VeraPlus - locks, sensors, specific text notifications to multiple users?

Community Playground Getting Started & Initial Setup
1

Hey people…

I have very specific needs that I am curious if a VeraPlus will be able to provide without too much need for add on apps etc. If add on apps are needed even in the latest and greatest software and VeraPlus HW please let me know which apps I will need. Hopefully nothing specifically requires any coding to work. Your help is greatly appreciated.

Here are my scenarios for using the VeraPlus with a few locks and some sensors and will most likely expand to include the garage (and if it is left opened for “x” amount of time then alert me and close the garage or give me the immediate option to close the garage.)

  1. the lock will have multiple pins. I only want to get alerts when a specific pin is used with specific text. Ex. 1234 is assigned to Doug… When Doug comes to my house and enters pin 1234 on the door, I would like to receive notification on my iPhone’s Lock Screen or Apple Watch that “Doug has entered the FRONT door”. Is this possible? I don’t need notifications everytime my wife or myself enter the front door or any other door for that matter. I need these notifications for approx 5-7 different pins with the appropriate text to go along with the pin use.

  2. I would like to set the front door to automatically relock itself after a certain amount of time. However I only want it to lock itself when the door is physically closed. I want to be able to possibly use a door sensor on the door and get 3 things:
    a) if the door sensor is “opened” for more than 3 min (or some number) alert my phone or watch with something like “attention is needed at the front door, it is not closed”

b) if the door sensor is “closed” then wait “3 min” (or some number) and lock the front door

c) if the door is reopened during the waiting period… everything starts over.

  1. Can I get alerts for example if the door is not closed all the way and the lock jams?

  2. Battery of lock at 25% warning, then a critical warning when the battery is at 10%. Both of these with specific texts that I set? And have it sent to my phone lock screen or watch?

  3. have all the alerts just mentioned sent to more than one person (i.e. the 2 adults in the house with emails and phone/watch notifications)?

Hopefully these things will not be too difficult to accomplish. I currently do #1,3,4,5 today with a VeraLite and 2 apps needed to accomplish… HomeWave and VeraAlerts from back in 2013 when they were setup and haven’t been touched since… are they both still needed? is there a better way now in 2017 with an upgrade to maybe even the VeraPlus?. I have no idea if #2 above is possible.

Looking forward to replies.

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My opinion here is that Vera Alerts/PLEG seem to be the way to get that custom detail in your text messages. I’m sure it can be accomplished but I can’t give you step by step as I don’t use VA or PLEG.

Vera’s default notifications for texts/emails have been the subject of debate on the lack of ability to customize them. It would appear you either have to write lua code or use pleg/VA for that granular level you want.

I have used Tasker and AutoVera for a while now. The downside with AutoVera is certain variables of the lock like sl_user (whatever the name was for pins by user) is not exposed to AutoVera making it impossible to get that to work. It’s been posted on joao’s forum who creates AutoApps.

Your scenes all seem reasonable and can probably be done using the default methods. Beyond that (and the reason I like Vera) you should look further into code snippets from the Advanced section of this forum. Many postings about a lot of items.

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You can achieve what you describe most easily by using Vera Plus and the Program Logic Event Generator(PLEG) plugin and the Vera Alerts plugin.

See PLEG Example - Detect Door Left Open with Repeated Notifications for how to get started.

Also, see PLEG Basics - An Introduction to the Program Logic Event Generator for many more ideas with PLEG.

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Thanks for the answers and the links. I will give this a shot with the new hardware utilizing PLEG and VerAlerts