Hello,
I would like to set up the manual alarm for my house, but it does not seem to fit my needs.
Right now I have my own workaround in place which uses an input_select holding the alarm states, and a ton of automations for the behaviour.
I would like to clean it up to a more integrated/durable solution (preferably the manual alarm), but I’m blocked by some limitations: see text below.
If anyone has a suggestion to help me out it would be greatly appreciated.
Triggering instantly
When the alarm is in armed_away, some events (e.g. window sensors, motion upstairs) should trigger the alarm instantaneously, others (e.g. front door, motion downstairs) should trigger the alarm with a delay allowing me to enter the house and disarming the alarm.
If I understand correctly, the transition armed_away->triggered always goes via pending, which waits for delay_time+pending_time.
–> Question 1: is it possible to set different delays per sensor group, or do a forced transition armed_away->triggered skipping the pending state?
Arming away semi-instantly
Upon leaving the house I call the service alarm_control_panel.arm_away.
The transition disarmed->armed_away goes via state pending, which counts for pending_time seconds.
Some state changes (e.g. ‘front door is closed’) mark that I left the house, in this case the pending counter should be aborted and the alarm state should become armed_away.
–> Question 2: is it possible to skip the pending state, i.e. force the transition to armed_away?
Switching arm modes
I have a vacuum robot that is linked to HA which is scheduled to vacuum the downstairs areas every weekday.
Usually we are not at home at this time, hence the alarm is in armed_away.
The problem is that the vacuum is sometimes mistaken for a burglar by the motion sensors.
–> Question 3: is it possible to do a armed_away to armed_home transition (or vice versa), to temporarily ignore motion detection so the vacuum can do its job in peace?
I use envisalink with a dsc panel so I don’t use the manual alarm but looking at the docs here’s what I’ve concluded.
The pending delay is only during exit. The manual alarm won’t report a different state until after the pending time. Once armed however all sensors would be able to trigger instantly. You can adjust the pending state time but I’m not sure this is really an issue since once again it’s only for exit for you from the house not triggering.
The sensors are handled via automations. You should be able to create automations for different sets of sensors with different delays in the actions before reporting a trigger to the manual alarm. If in the meantime the manual alarm is deactivated then it won’t report.
You can arm and disarm the alarm either remotely or automatically. I’ve armed and disarmed mine remotely but never tried going from armed-away to armed-home. You might have to go through the disarm state first.
Just to add on. Since sensors go through automations you could probably adjust the conditions to make things work for your vacuum without turning the alarm off at all.
The pending delay is only during exit. The manual alarm won’t report a different state until after the pending time. Once armed however all sensors would be able to trigger instantly.
The thing is that I use the HA GUI combined with push notifications when the alarm state changes.
I would like to get feedback (from both channels) that the alarm is armed as soon as I leave the house.
In my opinion it is very user-unfriendly if I get a confirmation (or worse: an error) by the time I’m already driving the car.
The sensors are handled via automations. You should be able to create automations for different sets of sensors with different delays in the actions before reporting a trigger to the manual alarm. If in the meantime the manual alarm is deactivated then it won’t report.
Do you mean defining delays in automations, instead of using the control alarm panel component to handle delays in transitions?
If so, it probably would work but again, from the user side you don’t see that a countdown timer is running.
The ‘pending’ state in the alarm panel provides a clear visualisation that the alarm is about to be fired.
You can arm and disarm the alarm either remotely or automatically. I’ve armed and disarmed mine remotely but never tried going from armed-away to armed-home. You might have to go through the disarm state first.
I’m afraid this is the case too. It would be fine for me, but I was hoping to avoid receiving daily push messages ‘Alarm is now: Off’, ‘Alarm is now: Armed Home’. If the transition from armed_away->armed_home would be possible, I could prevent the sending myself the unnecessary notifications. Thats all…
I have read the manual but I’m not really understanding how to put it to good use.
I was thinking to make 2 control panels:
Alarm_control_panel with exit + entry delays
Alarm_control_panel with no delays
Next step would be that the delayed version is linked to the immediate version.
And then in the sensor automations I could define which sensor triggers which panel.
The issue that remains which how to combine these entities in the alarm panel card. I would like to have a single alarm instance in the GUI which shows the realtime status (including exit delays / entry delays).
I’m not sure how to do achieve this when using the template panel.
Any thoughts on this?
I think you could in theory use the template alarm control panel, but you’d have to keep nearly all of your current logic. Sounds like you need to write a custom component to do this.
Sensors always report immediately. I use my sensors for triggering the alarm as well as turning lights on when I enter the room. The manual alarm delay is only for determining when the manual alarm state changes from unarmed to armed. All alarms provide this to allow you to exit the house. You would then use the manual alarm state as a condition in your sensor automations to determine whether to trigger an alarm. Manual alarm does nothing to the sensor report timing. The sensor automations would do this.
Given all that, you could write an automation that would notify you when the alarm system is in pending state (immediate notification) and then in armed state. Also you could add another condition in your sensor automations to not trigger during vaccuum activity without changing the alarm state at all. Finally the sensor automations would be where you add any sensor reporting delay since the automation is where the service call to trigger the alarm system is located as per the documentation https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/manual/#sensors (see the last two lines of the sensor automation example).
Take a look at this integration.
I think it does what you want (you can configure immediate and delayed groups of sensors for each mode, there is an options to set the alarm immediately and a lot more - it’s actually built on manual alarm) and I believe I saw a guy who has a similar request regarding his vacuum cleaner and we came to a conclusion it’s possible to overcome the issue somehow (I don’t remember how exactly but it’s all in the topic or in Github issues).