I don't know if anyone else has had this problem but I've created alerts for myself in the past and then forgotten what they mean if they ever got triggered. For example, I've created rules that cause a light to turn on at a certain color to alert me if a water sensor gets wet. And since that water sensor rarely got wet that random light would turn on bright red I'm like Holy Bright Red Light, Batman! But then I'd just sit there and try to remember which problem I should be concerned about. Bright Red light over the sink means...hmm? It can be a fun game of Clue.
Well, then I decided to integrate with Alexa to actually tell me what the problem was. But eventually I had moved way from having Alexa do anything. So I now have other speakers with local control that tell me what is wrong. I also send an alert to my phone but I get so many notifications they rarely even register so I don't tend to look at them in a timely manner, thus the speaker as well.
So why am I writing this? Well, I want to set up some water sensors for my parents and I am trying to work through how to alert them to a problem like a leaking hot water heater (actually happened about a month ago) or a leak under the sink or the dishwasher (so they can run the dishwasher at night - because someone one time on FaceBook said that their dishwasher started leaking at night and they didn't find out about it until the next day blah, blah, blah - ...stop getting your information from FB!!!!! - sorry that was just a bit of a rant...). And I was thinking about how I could alert them when they currently have zero 'smart' lights or speakers in their home.
I think I am going to give them one of my smart light bulbs and give them my old C-5 and then get them a handful of water sensors and set up a fairly simple rule they can recognize and is immediately actionable. So I'm going to cause a tripped water sensor to turn the smart lightbulb on to flashing and simultaneously send a notification to each of their phones. They will know from the flashing light that they need to check the notification on their phone and when they do check they will know which sensor is wet.
Does anyone have any better ideas?
[Side note: I also want to get them some motion sensors to turn lights on at night so that is why I am keen on a potentially over-engineered solution to the water sensor problem.)
In addition to colored light, why not send a push notification to their phones (and yours) saying: "The red light is on because the water heater may be leaking. "?
Also if the light uses different colors for different events, what happens if more than one event occurs?
How are you planning to set up the notifications on their phones -- will they each have the Hubitat app installed?
Over the years, I've gotten wayyy less cute with light-based alerts, and I now just use Pushover (PO) pretty exclusively -- being able to set certain notifications as Emergency / persistent is awesome.
My iPhone often whiffs at passing even iMessage texts and calls to my watch (let alone most 3rd-party notifications!), but PO has never missed getting my attention. It's been 100% reliable for me.
Where will the (single?) alert light be located such that it's useful most of the time?
A water leak from a pipe can cause many thousands of dollars of damage. I too am paranoid about it.
I have a valve that turns off the water, along with a switch for the well pump. It trips when there's a leak, and it's off when I leave the house, and now that I'm single, lol, overnight.
When the water is off, there's an incentive to find out where it is and address it.
Also I have one of these at every one of my detectors, which are somewhat shy in the volume department. The $15 Watchdog is very loud, and the batteries last forever.
Pushover notifies which detector is alarming as well.
I have an Ecolink chime/alarm z-wave speaker that announces there's a leak, but not the location.
I have lights that go on when the standby generator is on-line or not, since I can't hear it becauese of its location (which is a good thing). I too forget which is which, so I wrote little notes in pencil on the associated switchplates.
I have not messed with this yet; I should.
I have, though, limited the number of Pushover notifications to more urgent ones-I had a few that were extraneous.
For people who don't currently use HA, any kind of smart alert may be uninteresting or even intimidating. If you really want to protect them from themselves, they may respond better to old fashioned screeching dumb alarms.
You can always add HA features and make sure YOU get the notifications as a backup. And/or an auto-shutoff.
Oh man I don't know how many conditions I have coded for and forgot that I did. The last one was the garage door still opened as the house was going into sleep mode and my Lannouncer did the star trek alert sound but I never added the text of why the alert went off. And it's programmed to fire off every 5 minutes. Last night was the first time that alert had gone off since the wife and I are really good at following my nag message that fires up after the garage door is open for 5 minutes "Warning: Garage Door is open!". It took me about 15 minutes to dig though my code before I glanced at my dashboard and the garage icon was red. Fixed the routine this morning by adding text announcement to the alert.
