UPDATE:
After a quick tutorial I am rolling. The biggest thing I was having trouble with was - where to select users in a trigger, device, or scene to be notified vs vera alaert device settings and putting in users there. As well, a big issue was not knowing I need to go back to the vera alerts device and click on the notifications tab anytime I do anything. The issue I have now is that it says Test aux in front of everything and I have nothing selected in that tab under the device. Maybe it’s something programmed in the device that was saved wrong from the unknown “need to visit the notifications tab w every change” rule. How can I find it or should I just uninstall the app and reinstall? SOLVED: I hit the spacebar and then enter and now nothing is saved, it was a ghost of some sort. Now it works perfectly. Editing just the sensor and selecting to notify when armed and tripped works for each device where the test speech can say what I typed in for each individual device e.g. garage opened, slider opened, etc. I deleted all scene trigger as they were doing the same thing and doubling the notification. I then turned of vera’s annoying texts in the account page; annoying bc they make a diiferent thread on my phone each time something is tripped.
Overall I think I was running in circles bc I was not saving things correctly. Also reading other posts got me confused. As well I did not edit the individual device notifications but rather just the scene trigger. Also you have to click and unclick at least once on the “notifications” and “vera restart” check boxes under the vera alerts device and under the settings tab. Also you cannot do anything in the graphical interface within a scene with vera alerts so you have to go the the scene’s advanced tab.
FYI from the creator’s mouth, paraphrased of course:
Prowl = I-phone email setup
SMTP = Android’s email setup
Luup = Not needed for vera alerts to work, but to do major tasks
Plugin = send a Prowl, SMTP, etc at once vs just using one
Vera Alert = Instant Alert through google’s server
TTS = cellphone app under settings, voice output that reads text out loud - I like Ivona’s Amy/UK voice like other mentioned.
ORIGINAL POST:
"Vera Alerts is showing up in the devices, but had a crossed out circle while in a scene. I cannot select it as a device in a trigger as well. I have installed a few times, tried a lot of things, and I am no further than I was 2 days ago.
I have literally spent 6 to 8 hours reading and some basics are leaving me lost in conversations while reading. I would like alerts when my door sensors are tripped for children. I’m lost on where to start, terminology, and basics. I tried to follow the setup guide, but it’s tough when I don’t know why I’m selecting this vs that. After reading my goal below, maybe you can point me to whether I should start with LUUP, vera alert messages, SMTP, ELK (I think it was), Prowl push. I have the basics working. At the moment I recieve vera alert TEST messages to all devices from the test button in UI5 and an alert at Vera Start up (even with the app unchecked in the notify at startup box), however I am recieving texts from vera alone when a door is opened; so the trigger works, now I just need vera alerts to chime.
My goal is to set a chime, mp3/ audio file (I have figured out how to select the chimes), but also to play when a particular door is opened. E.G. play chime 1 when the front door opens, chime 2 with the garage, chime 3 with the back door. Could I make one scene Alarm on or off but have triggers for each of the 3 sensors individually reporting to vera alarts w/ a different sound for each, or so I have to set three different scene alarm ons to accomplish this. It would be great to hear welcome home when I unlock the front door as well with my qwikset z wave lock. I also have speaker setup tp an android device so I could run “chimes/sounds” over that too
Vera Alert Messages = through google’s servers to all my android devices via a sepatrate account for each device to get the code (device identifier) on the device - Do I set Alarm scene and then a trigger for when it’s tripped, and then set an alert for that trigger? If so how do I go about choosing chime 3 for device a,b, or c
When I go to vera alerts mobile under device and settings only aux message is there.
Luup = code to do something you want - I assume I would do this for complex tasks. I think I will do this later once I get everything stable and figured out.
Text messages are slow. I hate that the texts keep starting a new thread with a mew name each time such as noreply10, noreply11, noreply12 and so on.
Plugin - Why would I want one??? Is it a universal LUUP or something?
Plugin Forwarding?
What is a ELK?
What is Prowl push?
Push notification = email and this seems to be tedious when a kid trips a door when I am upstairs and I have to go into an email amongst other emails received to see it has been tripped. This seems better for rare use or logging door traffic.
