Door status reporting

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  • Hippo
    Automated Home Lurker
    • Jun 2012
    • 2

    Door status reporting

    Hi all

    I need to find a way of getting Cortex to report that I have left doors open on outbuildings and garages.

    I have eight doors, five of which I do not have line of sight to.
    One out of the five is public facing.
    The doors are generally open when I am at home.
    All doors are already attached to Cortex.

    Keen to understand the various possible options e.g., audible alert, light flash, etc., for a reminder at regular intervals. Ideally, I'd have a shorter interval between alerts for the door that is public facing versus the other seven.
  • Viv
    Automated Home Ninja
    • Dec 2004
    • 284

    #2
    I think you first need to decide what is considered left open?

    Is it if its been open for say more that half an hour.
    Or perhaps after 6pm.
    Or report what doors are open at specified time of day.
    Some doors may have a different consideration.

    The Alarm system can report which doors are open that should be closed on arming the alarm.

    If you have lock bolt sensors then you can also decide if the doors are actually locked.

    Viv

    Comment

    • Hippo
      Automated Home Lurker
      • Jun 2012
      • 2

      #3
      Sorry all doors have sensors fitted to determine closed.

      I probably need to know after a certain amount of time and repeated regularly for one of them
      also a time related one late at night, and possibly on going dark although thats possibly of little use in the winter months.

      Suggestions on how else i could have it reported

      Comment

      • chris_j_hunter
        Automated Home Legend
        • Dec 2007
        • 1713

        #4
        we do lots of this, for lots of reasons - eg: if the Pantry door is left open for more than so-long (putting food at risk, maybe), Cortex talks to us; if someone (eg: deliveryman) comes in the garden door when we are not nearby, Cortex tells, us; if the basement door is opened, and we have children in the house, Cortex tells us, in-case it's them going where they shouldn't & trouble might follow; if doors are opened into distant unoccupied parts of the house, far from where we are, Cortex tells us; etc; etc ...

        not only doors, also windows, and other things ...

        a combination of various devices are used to achieve this, depending on individual case :

        relays & doors can speak (Behaviour window, click Annunciation icon) ...

        Virtual Relays (Cortex Relay objects, not Enabled) ...

        General Logic gates - a Delay gate sourced on a Door & outputted to a VR will clear before activating if the Door is closed before the delay runs out - use NOT gates as needed, and AND & OR & various other gates when interlocks are required (eg: when a Room’s Occupied, could be no need to tell people because they will already know) - etc, etc

        use Broadcast or Speak Local, according to which Intercoms are required to speak - with VRs, when used, located in the same room as the intercom, when they are needed to just speak local ...

        all works very well, and there’s also the Messages object, too, which we’ve yet to explore, but looks to be very useful for this sort of thing ...

        Chris
        Last edited by chris_j_hunter; 14 August 2015, 08:19 PM.
        Our self-build - going further with HA...

        Comment

        • Karam
          Automated Home Legend
          • Mar 2005
          • 863

          #5
          As Chris suggests you could have the individual names of the doors reported, or different sounds for different doors. You could trigger flashing lights (though this won't tell you which door unless you assign a different light to each door), you could arrange an array of LEDs driven perhaps by an ODO module to indicate which door is open, you could send yourself e-mails, SMS's, though that's a bit OTT :-). You could set up a notice board and have messages appear on that. You can make LEDs flash or light up on a DFP or even a button module (this might use ORing to tell you at least one door is open). So there are many ways to notify you but the more difficult part will be getting the appropriate notification to suit the context and to decode the requirement correctly. By this I mean you may even want to vary the nature of the notification depending on other signals such as time of day or light level as you suggested. Sounds to me like you may need to use a mixture of logic gates and macros to get most flexibility. Chris has already suggeseted how a delay gate can be useful for creating a signal if something is TRUE for long enough and there are probably more than one way to implement repeating messages after this point and so on
          Last edited by Karam; 15 August 2015, 09:41 AM.

          Comment

          • chris_j_hunter
            Automated Home Legend
            • Dec 2007
            • 1713

            #6
            when we first set-out, intercoms were not on our list ... now we wouldn't be without them, and would have more ... through them, Cortex speaks to us quite a lot, letting us know when things happen, giving us warning of what's about to happen, etc ... and it's not intrusive, whereas we would have expected it to be very so, but we've found it useful to know what's going on - trick was to word messages very carefully (early efforts were far from what they are now) & to be very selective (of course), and as context-sensitive as possible (some General Logic helps a lot), and to include pauses to improve clarity (difficult to do, but including space-dot-space where needed usually does the trick) ...

            when we're accessing Cortex from our laptop, with its sound level a touch above zero, we hear messages twice - first from the intercoms (MFPs in our case), and a fraction later from the laptop - not what we intended, but the effect is not unattractive - a bit like being on the Nostromo (Aliens) when things were running quietly !
            Last edited by chris_j_hunter; 14 August 2015, 08:59 PM.
            Our self-build - going further with HA...

            Comment

            • Karam
              Automated Home Legend
              • Mar 2005
              • 863

              #7
              Yes I think most people don't quite appreciate how useful audio is, possibly because most home automation tends to be thought of and provided in the realm of mainly remote control and rudimentary automation type of tasks. Whereas as many of you will already know we in fact started with audio first and displays later, so its provision and management runs quite deep within the integration fabric. I do think it also gives a more 'friendly' touch and makes the house feel more alive. This aspect is probably more useful then you might imagine in some contexts - see our portfolio example about the independent living application.

              Comment

              • chris_j_hunter
                Automated Home Legend
                • Dec 2007
                • 1713

                #8
                >friendly ... alive ...

                equally all the possibilities brought with the new Web API interface of v27 - really looking forward to getting some of our other stuff linked-in, too, as well as things like weather-forecasts (hopefully presenting images like radar-maps will be possible) ... !
                Last edited by chris_j_hunter; 21 August 2015, 10:26 AM.
                Our self-build - going further with HA...

                Comment

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