Monitoring: the often overlooked automation.

What do I mean by monitoring

Being able to control things like your lights, TV excreta with your voice is nice and seems to be enough for a lot of people. At least till they discover a few well placed sensors with turn those lights off and on automatically. That is making the jump from remote control to automation and in a way could be considered monitoring but is not what I'm referring to. Simple monitoring would be like:

• What I posted in UPS monitoring to tell me if a UPS monitor is offline.
• Having IFTTT update a Homeseer virtual timer that triggers an alert if your Fitbit has not posted sleep in over 30 hours to monitoring the system itself. 
• Having a smart plug power a cycle a camera that has dropped offline for several minutes

Stuff breaks, crashes or batteries simply die. In the case of batteries they might die while the system is still reporting them as good. Unless you are watching for missing data you might not know it is missing until you try and use the data or the control it is linked to.

My ChkSensors.vb script

Inspired by the BLRadar Plug-In for HomeSeer I wrote simple script ChkSensors.vb that is called hourly and looks at any Homeseer device object not in an ignored location and has the HomeSeerAPI.Enums.dvMISC.SET_DOES_NOT_CHANGE_LAST_CHANGE flag unset. The HomeSeerAPI.Enums.dvMISC.SET_DOES_NOT_CHANGE_LAST_CHANGE flag when set only updates the Last Change value if the value is changed from the previous update. The rub of course is that while many hardware devices update all values at the same time not all so and some plugins even set the HomeSeerAPI.Enums.dvMISC.SET_DOES_NOT_CHANGE_LAST_CHANGE flag during updates so those need to be ignored.  Currently my script is checking 449 of my 1788 "devices". Note a device in Homeseer is data stream or control so an Aeon 6in1 sensor for example is 8 Homeseer devices.

That may not seem like much but it covers all my Z-wave, Hue and Harmony devices along with several things monitored via Ethernet / WiFi. For example My alarm panel is seen by Homeseer as 19 devices. 16 zones and 3 other devices. In know "Root" and "Partition 1" change every time I open a door or change modes so that will happen at least a few times a day. Even if I was out of town someone would have to come feed the animals. Anyway that means I really only need to monitor 1 device to confirm Homeseer and the alarm are still talking to each other.

You will notice the script tags the devices (not in ignored locations) that it is not monitoring with a  which is a bit of a hack but makes it easy to know which devices have the flag set without having to open them up. Especially since, as mentioned above, some plugins force that flag unset.

There to you will notice with the Aeon 6in1 above I'm monitoring only Humidity, Luminance, UV and Temperature. Root nodes on Z-wave devices never seem to update. UV never reaches this sensor so it is never sent. Motion and tamper are not monitored because the location is were there should not be any animals and I want to alert me is any get in there. Hence the motion and Home Security devices should not update unless there is a problem.

Note too the script checks devices at 3 age levels. Anything not ignored over 48 hours old, any in the chk24 group over 24 hours old and anything in the chk1 group over 1 hours old.

Reporting

If a device is found to be last updated too long ago has its current Location2 (called Category in my system) saved to the device's UserNote field before setting its Location2 to offline. This makes listing all the devices that need looked at simple. The last thing the script does if there are any devices found offline is to give you a verbal warning. Assuming warnings are not muted. See SayIt.vb. What you get is something like this

To give some examples the Laundry door sensors tell me for some reason I have not opened that door in 24 hours which is odd but not a big deal. Same UPSBox_DC_Sensor_chan4 not getting triggered since yesterday when I went out get a package. Again normally I open the box each evening when filling the south feeder but yesterday it was raining so I skipped it. The WirelessTag ones though are an issue. And a very strange one at that. Looking on the server all the data is there and no errors are in the logs. Even stranger there appears to be no pattern to which data is getting updated and what is not. I have 8 tags linked. Each has 4 data streams (plus battery level which has never worked for some reason). This happened once before. Then tags 0 and 2 were not updating. Rebooting the WirelessTag hub did not help but repowering it did. This time 0 and 1 are the only ones updating. Worse yet only the temp of tag 1 has updated since I repowered this time.

There was an exception in the logs this time at 9/8/2018 at 5:06 PM but nothing before or since which makes me suspect the hub is going out. Though it might be a bad update from what I see here.

Want some more examples of why you might need monitoring?

