Noob will need some help getting vera Alerts going.

Greetings,

Allow me to introduce myself as the noob who’s going to be getting on your nerves (probably) asking a bunch of questions ;D

I do know forum etiquette dictate that i do my research first so that’s what i’m doing now (so no questions yet).

A little background: I came home one day from a trip to find an army of people putting the finishing touches on a shinny new VIVINT alarm system they had talked my wife into letting them install. Too late for me to stop them but fortunately i had a few days to cancel (3 days plus the weekend). As soon as i saw those $72/mo for 60 mo. i know i would cancel.

Easier said than done! My wife had fell in love with the video door bell and the VOICE ANNOUNCEMENTS. The only way she would “let me” cancel is if i had an alternative

So doing some quick research, i told her i would get a LYNX Touch L7000 which has VOICE ANNOUNCEMNTS and a Ring Video DoorBell. She was satisfied with that prospect and i was “allowed” to cancel VIVINT (that was an ordeal in it self).

Installed the L7000 and the Ring and all worked well but wait, now she want remote access to the zwave door locks and a few zwave module - that is $30 mo. to subscribe to Honeywell Total Connect. So off i go again doing some research…

Narrowed it down to SmartThings or Vera but i had a problem - Neither have native voice announcements and that is a must in order to achieve the highest WAF (Wife Approval Factor) ;D

Decide on the VeraPlus for 2 reasons: $0.00 for remote access and the VERA ALERT plug-in. Now i have the change to have the perfect system for her and me ($0.00 remote access) if i can get it to “talk to her” LOL

I have the Vera Plus and a Android tablet almost set up. I anticipate having some questions, if i may.

It’s pretty easy to have Vera Alerts talk to the Android tablet.

Next you will want to investigate:
Garage Door Contro - Remind you if left opem, automatically close. Turn on ligts if opened at nightl
GeoFence control - Arm/Disarm alarm system automatically and setback the Thermostat when no ones home.

So starting to get things setup, i went into the app on the Vera and from the “new profile” drop-down" i selected “vera-alert-LAN” and gave the profile a name. FIRST QUESTION: I kept looking for a “save” or “apply” button…?? How do you save?

In the “host” box, i entered the IP addy for the tablet

The “port” box was already populated with a number. QUESTION: Can that number be changed? Can it be left blank?

For “MessagePrefix” i believe i need to use {tone:tts} since i want the alerts spoken.

Am i on the right track? I figure i would have one profile for the in-home panel and another for my Galaxy S5 (i already purchased 2 licenses) since i don’t necessarily want the same notifications on both devices.

BTW - Thanks for the suggestions, i just may upgrade my long standing X-10 garage door control.

I f you are going to us LAN mode you may want to do some searches for Andoiid fixes.
Android often wants to shutdown the wifi connection to save power.

That has not been my experience but ill look around. What about these questions:

“The “port” box was already populated with a number. QUESTION: Can that number be changed? Can it be left blank?”

“For “MessagePrefix” i believe i need to use {tone:tts} since i want the alerts spoken.”

Thanks in advance.

A CLient and Server must be talking on the Same Port …
You need to configure the Plugin and the Phone with the same port #
You can put what every you want in the message prefix.
You do not need to put {tone:tts} because you can tell the phone to announce all messages.

I’m sorry, i didn’t make it clear, right now i’m trying to setup the Android tablet ONLY. I’m going to mount it on the wall like you would an alarm panel (in my case i will replace the LYNX L7000) panel).

So does that change the answers you provided above.

What App are you using on the Android tablet for Text to speach?

I have had great success with Imperihome on a cheap generic tablet mounted to wall. I also assigned static IP addresses to everything after my router changed the ip address on my VeraLite and threw my whole system out of wack.

Thanks to your thread, I now know that vera alerts can do more than send emails. Thanks. Now I have to go tinker with Vera Alerts more. ;D

This board is for the Vera Alerts app on Android … and it does Text To Speech.

I tried to set it up but it’s not working :-[ Please keep in mind i’m NOT using the vera alert app for android and I’m trying to use the LAN profile in vera alerts.

So I setup vera notifications for each sensor and i’m consistently getting notification emails (on my cell phone) from vera itself.

So then i went to vera alerts plug-in on the vera and from the “new profiles” drop-down i chose “vera-alerts-LAN” and gave it a name; i called it “control_panel” which is also the name of a user i created.

Then i filled-in the host: IP Add of the tablet; Port: Blank (i figure since it’s over LAN, the IP addr would be enough?); Message prefix: {tone:tts} (since i want the alerts spoke).

Then i went to the “configure notifications” tab and overrode the vera notifications with what i wanted spoken.

Then i went to settings and checked the 2 checkboxes and associated the profile “control_panel” with the vera “user” control panel.

At that point i thought i was done so to test it, i triggered one of my door sensors…NOTHING! but i did get a text from vera itself. I also tried to “send message now” but that didn’t work either.

I haven’t done anything to the tablet assuming it has some kind of TTS engine native to android. Also, is a port number necessary? I’m thinking not since i’m not accessing the tablet from outside, right?

This is it! I appreciate any help to get me to the finish line. Thanks in advance.

If you do not install the Vera Alerts Mobil APP on Android …you will not have anything to deliver the Notifications too.

So this “Vera Alerts Mobile LAN sends message right from Vera to the Mobile App without any intermediate stops.” means the mobile app still needs to be installed - I get it!

BUT i can’t rap my head around what to put in the “ports” box (if anything)??? Do i need to port-forward the IP address of the tablet???

You should really install the APP on your phone first …
The port is specified in the Settings for the APP! AND in the Profile for the Plugin!

I am NOT using a phone. Your attempts to help are just confusing me even more, they are not straight answers to my questions. I’ll just figure it out.

Thanks anyway.

You’ll need to install the mobile app on your tablet in order to get it working…