Questions from the recent podcast

[Greg1489090435]

I just watched the podcast on smart things and it led me here.

 

I had a few questions on some of the things mentioned.

 

1.  It was stated that you could do geofencing outside the home to make changes in temperature, lighting etc.  I can't seem to find that in ST unless perhaps you are doing it through IFTTT?

 

2.  I saw on Schoondog's shared screen that he has custom icons for some of his "things".  I see the option to do that for my cell phones.  It looked like perhaps he had one that wasn't a phone that had a custom icon.  If so, can you share how to do that?

 

3.  I can't find the settings that were mentioned for making the multi more sensitive.  I put a multi on my sump pump ejector pipe and the vibration is sufficient for my main pump to notify me that it was active.  However my back up pump seems to be "quieter" and doesn't trigger the multi.  Where can I make that adjustment you mentioned?

 

4.  The first alert smoke detector that was mentioned.  I see that it says compatible with Iris?   I'm not familiar with Iris and I don't see any mention of zwave or zigbee.  How are you connecting it with ST?

 

Thanks.

 

[schoondoggy]

I just watched the podcast on smart things and it led me here.

 

I had a few questions on some of the things mentioned.

 

1.  It was stated that you could do geofencing outside the home to make changes in temperature, lighting etc.  I can't seem to find that in ST unless perhaps you are doing it through IFTTT?

 

2.  I saw on Schoondog's shared screen that he has custom icons for some of his "things".  I see the option to do that for my cell phones.  It looked like perhaps he had one that wasn't a phone that had a custom icon.  If so, can you share how to do that?

 

3.  I can't find the settings that were mentioned for making the multi more sensitive.  I put a multi on my sump pump ejector pipe and the vibration is sufficient for my main pump to notify me that it was active.  However my back up pump seems to be "quieter" and doesn't trigger the multi.  Where can I make that adjustment you mentioned?

 

4.  The first alert smoke detector that was mentioned.  I see that it says compatible with Iris?   I'm not familiar with Iris and I don't see any mention of zwave or zigbee.  How are you connecting it with ST?

 

Thanks.

Hello! Thanks for watching the Podcast. Sorry about my audio and Dave's camera.

1. I have not expiremented with it yet, I am just researching. Here are some links from my research:

http://build.smartthings.com/forums/topic/how-does-the-geofence-work/

http://blog.smartthings.com/how-to/use-your-smartphone-as-a-presence-sensor/

2. The Presence sensors and tablet/phone icon lets you use a picture for your icon. Tap the gear in the corner of the icon you want to change, then click appearance. It will ask you if you want to take a photo or use the gallery.

3. Well,,, it appears I was wrong. I am very sorry about that. While I was in the IDE I thought I saw a place to adjust parameters, but it actually is just displaying the current state. That said I have been experimenting with multi's at work to determine if a fan is running or not. Similar to your situation the fan does not vibrate enough to set off the Multi. We tried putting the Multi on a small stick, tongue depressor, hoping the length would add to the vibration, it did, but not enough. Next we put the Multi on the end of a firm 2" spring and mounted it to the side of the fan. This seems to be working well. I will take a picture of it and post here.

4. Iris is a hub that Lowes sells. The model of the detector I use is ZCOMBO. It shows up as a Z-wave device. This is where I found out about it:

http://blog.smartthings.com/news/smartthings-updates/smoke-carbon-monoxide-alerts/

I have one more of these to set up, I will try to shoot a video.

[Greg1489090435]

Thanks for the reply. 

1.  Yeah it looks like you can only use geofencing for one instance with your phone unless you go through IFTTT - but still that's awesome

2.  I wish I could make custom icons for all devices  -

3.  That's a great idea with the tongue depressor or spring - might try that

4.  I'll be picking one of these up ASAP

 

FYI my current set up is ST hub, 3 multi's, garage door relay, 1 aeon micro dimmer, 1 ge light switch, 3 sonos, 2 phones as presence, 1 drop cam and a presence sensor I don't know what to do with.  I know the sonos and dropcam are in beta but I have found them pretty reliable other than general ST outages.  I'm new to home automation and dove right in. 

[cskenney]

I have implemented the washer app in my house on both my washer and dryer.  The appliances are brand new Samsung front load machines and the washer has some type of dynamic balancer built into it to limit vibrations.  The washer and dryer are on the 2nd floor of my house and I still can't get consistent enough vibrations to make this work consistently.  I contacted ST and they also told me there is no adjustment for the vibration sensitivity.

 

I moved the sensors around (originally had them along an edge) and found the best place to mount them was in the center of one of the sides.  The sides act a large diaphragms and have much less rigidity then the edges.  This seems to have helped and the apps work correctly now 100% of the time for the washer and about 75% of the time for the dryer.  I am going to take a look at the Apps in the IDE and see if there are any improvements I can make to make them more reliable.

[chachu]

Thanks for the reply.

1. Yeah it looks like you can only use geofencing for one instance with your phone unless you go through IFTTT - but still that's awesome

2. I wish I could make custom icons for all devices -

3. That's a great idea with the tongue depressor or spring - might try that

4. I'll be picking one of these up ASAP

 

FYI my current set up is ST hub, 3 multi's, garage door relay, 1 aeon micro dimmer, 1 ge light switch, 3 sonos, 2 phones as presence, 1 drop cam and a presence sensor I don't know what to do with. I know the sonos and dropcam are in beta but I have found them pretty reliable other than general ST outages. I'm new to home automation and dove right in.

Hi, for geofencing one could use cell tower and then have apps like tasker run an action once within that a cell tower..

 

I find using cell towers for location the best coz it doesn't take any extra battery..