Vera Alerts

Apps & Remote Access VeraAlerts
101

I messed around with tablets, phones and various kludged-together ways of doing this. In the end I got a Sonos Play3 and installed the Sonos plugin. The Play3 sleeps when not doing anything but will Say whatever text I trigger through the plugin actions at the volume I choose. It also comes to life as an internet radio at appropriately randomized times when I am away from home to help simulate my presence.

The Sonos is by-no-means the cheapest solution but it works so much better than the other schemes I tried. Not bad sound quality, too. 8)

102

[quote=“RexBeckett, post:101, topic:172920”]I messed around with tablets, phones and various kludged-together ways of doing this. In the end I got a Sonos Play3 and installed the Sonos plugin. The Play3 sleeps when not doing anything but will Say whatever text I trigger through the plugin actions at the volume I choose. It also comes to life as an internet radio at appropriately randomized times when I am away from home to help simulate my presence.

The Sonos is by-no-means the cheapest solution but it works so much better than the other schemes I tried. Not bad sound quality, too. 8)[/quote]

Well Sonos is obviously the way to do it properly, I’ve never owned a Sonos system due to the cost, I have however installed and setup some for clients.

I wonder if a Logitech Squeezebox receiver might do something similar? I don’t currently have any “real” Squeezeboxes other than an emulated one on my WHS that drives the speakers in our kitchen for music.

I am thinking a budget dedicated VeraAlerts option would be something like this and this. I could tap the little amp in to my speaker terminal AV wall plates to connect to my front speakers in the living room and the speakers in the kitchen.

Both devices are low powered and could be left running 24/7. I dunno what to do? I am liking the potential of VeraAlerts but don’t want to break the bank as I have other gadgets to buy as well.

103
I am thinking a budget dedicated VeraAlerts option would be something like this and this.
It could be worth a try.
I could tap the little amp in to my speaker terminal AV wall plates to connect to my front speakers in the living room and the speakers in the kitchen.
Paralleling two amps onto one speaker is not going to lead to joy. There is a chance you'll let the magic smoke out of one or both of your amps...
104

Yeah I was thinking about that as well. The other option might be to Z-wave the Cambridge audio amp that lives in the cupboard under my stairs, that amp drives the kitchen speakers. If I could power it on and off for VeraAlerts announcements. I would only hear them in the kitchen then and not in the living room as well, but its a start I guess. :o

Or just leave that amp on all the time, its 20watts I think of power usage. The Cambridge audio amp currently turns on and off when ever the WHS server wakes / sleeps using an E.ON Desktop Power plug thing like this.

AVR in the lounge is a cheap Denon no speaker B or Zone 2 but wouldn’t want to leave that on all the time anyway’s. Some amps auto sense an audio signal and wake from standby but your talking more$ for an amp with that feature.

105

If you are up to adding a z-wave switch, you could have it switch a couple of relays to connect the little amp to your existing speakers and disconnect the normal amps. It would be quicker than waiting for an amp to power-up. To be really nice to your amps, you could have the relays switch them to some dummy-load resistors in case they were running when the alert occurred.

106

Sounds good but I wouldn’t know how to do that! My background is I.T and some AV, electronics is not my best suit.

Another issue I could see if what happens when music is already playing and an announcement comes, it would just play over the top of the music?

With XBMC I can have Vera send a Pause playback command upon a trigger, not sure how to stop a Squeezebox playing via Luup from Vera.

107

Of course the other easy option is add another separate speaker to that Mini amp and Mini Android PC. Or an active speaker or PC speakers and no need for the mini amp. Could do that in the lounge and keep the whole thing separate from the currently installed speakers. That might work out as a budget getting started with VeraAlerts announcements kinda thing. 8)

108

I’m really confused about the email notification setup with VeraAlerts.

The guide says:

[i]"To have your notifications sent out use the Vera Alerts plugin. You will need to do the following.

  1. There is no (easy) way to suppress the notifications sent to MCV. So if you do not want MCV to process them; then disable the email and/or SMS notification of events for all users.

  2. If you want Vera Alerts notifications to be sent to multiple targets (Emails and/or Android Devices) than create a separate user for each target. This is done from Vera Web page … ACCOUNT tab and Other Users sub tab.

