Pimatic alarm system plugin

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I finally found the time to work on my promised plugin that implements an alarm system for pimatic. The sources can be found here: https://github.com/michbeck100/pimatic-alarm.

If you want to test just follow the instructions on github.

Basically it turns on all switches and dimmers if any contact or presence sensor gets activated. These switches can also be smoke alarms, which is pretty neat if you think about the sound level .

Please post every issues you have here or at https://github.com/michbeck100/pimatic-alarm/issues.

BTW: It would be nice if you could support my work by using the donation buttons. Thanks!

Hi all,
Is anybody using this plugin? I’m missing some feedback how it’s working for you. Would be great to hear so I know if there’s interest and if I should develop some more features.

What is the purpose of this plugin? It looks to me a plugin for something that could be done also with rules, or do I see this wrong?

sorry, haven’t had the time to test yet, but installed the plugin already.
need to figure out how to use it

Pheeeew!!! What a nice action I just had here at home ^^
first “armed” the system and then fired all devices with the alarm switch
what a nice and imo helpful plugin.

easy to use but :
i would recommend not to blacklist devices but to whitelist them instead.
so better include id’s not exclude since it does not make any sense to exclude more devices than including the really important and neccessary ones.
think about the case when adding new devices to pimatic. you always need to change the “blacklist” to exclude the device if you not want to fire it up at alarm.

just my 5 cents …

would it be possible (somehow somewhen) to have a dropdown list maybe with checkboxes or some other clickable solution to add / remove devices to the alarm system?
would be very very helpful !

@koffienl Of course you could do this with rules, but imagine you have 20 sensors that trigger an alarm and 20 actors that react on the alarm. This rule would be really big and confusing. So the purpose of this plugin is a simplification of the rule solution. This raises user acceptance for pimatic.
@leader21 I’ll think about the whitelist. You are probably right. I’m not sure how to create a dropdown list in the device editor.

@michbeck100 said in Pimatic alarm system plugin:

This raises user acceptance for pimatic.

totally agreed! personally i welcome efforts to simplify operations. this plugin can save lots of rule works and can be used for other purposes than for alarm usage. you can trigger many actuators by one only one device. i like the idea

@leader21 I’ll think about the whitelist. You are probably right. I’m not sure how to create a dropdown list in the device editor.

@developer : having some frontend devs aboard … maybe they can help to evolve ?

@koffienl said in Pimatic alarm system plugin:

What is the purpose of this plugin

The beauty of plugins is you’re a free to use what you like while the core framework stays lightweight.

@leader21 I’ve created a reminder for the whitelist: https://github.com/michbeck100/pimatic-alarm/issues/1

Just released version 0.0.3 of the pimatic-alarm plugin. This version implements https://github.com/michbeck100/pimatic-alarm/issues/1. Please update your configuration to switch from blacklist to whitelist.

I have one question if i may.
I have two Raspberry Pi’s running pimatic . I have two raspberry’s because there is a wall which stops all radio signals, both Wi-Fi and 433MHz . So for the communication between the two raspberry’s (pimatic programs) I have to use the wired network.

I would like to know how to make one pimatic installation see that the other is “sounding” the alarm . So the first one can do the same.

Thanks Hans

You can add a switch of class AlarmSwitch, as described here: https://github.com/michbeck100/pimatic-alarm/blob/master/README.md

This switch will be switched on if the alarm goes on. is that enough?

you can call / trigger the device via api from one pi on the other

Hello Michbeck100 and Leader21,
If the alarm gets triggert i get the log-message “device Bewegingsmelder2 activated the alarm”.
However, the switch is as defined in https://github.com/michbeck100/pimatic-alarm/blob/master/README.md does not react. maybe a bug?
and last but not least can you give me an example of a api call/trigger for the alarm?

Thanks Hans

@hansjeu not really a bug but a misinformation . I thought I implemented this already, but looking at the code I obviously didn’t. Shame on me. I will add this as soon as I can.

Thanks I thought I lost my touch.
Hans

If I may be so bold.
Now you are reprogramming “alarm” again, I have a question.
If the alarm is activated, I get a log message like "device Bewegingsmelder2 caused the alarm."
Is it possible (if can you make it possible) that the triggering device is stored in a variable so that I can show it, for example, on the screen to see what was the cause of the alarm, or for example, I can send a text message that a smoke detector gives an alarm.
If a smoke detector device triggers the alarm I would therefore take more drastic actions, as when a cat at home activerd a motion detector.
Greetings Hans

@hansjeu Added as feature request: https://github.com/michbeck100/pimatic-alarm/issues/2

@michbeck100 Does any body know how to set a variable? Please answer here: https://forum.pimatic.org/topic/2256/how-to-set-variable-programmatically

Just released version 0.1.0 of pimatic-alarm, which sets the variable on alarm.