Last week my Rachio got knocked offline by a storm. It shows in the list. I reboot it and all is well. Better than finding when wondering why the plants are wilting.

Today I had an alert for the north lights in the barn. A Z-wave wall switch. A quick check and I found the breaker had tripped. Better than finding by needing to see in the barn and not having lights that work.

An event example in case you need

If you have read this far you probably already know how to trigger this from an event but in case you are not that deep in the woods yet here is what the event looks like.

Helper methods

There are a couple other helpful things in that script as well to simplify life. For example

fixFlagsByType lets you set the HomeSeerAPI.Enums.dvMISC.SET_DOES_NOT_CHANGE_LAST_CHANGE flag on any device in offline by passing it part of the type name. For instance any BLOnkyo Plug-in device

fixFlagsByRoom does similar by room (dv.Location)

initFlags unsets HomeSeerAPI.Enums.dvMISC.SET_DOES_NOT_CHANGE_LAST_CHANGE flag on all devices not in the filtered locations to get you started.

Things to monitor and control

People often ask for ideas of what to do next. I say if you can count your devices, you need more.

Some of the things I'm doing:

• Smart bulbs and light switches of course mostly controlled by motion and or contact switches
• Alarm system
• TV and other AV gear mainly via Harmony hubs
• Voice assistants
• 61 security cameras (at the moment and not including the Ring doorbell as it is cloud based) linked into HA motion sensors, alarm system and AV controls to mark video and send triggered cams to main stream video dependent alert and alarm levels.
• Indoor and component temperature monitoring, smart thermostat and window AC and fan controls.
• Weather monitoring
• Watering system
• Tons of monitoring, as that is the bit that people always seem to forget, Which tells me is something is offline or a battery is low or is signalling replacement as in the case of a UPS. This ranges to things like shows being short on a TiVo which would indicate the cable company knocked the tuner offline with an update again and over loaded CPUs on PC and updates need applied. I even wrote a program to make adding things to monitor easier.

Still on the to-do list:

• Find smart door locks that can tell me the doors lock status at a reasonable price. The weather is so variable here in central Texas, heat and humidity wise that exterior doors change shape enough that doors tend to need a push or a pull for the dead bolt to align so I've given up on actually being able to lock/unlock them. Wish now I'd wired the dead bolt holes with recessed switches.
• Open garage door on command though mainly for the "Goodbye" routine that puts the site into away mode only after checking the alarm is ready to arm. Seen too many glitches to feel good about it opening automatically on return.
• Smarter motion recognition. Ultimate goal is to be able to have it tell me what is sees moving and tell me where a pet was last seen. Would prefer a Blue Iris plugin or similar but might look at a separate system like YOLO I can send triggered images to.
• Want GPS tracking of pets when practical. Which seems soon.
• Of course wild critters are getting to be big deal here which accounts for many of the cameras. For example I recently added 4 just trying to find a snake that got in the shop. Lately feral hogs are the thing.
• Well and water softener monitor so know if the well has tripped, a filter has clogged or a pipe is leaking / burst.

Other stuff some have mentioned but not on my list:

• Smart or controllable blinds.

Another example of why monitoring is a big part of home automation.

As mentioned in Monitoring: the often overlooked automation. I was alerted my Rachio was offline by Homeseer monitoring my Rachio. Today I received an email the Rachio had detected an issue with one of the solenoids it controls.

This lets me know to go check it, and this case replace it, before the plants start showing distress. 

FB October 18, 2016

just posted this response elsewhere and thought I should post it here so it is easy to find when asked again later.

