Away from home, door open, can't arm system

At the moment this is hypothetical, but could easily be a real situation.

  1. Leave home without arming system, with a rear door(contact) open.

  2. Rear door is listed as must be closed in order to arm away

  3. At some point, realizing the system is not armed, I attempt to arm the system via a dashboard, but get a HSM message "System not armed, back door open"

Any way to get around this and arm the system?

At this juncture arming the system with the back door open is in my opinion better than leaving the system disarmed. The back door sensor will not cause an alarm unless it is closed then reopened, and if armed anyone walking in through the open door will be picked up by any motion sensors.

1 Like

You could send a custom command to the device (if the device will allow it) and set the contact sensor to closed.
I know this can be done with Xiaomi contact sensors as i do it for my curtains. One of them occasionally plays up. Check to see if it could be done with your contact sensor.
This could be a way round the issue.

I have a VPN server setup at home, I can connect to the HE hub when away.

SirReal

Nope...no way around this. That's why I have contact checking built into a RM rule. Instead of arming directly, I run a rule which checks for contact state for the ones I want. Leaves me the option of arming HSM directly.

1 Like

That's not the problem. There's no way to bypass HSM's contact check when it is arming. I ran into this same problem when I first got HE. No way around it currently.

There has been the suggestion of adding a list to this function like the other functions in HSM to limit the sensors checked when arming.

Yes this will works for me. Don't set contact sensors that must be closed in HSM, Arm system, get a message about open contacts

When my curtain contact sensor plays up when I'm away, I VPN into my hub.
I then send custom command resetToClosed/resetToOpen to my Xiaomi device.
In your case, OK the door may be open, but if your device will allow it, you can set it to closed and then arm your system.
So there is a way round it but you do need remote access to the hub to do it.
Like I said, I know it works because I do it. :wink:

That's not a HSM way around it, you are just tricking the device into thinking it's actually closed. And that's not possible with any of the built-in contact drivers. So, yes, it might be possible with your custom Xiaomi driver but not for all sensors.

Also, what if it resets and then reads itself as open...then HSM will alarm. That's not good either.

If I had a VPN and Xiaomi contact sensors, this will work. However, for me the path of least resistance is @Ryan780's suggestion.

1 Like

No problem.
You asked a hypothetical question, I gave you a hypothetical way round it. :smile:

1 Like

An additional setting and some code in HSM could totally mitigate this issue.

Add an additional HSM setting of "Contacts to Check when arming" that send a warning message, but allow the system to arm, or a bool flag on each contact sensor specified that allows system to arm or not.

Tagging: @bravenel @mike.maxwell

2 Likes

Yeah, I agree. What's been suggested a couple times is to have an exception list like the intrusion delay has.

I must have missed that, and I just reviewed the HSM settings. What's the exception on intrusion delay

Sorry, it's been suggested that be added to HSM's contact checking. It's not there currently.

Coming from Iris, the app/keypads would allow you to arm again after the first arming failure while automatically excluding whatever open contacts there were (from monitoring), until the next time you armed.

This functionality would be great to have again.

3 Likes

That would be very cool. You'd want to include a timeout so that the arm requests would have to come say, less than 5 minutes apart. That way you're not arming a day later not realizing your contact check was excluded. That's a great idea though!

1 Like

When I first setup HSM I had the arm failure messages setup and it would not arm if a sensor it was supposed to monitor was open but it would send me a message saying the sensor was open and it failed to arm. However I removed the failure message option from my HSM and was then able to arm the system with the sensor open and closing it then reopening it set off the alarm. It would be nice to be able to get the message that a device was bypassed due to it being open rather than having that cause the arm failure.

2 Likes

I've sent a PR on Github for Cobra Check Open Contacts app to be triggered from HSM Arming. It will work as required but with the drawback that you need to add (and maintain) your contact sensors list in two places.

You can do that know. You can detect that HSM has armed and turn on a virtual switch to trigger Open Contacts Check. But I maintain, that still won't help. Because if you have left a window open you want closed at that point you would have to disarm HSM before closing the window. If HSM had an exception list so you could choose which devices were checked, that would be the best. That way, you could leave your exit doors off of being checked but add all your windows, if that's what you wanted checked.

Thanks, that's good to know.