Hi,
I am new to Sharptools so apologies if this I am repeating anything said before. As a lot may be aware Smartthings withdrew support for SMS notifications recently and being based int he UK seems to add an extra dimension to resolving this. SO when I came across a post on the SmartThings community stating Sharptools plus Twillo is the way to sort it, I thought I would take a look. The first thing I have stumbled into as a bit of a block is there appears to be no way to set up a rule that says if SHM alerts for security, fire, water etc then do this action. It seems I have to write a rule with every sensor in to achieve this. Am I missing something here ? Surely I can create a rule that says if SHM detects a condition state that is an alert then do action?
On a second note I notice there is an SMS option in addition to the Twilllo option in the actions menu in the rues engine. I assume this is US based only and for the UK I do need Twillo.
And finally … apart from the ability to have multiple dashboards/tiles etc there appears no real benefit for UK users to pay for premium, again am I missing something.
Appreciate anyone taking the time to put me on the right path… Thank you
Hi Andy, welcome to SharpTools community and family, and thank you for your feedback & questions. See below for the comments.
SMS: SharpTools SMS is only for US premium users as SMS can cost 15 times more in some countries than US and is not practical for our pricing model. However, we’ve integrated with Twilio (and several other notification providers, such as Pushover, Pushbullet and email) and made them available to all users (Free & Premium) with no location restriction so users have the options to choose whatever works best for them.
SHM alert notification: it’s correct that you cannot send notification based on SHM alert. However, the beauty of Rule Engine is to create flexible automation with advanced actions/conditions the way you want. For example you can send notifications, play alert message through your Echo or Sonos speaker, and turn a light to red for any water leak or smoke event, but only do so when a door is opened or motion is detected while SHM is armed, during specific time, or you are not present. And once the rules are created, you rarely need to touch them again. (Feel free to let me know if you need any help with your automation ideas.)
Here is a quick demo video we filmed at Samsung Developer Conference 19, and is a great intro for you to learn some ideas about what SharpTools offers.
Thank you James for taking the time to explain. Its a shame as I run ActionTiles and quite willing to move across, but without the SHM integration it does make it more to maintain, especially as I have quite a number of sensors etc that would all need a individual rule to make it work.
Twilio sounds good and if you offered the same integration for the UK as the US I think a lot of ST users would be interested. Will have a look at the video and see if I can make it work for me.
@Andrew, I am sorry if I didn’t explain well. SHM is fully integrated in SharpTools like other solutions and that means you can change SHM status from Dashboard and Rule, and trigger a rule when SHM changes to specific status or use SHM as a condition in the rule (this is not supported by the other solution mentioned.)
For creating notification rules, you don’t need to create individual rule for each device. You can simply add multiple devices as triggers in a rule, and the rule will be kicked off when any of the triggers is matched. See example below, and let me know if anything I can help. You should be able to create the rules to notify when leak, smoke and motion/door is detected in a couple minutes.
Security monitoring & notification rule Trigger: when any of these door/contact is opened or motion is detected Flow: if SHM is Armed Away, send me a sms notification
No you explained very well. I understood but when you have approx 14 sensors that monitor intruder , plus 4 smoke and 5 leak detectors then rules become long and troublesome.
If there was just an output from SHM that would help. However I have an idea. I have created a virtual switch that when SHM detects any motion or open door etc it switches the virtual switch on… therefore if I create a rule with just the one virtual switch and monitor its state I should get the same result which I need to trigger Twilio SMS.
Will have a play when I get 5 mins. In the meantime thank you for input and time.
It’s unfortunate that SmartThings doesn’t report the SHM alert events via API (only the armed/disarmed state), but the idea with turning on a virtual switch as a response within an SHM event is great!