A LOT of depends on what hub is right for you. So far I've BOUGHT and installed, in order, SmartThings, Vera Control, Ltd., Iris by Lowe's, Hue, 3 more Veras, Amazon Echo and HomeSeer Home Automation to replace my X10 based system first installed in the 1990s. Vera can be easier to do simple stuff like turn on a fan when it is warm cause everything is an app in SmartThings. If there is one already that does what you want, great, if not you need to write one. Vera mainly uses a wizard of if this or that happens do this. You only write code for "complex" stuff like this AND this happens do this. Both Vera and SmartThings seem to be having a lot of stability issues lately. So much so I looked into Homeseer. Homeseer can do if this and/or that happens do this which is a bit simpler than Vera but the interface is aimed at installers not end users. They assume you will create an end user interface if needed with an optional designer tool. I'm a long time developer so the basic Homeseer interface is fine for me. It is way more expensive than than SmartThings or Vera though. That said, I now have moved all my day to day stuff onto Homeseer, shutdown my all my Veras and am just using SmartThings as a backup channel to my Hue lights. Homeseer also allows you to have and control multiple z-wave networks from one hub over Ethernet. For instance I can control my house and shop from in one screen now and do things like turn off or on all the lights in both places with one command. No matter what you go with I'd suggest you try and stay with devices that work with most hubs. One of the things I really like about Hue lighting is they will connect to multiple hubs at the same time. I would avoid anything that wants a monthly fee like Lowes Iris. (Iris has a bunch of other issues too. AVOID.) Read reviews! I would try and minimize having to go to the net for stuff too. For example another selling point for Homeseer to me is local login and actions. Other than IFTTT interactions of course. (Note Vera has no IFTTT or Echo support. Homeseer and SmartThings do.) SmartThings is mostly in the cloud and even Vera wants you to log on via their web site. You also might want to think about install base. Google some of the things you want to control and see how others have done it on the hubs you are thinking about. In the end you will probably end up having to write at least some code once you get into things deep enough so you should look at those interfaces and see which make sense to you. Oh one last thing, think about how the hub / interface will handle a hundred or more devices even if you only plan to do a few things. Most of the interfaces seem to be made for a dozen or two devices at most without getting slow and/or clumsy to use beyond that. You will be amazed how many things you end up adding after you get started. My current Homeseer is monitoring and / or controlling 678 things including monitoring 17 UPSs. And I'm not close to done yet! (Note a single device like an Aeon 4in1 sensor counts as 4 to 5 things depending on the interface.)

HomeSeer Home Automation Nice write up and comparison chart! A couple comments... our systems are compatible with the Mimo product from FortrezZ and there are 2 plug-ins available for Insteon and X10 too. I would recommend replacing the "Z-Stick S2" with a SmartStick+ or Z-Wave.me UZB for performance comparable to the Z-NET. Anyway, well done! 

 Round Mountain Rescue Ranch Yeah I did hook up the FortrezZ to my Homeseer but the reaction time seems so poor no matter what hub it is on I've abandoned it for a Raspberry Pi / PiFace solution I'm trying to work the bugs out of. Fortunately that is an option with Homeseer! 

A quick note on baselines and monitoring

People in IT generally get the importance of monitoring for spotting issues. This is why surveillance systems tend toward overkill on data capture as well. Because looking for a pattern, much less a trend in limited data too often leads to the wrong conclusions.

The current CoVid-19 guidelines include taking you temperature twice a day. At first this might seem excessive but here is the deal.

• 98.6 is a generalized average for humans. But actual people vary a fair bit from that. I remember the first physical I had to have for a job the doctor tried 3 thermometers on me before finally deciding I was fine other than being on the low end of the spectrum. 
• Then you add to that people's temp varies over the day and thermometers are not near as accurate as most people assume. Take your temp 2 or 3 times in 5 minutes and see for yourself. 

So knowing YOUR normal range with YOUR thermometer is critical to knowing if you actually have a fever. Those with allergies probably already know this as often a fever it the main difference between a bad allergy day and having a cold or the flu.

Personally I use MyNetDiary to log all kinds of health data including how I feel, pills I take, food I eat and even how much water I drink cause when I feel like crap I want to know why. And hopefully how I can work out how to avoid it happening again or at least plan to deal. This can be very useful sorting allergies and controlling weight as well. Being able to see the data in charts really helps in seeing patterns and bad data too.

Note there are lots of online tracking services I like MyNetDiary because it support custom things like temperature. Note they hide these in the diabetes section for some reason I've never sorted. You will notice above I even track the room temperature at the time I take my temperature just to ensure if there is any variance discovered later that might be accounted for by the room temp. Like I said there really is no such thing as too much data. You can always filter or delete later but you can not go back and get data you did not think mattered at the time.

For easy of use it is hard to beat the Withings Thermo Sadly Withings does not show charts for temperature. But then last I checked transcribing into a service like MyNetDiary was the only way to get a chart of your temperature. Maybe after this outbreak that will change.  

Monitoring soil moisture

Someone asked on Stacy's podcast about a good way to monitor soil to know when to water.  So I was motivated to finish this and get it posted.