  3. Open up the Vera Alerts Notification Configuration tab. Here you can specify the email and/or Android Vera Alerts ID# for each user. You will need to come back here often. A side effect of opening this page is that it updates all of the Notifications in Vera and adds a callback to VeraAlert to actually process sending the notification via Vera Alerts. If you change any notification (enable/disable, change users, edit the conditions …) you will have to come back to this tab so it can update all of these notification callbacks. All of this is magic … but you have to remember to do it and of course to Save the changes."[/i]

I turned off the MCV email notifications for my MIOS account as suggested. In the VeraAlerts device on the Settings Tab → Default Recipients I entered the ID of an Android device followed by a comma and then my email address.

For my motion sensor I added a new scene which detects the motion as a trigger and I added in the Advanced tab a VeraAlert SendAlert Message 'Motion Detected Porch". Now when there is motion the Android tablet speaks out “Motion Detected Porch” and I get a email from Vera@RTS-Services.com that says “Motion Detected Porch”

So I have it working to both Android and my email, without doing point 2. I haven’t created a second MIOS account in the Account Tab → Other Users.

Also if I still wanted some email notifications to come from MCV how would I do that?

Many thanks.

EDIT: For my Doorbell scene I get an email that says:

{picture:va.38.60307199629167.jpg}There’s someone at the door

But no picture attached to the email message. I can see the picture however in VeraAlerts on the Android tablet.

EDIT2: Trying to figure out how it all works, if I turn back on in Vera - Account Tab - Email Settings - Send me an email and in my doorbell scene if I edit the trigger and tick the box next to my username for MCV notification.

The Android now says: “Doorbell Binary Sensor is triggered” it then says the VeraAlert as well “There’s someone at the door” and I now get two emails one from noreply20@notification.mios.com and one from VeraAlerts.

109

Step 2 is really only needed if you want to Control which recipient gets what …

If you want some Alerts to go to Android Vera Alerts App, and a different set of alerts to go to email via Vera Alerts, and a different set of alerts to go to MCV Email … you would need 3 MCV accounts.
One account would have MCV email enabled. The other two would not.
You would associate one of the MCV users with the Vera Alert ID … and then checking this user on any notifications would send the notification to the Android App.
You would associate another MCV user with the Vera Alerts Email address … and then checking this user on any notifications would send the notification to the Vera Alerts Email address.
And of course checking the user with the MCV email account will send via the MCV servers.
This strategy applies to multiple Vera Alerts Android apps as well!

You will then have the option to mix and match … any combination just by checking 1 or more users for each notification.

110

Richard thanks think I understand. Will have to have a play about with it.

Should I get the picture sent from my camera to my email as well as to the VeraAlerts app on the Android?

I used the VeraAlert Message of: {Picture(38)}There’s someone at the door in my Doorbell scene. 38 being the ID of the porch cam.

Thanks again!

111

I have to do some work to get it to work with email … I will add that to the list.

112

OK great, what I think I want to setup is this:

  1. To have VeraAlerts voice notifications to go to an always ON Android Mini PC device and connect this to some wireless speakers one upstairs and one downstairs. This will give me voice announcements in the house. And also have VeraAlerts text notifications to go to my Android mobile phone.

  2. To continue to have the MCV email notification going to my gmail account as they always have done, or possibly switch to VeraAlerts email notifications instead.

113

Hi

You said “You would associate one of the MCV users with the Vera Alert ID … and then checking this user on any notifications would send the notification to the Android App.”

I’ve added a second MIOS account that is not enabled for the MCV emailing and in the VeraAlerts device I have put in the 12 digit code against this new second user in the Vera Alerts ID field on the Notification Configuration tab.

My first (original) MCV user account does have MCV emailing enabled.

Then if under my doorbell scene I go to the triggers tab and tick this second user account, when the scene is triggered the VeraAlerts app says" Binary Doorbell Sensor is tripped" which is the name of that actual Z-wave device. I also see in the VeraAlerts device that once I have selected an MCV user, then under the Notification Configuration tab it is then listed here and there is a message override option. So in here I would write an override message of “There is someone at the door” This works OK and as expected.

