Securifi Community Forum

Sensors and Home Automation => Home automation => Topic started by: d.kiran on February 21, 2016, 02:12:28 am

Title: Sensor Missing
Post by: d.kiran on February 21, 2016, 02:12:28 am
Is it possible to get notified if a device has left the mesh network? I had a few guests over, and they broke the water sensor in the guest bathroom and rather than tell me, decided to throw that in the dustbin. That got me thinking if an alert could be raised if a device has not communicated in a while

I know this would be a feature request, but I am curious as to whether it would be technically feasible or not.
Title: Re: Sensor Missing
Post by: SecureComp on February 21, 2016, 10:37:24 am
Yes, if a device has not reported anything within a given period and alert could be generated.
What form the alert would take would be an issue but ultimately, yes, this sort of thing can be done.

It's not easy, there's a lot that would go into knowing the device type and expected event reporting and grabbing an exception to that.

Another way is the "keep alive" method which is a much more likely implementation where you kick out a message to the device and expect a response, no response= DANGER DANGER

Down side to that is polling intervals and battery life.

But yes, there are ways to accomplish what you describe.
Title: Re: Sensor Missing
Post by: d.kiran on February 21, 2016, 11:06:28 am
Thanks for that. I see some sensors constantly reporting values when I click on Device History. With those, I think it would be easier to detect if there has been no communication.

But I have a few contact sensors that haven't communicated in months. I have a dry contact sensor wired to a smoke alarm that last reported status in Nov when I did a smoke alarm test. My question is, how do we know for sure if that sensor is still attached to the z-wave network and will respond when activated. (To be clear, I did test it and it did work :-))
Title: Re: Sensor Missing
Post by: d.kiran on February 21, 2016, 11:06:47 am
So apparently there is something that can visualize z-wave networks - http://www.ehomeupgrade.com/2006/11/10/homeseer-unveils-z-seer-z-wave-diagnostics-tool-for-installers-and-homeowners/

If that is possible, then it should not be too much of a stretch to get a list of devices on the mesh network and look at the DeviceList and identify if any of them are missing. Again, I think there are far more important things to be added, but this would be nice to have. It increases trust on device management.