Real Options I've tried:

Davis Soil Moisture station
Expensive but works.
Pros:

• Prosumer grade gear. It still is working 7 years later with little maintenance. 
• You can expend to many units as the the consoles and hubs are coded to each other. 
• I've ran Davis on cables up to 100 feet with chewed wires and ants getting into the hub being the only issues and the hub upto over 50 feet from the gateway/console.
•  Leaf Wetness Sensors come with 40’ (12 m) of cable standard and can be extended up to 200’ (61m) using 6-conductor 26 AWG cable.
• Soil Moisture Sensors come with 15’ (4.6 m) of cable standard and can be extended up to 1000’ (300m) using #18 gauge UF cable.
• Temperature Sensors come with 15’ (4.6 m) of cable standard and can be extended up to 800’ (242m) using #24 AWG shielded cable or up to 1200’ (260m) using #22 AWG shielded cable.
• Sensors can be placed as deep as you want.
• Temperature reading is true at depth and unaffected by air temperature.

Cons:

• Sensors are wired to transmitter though this might be a plus too given only one solar charged battery is needed per 4 sensors.
• $466 to $600 for hub and 4 sensors pairs. Plus you need base / weather station for it to talk to plus more if you want it to upload to cloud services so another $500 - $1000 depending on models and features.

Ambient Weather WS-8482 $87
Probably best on a budget.
Pros:

• Way cheaper. Even with base plus 7 $29 soil moisture sensors still costs less than the Davis base unit with only 2 temp/moisture pairs. 
• Wireless sensors though that also means a battery for each.

Cons:

• Some of the sensors seems to not work all that well while others track closely to the Davis units. So might still be cheaper even if you have to toss some of the sensors but you might need to toss some.
• You are limited to 7 sensors total (plus station temp/humidity) or placing stations out of range of each other as only 7 radio channels. Some of my sensors are over 50 feet away so hard to say how far that separation might need to be.
• Hub needs to be indoors with AC power and WiFi so may not reach to some areas.
• Limited to reading about 8 inches down max since transmitter top needs to be above the ground.

Tried but failed:

Wireless Tags Water/Moisture Sensor and Plantlink both were completely worthless for more than telling when being watered. Neither seemed to last long either. The Wireless Tag you can not even change the batteries in.  Scotts bought Plantlink on 2016 then discontinued it. I appears they used the tech to create a new Scotts' version.  At $99 for a hub and one sensor then $40 for each add on sensor, it seems overpriced. Amazon reviews are NOT good either. Oddly those on their site generally are. That ought to give you pause right there.

Though Wireless Tags indoor sensors are great and damn cheap for what you get (temp, humidity, vibration, signal level, and battery level). Especially if you buy 5+ at a time. I even use them inside the freezer.

Also tried Wimoto SEN001 Sentry Bluetooth Smart Water Sensor, alos no longer available, a couple years back but those kept losing connection on top of the iffy data.

Compared:

Homeseer can link to Ambient and Davis via the Ambient site plugin.
Wireless Tag talks to Homeseer directly through REST api calls from the gateway.

Sample Ambient site screens of my Ambient Weather WS-8482. Note the Ambient site also works with Davis stations. Both also go to Wundergound site. When Wunderground is not having issues. Currently soil moisture is not showing there.

Monthly compares
Rain fall (not including from sprinklers)

A Davis sensor recorded (note only one seems to make it to the cloud)

Note the Davis sensor moisture data is sort of inverted as it really reports dryness.

An Ambient sensor about 6 inches away.

Just for grins here is the chart for the same period for the one Wireless Tag that is still "working".

The sun can really throw off the temp readings. The moisture setting had been adjusted to match a meter but quickly started to vary. Finally just left alone. Note this is outside in a pot and the spikes appear to be sprinkler times.

This is the matching Ambient sensor

Though if you are using Rachio to water an area (no pots) then checking the soil a few times with a cheap manual $10 meter to get it dialed end might make the soil monitoring unneeded since the Rachio takes weather and soil type into account and adjusts as needed.

Wanting to monitor your fridge / freezer?

For fridge / freezer monitoring this Wireless Tag is definitely the way to go.   They also give you motion alerts, talk to about anything, cheap compared to most and will even give you verbal alerts in a browser.

