I have an Elk M1 and a Vera 3. They are connected and talking via the Vera Elk Plug in.
I got the luup code for “blinking lights” and created a scene with one light (device #8). Running the scene, the light is blinking as it should. Run the scene again, light stops blinking as it should. Simple so far.
Now, all I want to do is if my Elk is armed and goes into alarm, run the blinking lights scene.
So I created a virtual switch that turns on if the Elk is in armed mode.
Then I created a combo switch that if virtual switch is armed AND Elk panel is tripped while armed then turn on.
Now I made a scene with the trigger from the combo switch is on, and pasted the blinking light luup code in.
When my Elk goes into alarm, the Elk panel is tripped in the combo switch is not seen, so my combo switch never turns on. (only 1 condition is met)
As I see it, When my ELK goes into actual alarm, Vera is unable to know this condition! So scenes don;t work.
Please tell me what I’m doing wrong. I admit I have terrible ability to figure out the scene creation thing. It is not user friendly, nor is there adequate clear information for new users. I spend hours looking for clear concepts about scene creation, but it all alludes me.
It would be nice if there was a thread users could contribute their own scene examples, so we could learn by example. So frustrating!
I’m not sure but I think you might have over complicated this if your m1 reports an alarm condition why not just use that to trigger said scene instead of “armed state/in alarm” combo switch. sorry if I’m looking at this wrong I’ve never used the combo switch or elk plugin but it seems a bit redundant, if your system is in alarm than we already know that it’s armed and if not than its reporting a fire alarm in which case I would want the outside lights to flash anyway so fire trucks knew where to go and inside I would light a path of egress for ease of exit. hope this helps let me know if I missed something
I agree about the complication issue. however the problem is the the Elk plugin IS NOT reporting an active alarm condition. Therefore I cannot use this as a trigger.
I would think at the basic level it should report this, but if I put the Elk into alarm, there is no change of state to the plug in. Under advanced, Alarm state never changes. It shows all my zones and updates their states fine. It tell me the panel is armed or disarmed, but no alarm state!
In that case what about using a combo of armed state and any one of your sensors so when armed if any sensors trip run flashing lights scene that way even with out the “in alarm” reporting the Vera will know due to a decided alarm condition of its own the hard part will be putting a delay to allow for disarming when you come home unless you disarm remotely
FYI, I reset my Vera and reloaded the Elk plugin. Now it has the “in alarm” selections and I can make the triggers I need for it to work. I also found other plugins that didn’t work correctly until I reset and stareted over. Very frustrating for a new user when the Vera seems to function correctly, but in reality, I was corrupted somewhere.
Thanks for the replies.
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