However alternative there is another way to do it, rather than checking the MCV user in the trigger area of a scene, you can instead go to the Advanced tab of the scene and add the VeraAlerts device - select Send Alert and type in your message there in the Message field. It will then send the alert to the default recipients listed in the VeraAlerts device or you can in the advanced tab of the particular scene in the Recipients field, state here who the recipients are.

So its a bit confusing for me at least as there are two ways you can set it up, to send the voice alert to the Android app.

Which is the recommend way? It seems to me the first option of ticking the MCV user in the triggers tab of the scene and then using the message override option in the VeraAlerts device on the Notification Configuration tab is the better way to do it.

Many thanks.

EDIT: How would I send the voice alert for the doorbell to two Android tablets. I have our Samsung Galaxy tab 2 currently setup as the default recipient and this tablet should receive all voice alerts. However for this particular doorbell scene I would like the voice alert to also go to my daughters Android tablet as its normally her friends at the door!

Sorry for all the dumb questions but its not so easy working this out for me it seems.

EDIT 2: Using “option 2” and using the advanced tab of the scene with the VeraAlerts Device → SendAlert. I can put in two 12 digit numbers separated with a comma, this works for the doorbell scene and both tablets get the voice message.

I couldn’t see any way of sending the message to two tablets using “option 1” and ticking the second MCV user account on the triggers tab of the scene. In this case it just goes to one tablet the default recipient.

114

OK I think I have this doorbell scene setup as I wanted it now.

Voice alert to be sent to two tablets and an email alert sent to my gmail via MCV.

Please see attached screen shots for how I set it up was this the correct way? Only thing is that the voice alert to the second tablet is delayed a bit, the first tablet receives it much faster.

Thanks

115

You do not need to create a scene that is triggered by the DoorBell sensor.

You only need to add a notification on the DoorBell sensor … using the Notifications tab for the sensor. And similarly for other device notifications.

If you want to do other things when the doorbell sensor is tripped … than a scene is needed.

116

That door bell scene also has some Luup code to send a popup notification to XBMC and also pause playback.

117

All of the multi user stuff I mentioned is related to Vera style notifications … Notifications that are attached to Scene triggers and Device Notifications.

Calling the VeraAlert SendAlert action (either by the Advanced Tab of a scene or by LUA code) … is low level interface to sending Alerts.

You are mixing the two together … which is fine … but not needed.

118

[quote=“RichardTSchaefer, post:117, topic:172920”]All of the multi user stuff I mentioned is related to Vera style notifications … Notifications that are attached to Scene triggers and Device Notifications.

Calling the VeraAlert SendAlert action (either by the Advanced Tab of a scene or by LUA code) … is low level interface to sending Alerts.

You are mixing the two together … which is fine … but not needed.[/quote]

Using a Vera style notification on the trigger tab of the doorbell scene with the CDKID user and also using a VeraAlerts - SendAlert action was the only way I could seem to send a voice message to the default recipient tablet #1 and the tablet#2 and also have a MCV email notification sent to my inbox.

How might have I set that up in a better manner?

119

I have configured another scene for my motion sensor, this time using VeraAlerts email instead of MCV.

Porch Motion Detection scene - I wanted it to send a voice message to the default recipient tablet #1 and send me an email to my inbox from VeraAlerts not MCV.

To do this I edited the trigger in the scene and selected the CDKID2 user this time, this user has MCV emailing disabled.
On the advanced tab of the scene this time I did NOT add a VeraAlerts device - SendAlert.

In the VeraAlerts Device, under the Notification Configuration tab, in the Vera Alerts ID field for the CDKID2 user, the tablet #1 12 digit code was already present and also I now added my gmail email address in here as well.

This works fine, when motion is detected, the Samsung Galaxy tablet says: “Porch Motion Detected” and I get an email from Vera@RTS-Services.com rather than MCV.

120

Thanks for your help, I think I am all setup now, for the other scenes like “Leaving House” “Welcome Home” I have just used the Luup tab in the scene and added code like

luup.call_action("urn:richardgreen:serviceId:VeraAlert1", "SendAlert", {Message = "Goodbye you are now leaving the house", Recipients = "AndoidIDCode"}, 83)

Which is exactly what I needed, now when I used a minimote or keyfob or a phone app the system will announce it has run those scenes.

Going to order that Mini Android PC now and set this up more permanently.

Only thing I haven’t figured out is how to announce when a door is opened or closed?