I've never used light-based alerts precisely becuase I know I'd never remember what they were for. I do have all of the house lights turn on if there's an emergency overnight (water leak, etc.) but that's only to help wake me up and ensure I don't trip on anything as I attend to the problem. To alert me to the specific problem, I use both a push notification to my phone and an audio message from Alexa. I set up precise messages to say it's not just a water leak but where the leak is. I've also got an auto valve shutoff on the main water line that kicks in, and power is cut to the dishwasher or washing machine if the leak is near those appliances.
It's a little over-zealous in some respects. Most of the leaks that have been picked up were from a not-perfect seal in one of the sinks' drains. So shutting the water off and turning off the dishwasher do nothing to resolve that. But in the case of water leaks, I'd rather be over-cautious.
Thanks for the idea about sending myself a message, too! I think I was missing the forest for the trees on that one.
I don’t think I would ask my worst enemy to try and recall or decipher the meaning of different colored lights for different alert conditions. It seems it’s not just me that has had problems remembering what those types of alerts mean.
I know my parents would more likely go unscrew the lightbulb than try and figure out what it means.
So I would leave the heavy lifting to the notifications on their phones with the flashing/colored lightbulb acting as a general alert indicator to call them into action (i.e., To the Bat Cave! I mean ‘go check your phone’).
I would create a fairly simple but actionable message much like the messages I create for myself. Sort of a generic model like:
%Device% is %State% as of %Time%. Please confirm there is not a problem. It is currently %CurrentTime%.
(The current time in addition to the time the alert was triggered because I typically send notifications multiple times over a certain time period or while the alert condition persists and it helps make it extremely obvious how long it’s been between reading the message and when the problem started. …just in case anyone was wondering…)
Wow. I am so far out of the loop! I have not seen Pushover before!!! Thank You for bringing me out of the Middle Ages!
I think Pushover will be a much better solution than alerts from the Hubitat app for my parents as well. I haven’t checked it out yet but it sounds like it integrates well with Apple iPhones (and Apple Watches as well) so that would be easy for me to configure on my mom’s phone at least since I end up fixing something on her phone every time I see her. lol
It really might take more than one smart bulb or perhaps some smart outlets connected to lamps which could flash on and off and be sufficiently annoying to motivate them to check their phones. And then they can just go unscrew the bulb or unplug the lamp as I’m not sure how I’d actually program the alert to stop if a sensor remained wet or something even though the emergency had hopefully been addressed.
The self closing water valve may or may not work for their situation. I honestly don’t have a clue where their shutoff valves are and if they are sufficiently accessible. I am picturing the Zooz smart valve in my head which I recall thinking was fairly substantial in size (which is likely necessary to ensure the device can close certain older water valves). But I’m headed to their house this weekend so I can check it out then.
As people age it is amazing what seemingly simple things end up being confusing and perhaps even overwhelming...I say that thinking of my own parents towards their end.
The whole "light color" thing seemed so smart and cool at first until reaching the very-
you described.
That prompted a migration to a three light system, and even as I type it I'm friggin trying to remember if it's Orange, Yellow, Red or was it Yellow, Orange, Red in escalation order. Crap, see what I mean !!!
Anyway, the point is it goes from the condition level of:
"hey, you left something open/unset/etc", to
"hey, something is not normal and could be a mess in the making...so look into it NOW", to
"HEY get your azz outta bed and get out of the house NOW".
So then what; yes I have the notifications on the phone which serve me well once I can see. And the Sonos is going to announce anything serious. But I can see where the phone might be a irritation (thinking of the elderly). What would be ideal is a never-fail dashboard on a slate on the frig or on the bedside table....even better if it could cycle through family pictures in between offering notice of alerts/conditions.
Failing that, and the phone notifications, perhaps a list on the back of the kitchen pantry door which has all the things they should check for the first two condition levels...not the red of course, that's when they call you and tell you to get your azz over and figure out what is up.
No joke, with every year of age past a certain point they'll increasingly be calling at the more minor condition levels. At that point it's better you're getting the notifications and telling THEM what to do before you get there.
