Create a Scene /Scenario for 'arming the house' upon leaving

Posted on
Wed Nov 23, 2022 6:59 pm
eliot offline
Posts: 5
Joined: Feb 06, 2015
Location: Bullhead City

Create a Scene /Scenario for 'arming the house' upon leaving

Hi all,
I still feel link an infant in working with Indigo.
I would like to do several things and have it all grouped together:
Turn the volume up all the way on my Mac.
If I could; also change from my local speaker to the Bluetooth speaker in the center of the house
Then 'arm/activate/ all my motion sensors & open/close sensor throughout the house
So if someone breaks or walk-in, in anyway, all the lights come on and the system provides an announcement that the police are being called
I have mostly the Insteon open close sensors and lights. a few Z-Wave lights
I have a speaker in the middle of the house (on the pot shelves) connected via bluetooth to the computer. the Mac Mini which is in one of the kids rooms

Posted on
Mon Nov 28, 2022 9:45 pm
whmoorejr offline
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Posts: 762
Joined: Jan 15, 2013
Location: Houston, TX

Re: Create a Scene /Scenario for 'arming the house' upon lea

The nice thing about indigo... if you can imagine it, you can do it. Luckily, there is already a pretty good write-up on creating a indigo based security system.

https://wiki.indigodomo.com/doku.php?id ... ity_system

Bill
My Plugin: My People

Posted on
Tue Nov 29, 2022 9:28 am
Different Computers offline
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Posts: 2533
Joined: Jan 02, 2016
Location: East Coast

Re: Create a Scene /Scenario for 'arming the house' upon lea

I remember wondering about this sort of thing when I first bought in to Indigo. I asked about "best practices." I approach this as best practices **for non-programmers**. If you're comfortable with Python, there are bound to be better ways to do things via scripting.

Over time, I've come to realize that as much as possible, it's sanity-preserving to move discreet actions into action groups, rather than have a trigger or schedule that directly does the action. That way you may have multiple triggers or schedules and change them all however you want, but they still do the same thing which you've hopefully tested.

So for example, I have an action group "Camera 1 Snapshot" that:

    Takes a camera snapshot with a specific camera and saves it.

    Manipulates that snapshot so it meets the upload file size limit for Indigo's web server

and that's all.

I have multiple triggers that can call that Camera 1 Snapshot for a variety of things sensors notice. This does two important things:

    Makes it easy to troubleshoot if something in the action group isn't working right

    Makes it easy to duplicate the action to other cameras.

In particular, I don't have to hunt through multiple different triggers to find the place where, for example, I have the delay before saving the snapshot file set too short. Because that delay is only ever set in ONE place, but then called by multiple triggers.

I'll go so far as to suggest that once you have two triggers with different conditions activating the same things, you're in a situation where you want to use an Action Group.

There's a similar but less compelling argument to make for Virtual Device Groups.

SmartThings refugee, so happy to be on Indigo. Monterey on a base M1 Mini w/Harmony Hub, Hue, DomoPad, Dynamic URL, Device Extensions, HomeKitLink, Grafana, Plex, uniFAP, Fantastic Weather, Nanoleaf, LED Simple Effects, Bond Home, Camect.

Posted on
Tue Nov 29, 2022 3:50 pm
jltnol offline
Posts: 989
Joined: Oct 15, 2013

Re: Create a Scene /Scenario for 'arming the house' upon lea

So I'm not sure if you looking for specific steps to take, or just some general info on this.
Probably like most folks, when I leave the house, certain things happen, including arming the security system, and turning on or off lights. When I return, the opposite happens. There are various ways for Indigo to trigger those two things, but what is more important is the Action Group that performs all those steps.

My suggestion is to take the list you've included in your post, and then setup an Action Group to do all of those things. Off hand, the Bluetooth issue may be the hardest to accomplish as it usually requires intervention on both your speaker and your Mac, but it may be possible.

Work thru your steps one by one 'til your Action Group does everything you want it to do, and simultaneously, create an Action Group that will un-do what you do with your first Group when you return home.

And the suggestion to create smaller Action Groups is a good one for all the reasons mentioned. You can still create a Master Action Group (just a regular Action Group that activates all your smaller groups ).

Don't get stuck. If/when you run into a specific issue, just ask. Include as much info about the hardware involved in the part that is troublesome, and someone will come to your aid.

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