There is both a simple interface for things like basic notifications

And a scripting interface called Kumo Apps that lets you do even more and call local URLs making it easy to interface with home automation like Homeseer. There are lots of templates to get you started.

Here is an example of how to send the data to Homeseer
var tags = <#tags_[12|13|26|32|52|62|72|21]_N#>;
tags.forEach(
function (tag) {
tag.updated = function () {

//KumoApp.Log("Updating:"+tag.name);
if(tag.name === "Comp Rack 0"){
 KumoApp.httpCall("http://10.10.1.45/JSON?user=USERNAME&pass=PASSWORD&request=controldevicebyvalue&ref=3121&value="+((tag.batteryVolt - 2.75) / 0.45 * 100),"GET");
 KumoApp.httpCall("http://10.10.1.45/JSON?user=USERNAME&pass=PASSWORD&request=controldevicebyvalue&ref=3122&value="+(tag.moisture),"GET");
 KumoApp.httpCall("http://10.10.1.45/JSON?user=USERNAME&pass=PASSWORD&request=controldevicebyvalue&ref=3123&value="+(tag.eventState),"GET");
 KumoApp.httpCall("http://10.10.1.45/JSON?user=USERNAME&pass=PASSWORD&request=controldevicebyvalue&ref=3126&value="+(tag.rssi),"GET");
 KumoApp.httpCall("http://10.10.1.45/JSON?user=USERNAME&pass=PASSWORD&request=controldevicebyvalue&ref=3124&value="+(tag.temperature * 9 / 5 + 32),"GET");
}

Change the bits in orange of course to match your set up.

That gets you:

• Battery as percentage (note battery voltage reading is affected temperature. From my experience with my tags, at room temp 3.2 volts is what you will see for fully changed and is about to die around 2.75.  But in the freezer it will bounce between ~2.6 @ 10F and ~2.5 @ 0F. When it drops below 2.5 it is near the end. A little experimenting might be needed to dial yours in. UPDATE: After starting to phase in rechargeables I'm thinking just sending the voltage might be better and adjusting status on the HS side based on historical data. See UPDATE 5/24/2019 below.)
• Humidity (moisture)
• Armed Status (eventState)
• Signal strength (RSSI) in -db
• Temperature converted to Fahrenheit

See end for sample status setting for virtuals.

How well do they work?

I've been using them for years and on a whim stuck one in the fridge and another in freezer last February along with a AcuRite 00782A2 Wireless Indoor/Outdoor Thermometer (outdoor module in freezer). They stayed close to each other in readings. Note battery life is reduced by the cold. Freezer one lasts only about 3-4 months. Generally they last closer to a year.

You will need a hub "Ethernet Tag Manager" for them to talk to but it is low cost too.

Note though I have had no luck with the Wireless Water/Moisture Sensors The soil moisture never worked and even the temp sensors seem erratic in the new ones. Plus the batteries are not replaceable like the indoor models.

Also if you start seeing random false motion alerts it probably means the battery is about ready to be changed.

Sample Status Graphic setting for the virtuals for above.

Nothing fancy, just using standard icons though I should probably go through and make a full set of 32 by 32 icons given I'm almost to 2000 devices. An 8 kb is does not take long to send and render but 2000 of them plus all associated data can slow your browser down more than you would like.

Note on battery sometimes the batteries read as high as 3.3 volts even in the freezer fresh from the pack. Homeseer will just ignore and value sent that is out of range.

To avoid this set the high end on battery at 120 to 200 so even if you set the freezer formula to a more accurate ((tag.batteryVolt - 2.5) / 0.45 * 100) it will just should overcharged till it settles down. That way a checker like ChkSensors.vb will not mark it as offline. Again, tweak as needed for your setup.

Note the mismatched default sized icons in the following examples that should be made all to be 32 by 32.

UPDATE 5/24/2019:
Note you should probably adjust the battery notification levels.

The default is 2.5. For a tag in the freezer that is a bit high or low depending on battery type. Below shows a tag's voltage report over 3 standard CR2032s followed by 2 rechargeable LIR2032s. Note the "dead voltage" (just before it spikes up from the battery change) for the rechargeables seems lower despite the much shorter run time.

For tags in warmer areas though it looks like more the reverse is true. 2.85 to 2.75 seems a better setting for these with CR2032s but the rechargeable have held a steady 2.84 since install 15 days ago.

