Easy way to change mode to away when leaving the house

Plugins & Plugin Development Unmaintained
1

I’ve recently been playing with a new Vera Edge, and am slowly getting my head around the somewhat clunky configuration of Z Wave devices/UI7. Moving on, I would now like to make use of the various modes available on the Vera, specifically the away and night modes. I know I can set this on my phone, but I would much rather have a button by the bed or the door that I can press to set the mode. This is much quicker and easier than getting my phone, putting in the pin, starting the Vera app/loading the page etc.

Does anyone have any recommendations for something I can mount by the door/to the door which can enable the away mode with a quick click of the button as I leave the house? I was looking at one of the key fob controllers as I think that will do what I want. I could just double sided sticky tape that to the front door and it should do the job.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

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You could wall mount a tablet on the wall near your door to do this and as a benefit, give you the status and the ability to control all of your home.

Or you could set your night modes to automatically change at the same time every night.

Or you could set a geofence to automatically change your mode to away when you leave your home.

Lots of choices to do this and more.

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There are remote controls that could be used for such functions. There is a long list on the link listed below. You might find something suitable there:

http://www.z-wave.com/find_products/remote_controllers

Besides remote controls, you might also consider wall controller. There are many but to get an idea take a look at the Cooper RFWC5SG. It has 5 buttons for 5 modes so one of those modes could be night, home, away, movie, etc.

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Thank you for your replies.

Having looked into the problem the last few days, the remotes and wall mount controllers do seem like a bit of a rip off to be honest given that you can pick up a tablet for a similar price. Also, it is a longer term goal to have tablets mounted around the home to control various functions and provide other information e.g. calander, todays jobs etc.

I think I’ll give the tablet route a try. I’ve got a gen 1 Nexus 7 which I rarely use at the moment, so I’ll have a look at getting a mounting caddy for it and putting it near the door. With that in mind, would you recommend any particular UI for it? I’ve got the Vera app on my phone, but that crashes religiously when I start it each time, meaning I have to wait 15 seconds for it to restart itself before I can use it.

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With that in mind, would you recommend any particular UI for it?

AutoHomationHD works well. I use it on several Nexus 7 tablets around my house. As well as providing status and control of all devices and scenes, it can create shortcuts on the tablet’s Home screens for specific actions (like set Away, set Home, etc).

The shortcuts are what I use for most things. They can have custom icons so look good as well as working rapidly and reliably. See the AutHomation board for more details and to download the latest version.

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Imperihome. It supports now also those modes or you can change the modes via scene. I will post a Screenshot from my wall tablet later…

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I second AuthomationHD. I have it on my phone and multiple Android devices around the house that I use as wall controllers for Vera.

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Imperihome is my favorite. It is designed for wall mounted tablets. It will also go dark when no motion in front of it and spring to life when motion is detected with your N7,s camera.

Here are some screenshots.

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Iphonelocator v1.96 does this (setting home or away mode) for iPhones… Nothing to install on the phone.

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We do something like this:

Basically as we leave the house through the garage, lock the door and run a scene to arm all door/motion sensors and set the nest to away. Coming home and unlocking the door does the reverse.

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It doesn’t seem as if the issue is “what to do” when leaving. It’s how to indicate that the OP has left.

I accomplish this with my alarm system. When anyone leaves the house empty, they arm the alarm. This is integrated with Vera with the AD2USB device, and that then does all the things I want to happen upon exit.

In the absence of using an alarm… I’d suggest an occupancy sensor of some sort, and a door sensor. The occupancy sensor could be a ping sensor on your phone, or a motion detector. When the door opens and then the occupancy times out (with a PLEG sequence, possibly), you could have your “away” mode set automatically, without touching anything.