I was also thinking of using one of the motion detector zones to turn on/off some lighting. Basically, if you want to employ some automation on something that is already wired as an alarm zone, you can save some money and use this instead of buying smartthings devices.

Hope this helps. Let me know if you figure it out first!

Rob
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Re: SmartThings - Alarm Decoder Official App

Postby kevin » Tue Jan 03, 2017 10:28 am

Do note that if you are using wired zones for these sensors, when armed they will not report

That said, I do believe there are a couple known "issues" with those sensors at the moment, but Scott is more savvy to the SmartThings implementation, so maybe he will be able to chime in.
Not an employee of the company. Just here to help and keep things clean.
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Re: SmartThings - Alarm Decoder Official App

Postby ratty » Tue Feb 07, 2017 7:01 am

Hi Rob/ Kevin,
Just got the AD2PI appliance last week and loving the arm/disarm from smartthings. But like others I was hoping to not have to double up on smartthings sensors if possible. My use case is as follows:

Vista 20SECN Panel. zones defined as:

16 Motion sensor
02 Motion sensor
03 Motion sensor
08 Telco (ignore in smartthings)
10 Door sensor (already doubled up with a smartthings)
11 Door sensor
12 Door sensor
13 Glass (ignore in ST)
14 Glass (ignore in ST)
15 Motion sensor (doubled up with a ST sensor)

I have changed the device names and device network IDs of the default virtual zones to match some of my zones, but not yet changed the labels to friendly names. With the system disarmed I unable to see any activity on these sensors in ST.

I also tried to change the VirtualContactSensors to d8adrvn's Simulated Motion Sensor device type in the hopes that I could get better luck on the motiuon sensors on them, but get nothing. Internal motion sensors would be a much more valuable use case for me than the external door contacts besides having an internal light come on when the door opens.

d8adrvn's mtion sensor can be found here: https://github.com/d8adrvn/AD2SmartThings

I am glad I am not just nubbin this up and it appears it may actualy be an issue.
ratty
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Re: SmartThings - Alarm Decoder Official App

Postby R305 » Thu Feb 09, 2017 10:43 am

Hey ratty,

Short answer is that they don't work for me either. It's next on my list after I sort out the refresh rate thing.

Cheers!
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Re: SmartThings - Alarm Decoder Official App

Postby ratty » Wed Mar 22, 2017 7:35 am

Ok, so I tried to change the motion sensors to a virtual motion sensors, but that did not work well. Tried leaving them as contact sensors but changing the icons to motion sensors but it does not use the icons I stated, keeps using the contact sensors. Getting some oddness where zones just seem to not be getting status changes randomly, for example I see all of today's information for my motion detectors and front door, but the back door has not shown any changes since noon yesterday (been opened several times since) and yet never made any changes.

I have run into the open and closed being backwards for the smart home monitoring, but as I have a couple of routines working right now and am for the most part getting events not willing to break everything figuring out how to reverse the open/close right now (even anyone else has switched these, please let me know where exactly).

I have changed the device handler to more accurately match the latest device color coding used, but as noted the contact icon does not switch from closed to open but it is currently changing colors correctly. And the motion sensors completely ignore the icons specified at all. But I am including them below in case anyone else sees some issue with them, or wants to use them instead of the original grey/green ones on github:

Code: Select all
/* Virtual Contact Sensor for alarm panel zones */

metadata {
    definition (name: "VirtualContactSensor", namespace: "alarmdecoder", author: "scott@nutech.com") {
        capability "Contact Sensor"
        capability "Refresh"
    }
    // tile definitions
    tiles {
        standardTile("sensor", "device.contact", width: 2, height: 2, canChangeIcon: true) {
            state "closed", label: 'open', icon: "st.contact.contact.open", backgroundColor: "#ffa81e"
            state "open", label: 'closed', icon: "st.contact.contact.closed", backgroundColor: "#66ccff"
        }
        standardTile("refresh", "device.refresh", inactiveLabel: false, decoration: "flat") {
            state "default", label:'Refresh', action:"device.refresh", icon: "st.secondary.refresh-icon"
        }

        main "sensor"
        details(["sensor", "refresh"])
    }
}


Code: Select all
/* Virtual Motion Sensor for alarm panel zones */

metadata {
    definition (name: "VirtualMotionSensor", namespace: "alarmdecoder", author: "scott@nutech.com") {
        capability "Contact Sensor"
        capability "Refresh"
    }

    // tile definitions
    tiles {
        standardTile("sensor", "device.contact", width: 2, height: 2, canChangeIcon: true) {
            state "closed", label: 'active', icon: "st.motion.motion.active", backgroundColor: "#ffa81e"
            state "open", label: 'inactive', icon: "st.motion.motion.inactive", backgroundColor: "#7b66ff"
        }
        standardTile("refresh", "device.refresh", inactiveLabel: false, decoration: "flat") {
            state "default", label:'Refresh', action:"device.refresh", icon: "st.secondary.refresh-icon"
        }

        main "sensor"
        details(["sensor", "refresh"])
    }
}
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Re: SmartThings - Alarm Decoder Official App

Postby ratty » Tue Mar 28, 2017 7:06 am

Getting some oddness where zones just seem to not be getting status changes randomly, for example I see all of today's information for my motion detectors and front door, but the back door has not shown any changes since noon yesterday (been opened several times since) and yet never made any changes.


I have found that I need to hit the * key on the panel at least once daily to continue getting events to SmartThings otherwise changes to the panel zones are not carried across consistently and events are not triggered. Slightly annoying, but workable.
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Re: SmartThings - Alarm Decoder Official App

Postby ratty » Thu Apr 27, 2017 8:05 am

Updated device handlers to match new code updates:

Code: Select all
/* Virtual Contact Sensor for alarm panel zones */

metadata {
    definition (name: "VirtualContactSensor", namespace: "alarmdecoder", author: "scott@nutech.com") {
        capability "Contact Sensor"
        capability "Refresh"
    }
    // tile definitions
    tiles {
        standardTile("sensor", "device.contact", width: 2, height: 2, canChangeIcon: true) {
            state "closed", label: 'closed', icon: "st.contact.contact.closed", backgroundColor: "#66ccff"
            state "open", label: 'open', icon: "st.contact.contact.open", backgroundColor: "#ffa81e"
        }
        standardTile("refresh", "device.refresh", inactiveLabel: false, decoration: "flat") {
            state "default", label:'Refresh', action:"device.refresh", icon: "st.secondary.refresh-icon"
        }

        main "sensor"
        details(["sensor", "refresh"])
    }
}


Code: Select all
/* Virtual Motion Sensor for alarm panel zones */

metadata {
    definition (name: "VirtualMotionSensor", namespace: "alarmdecoder", author: "scott@nutech.com") {
        capability "Contact Sensor"
        capability "Refresh"
    }

    // tile definitions
    tiles {
        standardTile("sensor", "device.contact", width: 2, height: 2, canChangeIcon: true) {
            state "open", label: 'active', icon: "st.motion.motion.active", backgroundColor: "#ffa81e"
            state "closed", label: 'inactive', icon: "st.motion.motion.inactive", backgroundColor: "#7b66ff"
        }
        standardTile("refresh", "device.refresh", inactiveLabel: false, decoration: "flat") {
            state "default", label:'Refresh', action:"device.refresh", icon: "st.secondary.refresh-icon"
        }

        main "sensor"
        details(["sensor", "refresh"])
    }
}


Please feel free to use, test, and let me know of any tweaks I need to look into.
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