+66
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Important notifications

subzero 7 years ago in Panels (dashboards) / Notifications & Sound updated by Terry (ActionTiles) (Co-Founder) 6 years ago 12 2 duplicates

There are some notifications (alerts?) that require attention (e.g., water leaks, refrigerator door left open, etc). It'd be nice if those could result in a dialog pop-up window overlayed on the Action Tiles page and would require acknowledgement / dismissal by the user.

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Welcome to our forum, Dean, and welcome to ActionTiles!


The current way to receive alerts from SHM in ActionTiles is to use a Switch (real or virtual) that you can assign to SHM's alert options (i.e., "Turn on this light when Smoke is detected"). That will cause the Switch Tiles to be activated on your Panel(s). This will also be a relatively easy place for us to consider hooking notifications to (i.e., if we add in-app notifications to be defined for whenever certain Tile(s) change state...).


Unfortunately, as you noted, SmartThings doesn't provide any way for 3rd party apps to acknowledge and dismiss alerts; though they may extend this through exclusive partnerships (like they do for Scout monitoring). So this is a big piece of the feature that is out of our reach.


SHM hasn't been updated by SmartThings since it's release over 1.5 years ago. They are likely to offer a huge revision at some point; I hope that they include more consideration for 3rd party integrations!

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(We like this idea and it may be a duplicate, but Votes will automatically be merged if I find relevant similarities.)

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The request makes sense, Andres, but the solution isn't easy.


  1. The official SmartThings solution SmartApp for critical security and safety alerts is "Smart Home Monitor" (SHM). Though ActionTiles can arm and disarm SHM, we cannot configure it, nor receive and/or dismiss it's alerts. SmartThings is unwilling to offer 3rd party developed apps access to SHM notification alerts. Maybe they will change their mind someday, or there are some complex ways to work around it (such as using a Virtual Switch toggled by the SHM alert, perhaps...).
  2. There is an existing Feature Request(s) for Notifications (via sounds, pop-ups, pulldown lists, etc., etc.). We are not yet sure how this feature will be designed and incrementally implemented. It might start simple ... such as only displaying alerts explicitly sent from SmartApps or triggered by specific Tile changes. We would not recommend using this to replace SHM, as if ActionTiles or your Tablet is disconnected for any reason, you might miss critical alerts.

...Terry.

Duplicates 2
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Discuss & Vote

Welcome to our forum, Dean, and welcome to ActionTiles!


The current way to receive alerts from SHM in ActionTiles is to use a Switch (real or virtual) that you can assign to SHM's alert options (i.e., "Turn on this light when Smoke is detected"). That will cause the Switch Tiles to be activated on your Panel(s). This will also be a relatively easy place for us to consider hooking notifications to (i.e., if we add in-app notifications to be defined for whenever certain Tile(s) change state...).


Unfortunately, as you noted, SmartThings doesn't provide any way for 3rd party apps to acknowledge and dismiss alerts; though they may extend this through exclusive partnerships (like they do for Scout monitoring). So this is a big piece of the feature that is out of our reach.


SHM hasn't been updated by SmartThings since it's release over 1.5 years ago. They are likely to offer a huge revision at some point; I hope that they include more consideration for 3rd party integrations!

We have a strobe/siren we can trigger for such events, but it'd be nice if my wife can check out the ActionTiles dashboard to see what the issue is.

Answer
Discuss & Vote

(We like this idea and it may be a duplicate, but Votes will automatically be merged if I find relevant similarities.)

+1

I think you should support the "Messages" from SmartThings... would be great to have a tile listing the most recent messages.

On hurdle is that SmartThings doesn't make every message available to SmartApps and 3rd party Apps. Maybe it will take some Customer pressure on them to be more open.

I have made the transition from IRIS by Lowes over to SmartThings.  I am really loving the Action Tiles service to develop panels for a control center of my house that I can control and monitor via the web from work or from an old tablet I am going to install on the wall where my old IRIS keypad used to hang.    I am definitely going to implement the virtual switch to view INTRUDER Alerts.   Has there been any change in the last 6 months on having a method to dismiss an Intruder Alert remotely via Action Tiles?    I have read a few things on the smartthings community site and the best I can find is to use a link to the following:

https://graph.api.smartthings.com/api/smartapps/installations/{your SHM ID}/dismissIncident?name=Security



I think my SHM ID is my email address and have to use %40 for the "@".... that seemed to get me somewhere but got:  "Full authentication is required to access this resourceunauthorized"


Any thoughts or new connections from Action Tiles to ST?

+1

Unfortunately, SmartThings has not indicated any willingness to open an API into SHM notifications. This is a product they (quite reasonably) want to add fees to for central monitoring suppliers like Scout. The hack you mention was likely a leaked "back-door" that has been locked up.


ActionTiles would be willing to relay fees from our customers if they would offer this... But SmartThings is a big company and it's difficult to get them to "think outside the box".


You may have more success and flexibility using an alternative Alarm SmartApp, such as that which could be built with WebCoRE. We could hopefully someday coordinate a Notification interface with them.

Is there any tutorial on adding a digital switch? I'm sure it's not too involved but I've never done it before. I'm assume it's done through the smart things hub api page?  A physical switch would be doable but "things" arn't cheap and I'd rather not dedicate a thing to the sole purpose of alarms if I can help it. 

In the SmartThings Classic App go to Automation / SmartApps / "+ Add a SmartApp" / "+ More" / "Virtual Device Creator".


This now lets you generate basic Virtual Switches and Virtual Dimmers without requiring the SmartThings IDE website.

Answer
Answered: Discussion Open

The request makes sense, Andres, but the solution isn't easy.


  1. The official SmartThings solution SmartApp for critical security and safety alerts is "Smart Home Monitor" (SHM). Though ActionTiles can arm and disarm SHM, we cannot configure it, nor receive and/or dismiss it's alerts. SmartThings is unwilling to offer 3rd party developed apps access to SHM notification alerts. Maybe they will change their mind someday, or there are some complex ways to work around it (such as using a Virtual Switch toggled by the SHM alert, perhaps...).
  2. There is an existing Feature Request(s) for Notifications (via sounds, pop-ups, pulldown lists, etc., etc.). We are not yet sure how this feature will be designed and incrementally implemented. It might start simple ... such as only displaying alerts explicitly sent from SmartApps or triggered by specific Tile changes. We would not recommend using this to replace SHM, as if ActionTiles or your Tablet is disconnected for any reason, you might miss critical alerts.

...Terry.

+1

in a similar vein, It would be good to wake Actiontiles and automatically change to the panel with a tile set to “alert” or when a configured tile or panel detects a change in state.  For example, I have a panel for smoke detectors and sensors.  I set the tiles for the sensors to change to alert when it changes state.  You could add an attribute to make a tile or whole panel a “important” and when the state changes on that tile, you could force the panel it’s on to open.  Or 8t could po0 up a message on change in state for any thing tile marked “important.”