Keeping tabs on my Workshop - Monitoring the door

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I have a detached wood shop, and am starting to use HA for assorted things in and around the shop. This post is about some security-related monitoring.

This is still a work in progress, as I work my way through learning HA. I will provide updates as I have them, or just ask!

When I built my workshop, I installed door switches in the door frame - so I have a trigger when the door is opened. The shop lights are controlled with a Lutron Caseta switch. These two are used for the workshop alarm in it’s current state. I am using a Shelly One Plus for the door sensor. I have additional plans for this device as well.

When the door is opened, the status of the light switch is checked - if the lights are on, the shop is assumed to be ‘open’ and a doorbell chime sounds. If the lights are off, multiple things happen.

  • The lights are turned on
  • A message is sent to my phone
  • An alert tone plays
  • An announcement that the door has been opened plays
  • An entry timer starts
    When the timer expires, the alert plays again - and repeats on a loop until reset. Another message is sent to my phone that the alarm is triggered. When the reset is triggered, another message is sent to my phone. If the reset is tripped before the timer expires, the reset message is sent to my phone, but the alert does not replay and loop.

The other thing I wanted was to have an alert if the door is left open. When the door is opened, a timer is started. When it expires, a door open message plays, and repeats on an interval. I have a button on the shop dashboard that triggers a reset for the door open timers - if the door is left open on purpose, I don’t want to hear about it. Closing the door also disables/stops the door open alerts.

This is all done using Node-red. In the flow below, the timers are set to 15s - so I don’t have to wait multiple minutes while testing.

What is not done - I do not have the actual alarm reset/disarm set up yet - which is temporarily represented by the Test Trigger. I am also planning an RFID card for reset/disarm/unlock for the shop - that is still under development, and is not part of this workflow/automation.

Screenshot from 2026-05-02 20-08-13
Screenshot from 2026-05-02 20-08-131447×643 103 KB

If you have any questions, let me know!

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I’m curious about the goal(s). For example what do you want to achieve with the logic you describe for the door? You mentioned security, but I’m not sure what scenarios you imagine and what the purpose of the alerts is in those situations.

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Security, in the use here, is to let me know when the workshop has been entered. I made several changes since originally posting this here. Took me a bit (and some asking on here) to get this all working the way I wanted, but here we are.

The end-goal is to have an alarm to let me know when someone has entered my workshop that isn't supposed to be there. If I am in the shop, I also want to know that someone has come in - depending on where I am I may not be able to see the door.

The final plan is to incorporate an RFID tag reader and control over the lock into the entire system. That is a separate workflow and is a work-in-progress. As it currently stands, I get a notification when someone enters the workshop - a message to my mobile or a chime played in the shop, dependent on whether the shop is 'occupied' or not.

Like I mentioned, I made some changes since my original post. The current version incorporates an armed and disarmed state. This is managed via a dashboard - there is no alarm system hardware, it is all in HA software.

If the door is opened, a message is pushed to my mobile.
If the door is opened, and the lights are off, the lights are turned on.
If the door is opened, and the alarm state is disarmed, a chime plays over the shop speakers
If the door is opened, and the alarm state is armed, a countdown is triggered after which I receive another notification.
If the alarm is disarmed (correct code entered), I get a notification.
If the door is left open for 90s, and the door alert is enabled (this is a toggle in HA), then a message that the door was left open plays, and repeats every 60s until reset or the door is closed. I have this because I have been known to push the door, but not hard enough for it to completely close. The door alert control is a button on a dashboard. It is normally enabled. If the weather is nice, I can disable it and leave the door open for fresh air. The alert reset is also a button on a dashboard.

Of course, the flow is no longer captured in a single screenshot - at least not in a scale I am able to read :slight_smile:

Screenshot from 2026-05-09 18-13-18
Screenshot from 2026-05-09 18-13-181459×541 88.4 KB

Screenshot from 2026-05-09 18-12-35
Screenshot from 2026-05-09 18-12-35818×548 29.6 KB

I plan to incorporate the aforementioned RFID into the arm/disarm, and also incorporate the electronic lock - but that will be a different work flow that will, as far as this flow is concerned, control the arm/disarm state. I can, in the future, add additional functions here - such as triggering a light or siren for an alarm state. I want to make sure there are no lurking bugs before doing something like that. An annoying beep alert every 15s I can deal with. The neighbors might not appreciate a siren sounding, though. I also need to get remote access to my HA set up before I do that - and that will involve a lot more work than just HA configuration, as it will involve a VPN to my home network, which involves my firewall, which is an entirely different kettle of fish.

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Thanks, I get it. My next task is also remote access because I don't live in the house yet. So I'll be looking into Pangolin self hosted on a cheap VPS. Expecting dragons :rofl:

Good luck.