Are Sound Sensors a thing?

Just like the title says, are sound sensors a thing? We have a septic pump alarm in our basement that is nearly impossible to hear from the main living area of the house. I would like to add a sound sensor that listens for the alarm to go off, and based on that trigger, I will turn on a few select bulbs around the house and change the color to red. If anyone can point me in the right direction I would appreciate it!

The sound sensors I have seen are tuned to CO/smoke detectors and likely not general purpose. But there might be another way to rig a relay or dry contact sensor... can you describe the pump alarm in any more detail? Perhaps there's enough power to the horn or whatever to drive a relay... or perhaps a glass break detector might work?

I think @iharyadi is looking at making one eventually,,

If you can't find a sound sensor, I wonder if there is there a way to splice in a connection on the pump alarm wiring that would trip a smart switch, which then would run an "alarm" notification (lights on/set to colors, etc.).

Only other thing I can think of is a vibration sensor, which if it's possible to attach directly to the alarm speaker might vibrate enough to trigger...

You could do a dry contact sensor to an alarm or just plain notifications.

Alexa has a sound detection public preview, and it can listen for Beeping Appliance as one of the things.
Not sure if that would work with Alarms.
Actually its not available in my region but Alexa Guard does listen for Alarms.

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Maybe these could work.

Probably isn't the best way to do it but Arlo can be used as a sound sensor in a way.

Arlo has an option to trigger based off of sound or motion. That is in turn sent to Smartthings that can show how it was triggered. The problem is that Arlo doesn't have any integration with Hubitat, you would be depending on multiple clouds, and node red to get it into Hubitat, and it is a bit of overkill to simply know a sound was made.

Sure Brad. The septic alarm measure a backup level out near the drain field and was installed by the previous home owner to alert of there were was a pump failure. The alarm has only gone off a few times since we moved in, but I always wonder how long it goes off before we actually hear it. 100% of the time so far, the pump has stopped working do the the breaker popping on the GFCI outlet that the pump is plugged into. Maybe I could monitor that outlet and alert if it loses power?

Sorry - just to clarify, it's the breaker popping, not the the GCFI outlet, correct?

Could the breaker tripping repeatedly mean that it's not (or the GFCI outlet is not) the correct amperage (or whatever the term is, I am not an electricity guy) for the pump? AFAIK, a breaker should not keep tripping unless there is an actual problem.

If power is being cut how about something that simply monitors that circuit and can report like a ring extender. Let it sit on the circuit and when it looses power trigger a bigger alarm.

You could also use a raspberry Pi with a UPS. Have the Raspberry pi hooked up to monitor the UPS. Then use Node red to monitor the UPS and send status to Hubitat. Then hubitat could know when the power is lost on the circuit

The Ring extender is probably the easiest and cheapest optoin though

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@kerrylebel This would work... of course dollars to donuts the next failure will NOT be the breaker.

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I think the question is what makes the best trigger for the real alarm. Is it a power issue on the circuit, a water level issue in the septic system.

Maybe a question is what triggers the sound normally if power isn't a problem?

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With the latest firmwares for the Zooz Appliance switch (one of the few motor rated plug in modules) can disable both the physical and Zwave switches. (firmware 1.03 according to their documentation) They are fairly economical, especially when they go on sale, which they regularly do (and are now). You could monitor if the pump has run with "X" time period. This would work OK if it is a plug in type pump.

The other option might be to do this:

Suggestion for a device that senses voltage? Septic Tank Alert In particular, I outline using a relay starting at post 13 or so.

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Power gets cut to the pump because the GFCI pops and needs to be reset and as a result of the pump not running it triggers the alarm as levels get too high.

My 2 cents for what it's worth.

I assume your septic pump alarm goes off or on, when the water level is too high.

One thing you could use, is a water level float sensor attached to ZWave Plus Door Window Sensor with external input, as the water level reaches a danger point, it would set a rule in action, which could activate a light of something.

Dom

As others have suggested a Ring range extender could help notify you that the GFIC circuit is out. If your sump alarm has a LED light when its alarming you could purchase this light sensor and it can notify you if the LED is on:

Folks in the community use it for washer and dryer notifications as example.

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Well the ring range extender code certainly address the gfci outlet. But doesn't do anything about actually adressing the alarm condition. If you want both then i think there are allot of good options mentioned.

I would look to see if you could simply attach some kind of relay to the siren wiring itself.

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I've tried it and had basically zero luck getting it to work. It would be nice if you could put the Echo device into "listening mode" and trigger the alarm, so the device could send the recording up to the cloud and get it added as a viable trigger.

First thing I would do is replace the GFCI. They can and do go faulty.

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