In the fridge the batteries seem to almost match. Here is the chart for the tag in there. The first 2 are CR2032s and the third a LIR2032.

I should note the gaps in the above charts point to how important monitoring the battery level and or a heartbeat of a sensor is. With your notification level too low you might not know for days that the sensor if offline.

Alexa still not an entry level hub replacement

I was writing up a response to someone about IFTTT and Alexa / Wireless Tag integration which will probably but useful later so I'm saving it here as it reflects on Alexa's poor support for sensors. Note Alexa's home automation interface is still better than Google's almost non existent one. (See compare below.)

Why go through IFTTT when you can integrate Wireless Tags direct with Kumo? As in as in my fridge / freezer monitoring setup which updates values as they change in my Homeseer instance which then can trigger any action Homeseer can perform. Which is just about anything. Plus IFTTT was become very unreliable this year.

Alexa Wireless Tag integration sort of works. I can ask the temperature of a sensor for example, "Alexa, what is the temperature of the freezer" and it tells me the reading from my regular sensor in the freezer. Though oddly in the device list I only see motion values for the regular tags and what appears to be temperature for the soil moisture tags. (Not all my soil moisture tags are dead.) Again oddly you can't use the sensor values in routines. Though finding anything in the Alexa device list is almost impossible since it is designed for people the just have a few things. Even stranger:

• You can sort the device list in the web interface but not the android one. 
• The web interface does not let you do anything with the devices on the list other than forget the device.
• Routine management is missing from the web interface.
• The android list interface does have some groups to narrow down the list but way to few. For example, the only way to see a list of the 12 of my 348 devices Alexa sees as "sensors" is to try to create a routine with one. 
• My Homeseer sees 3137 "devices" as I write this. (Note a "device" is data stream or parent. As in a Hue Sensor would be seen as 5 "devices". A parent and 4 sensors, light level, temperature, motion and battery level.) Alexa only sees 348 of those (note some of the 348 are Alexa devices not in the Homeseer count) and only 12 of those as sensors from SmartThings, Wyze, Ring and Hue so far. Even then for example the Hue sensors report motion, temp and light gut Alexa only sees motion info.
• Lack of complex triggers. For example: if no motion has been detected and door opens, turn on light. If motion has been detected and door opens turn off light. Or if any of room motion sensors are tripped reset occupancy timer. When occupancy timer hits X minutes turn off everything in room.

When you have 348 devices (that Alexa sees) like I do, it is almost useless. Amazon REALLY needs to improve their interface so it can scale if they want people to use their routine framework for any logic. So while it would be nice to have Wireless Tags usable as sensors in Alexa to, for instance, announce the fridge is too warm, I do not really see it as big deal till Amazon makes their configuration interface more usable.

To be fair when Alexa is compared to Google's Home:

Cons:

• Google does not even have a web interface so everything must be done via phone or tablet.
• Often skills like Harmony where with Alexa you would say "Alexa, turn on Netflix". With Google that worked then it went to you had to say "Hey Google, Ask Harmony to turn on Netflix." and then often tells me it did not recognize me and would not do it. Now it seems to be back to just "turn on" BUT for instance when I say "turn on Hero" (my PC's name) to Alexa is just works. I say "turn on Hero" to Google it starts playing something from Pandora.
• It appears too that at some point Google Home lost some of the account links I had setup.

• Lately the Googles (I have a Home and 3 minis) seem to say try again in a few seconds a lot.
• To discover new devices you say "Alexa, discover devices." You say this to Google and it finds phones and asks if you want to ring them. Ask "how do I get you to discover devices", you get "I don't understand" and "I found a related how to get Alexa to discover devices"! It is also easy to do from the Alexa app with a swipe down. Instructions I found online say Google's Home should do that too but it appears to do nothing for me.
• Google appears to allow one Harmony hub to be connected while Alexa allows many. (I have 5 currently)
• Adding skills to Home is an egg hunt compared to Alexa. I just tried to add the Wyze skill for example and I had to search on line to even figure it out. Then while trying to link the account it just exited half way through me entering my login info.
• Wyze, Alexa sees all the cams, motion and contact sensors I have. Google sees on the cameras and contact sensors.
• Google routines still appear to be voice command triggered only while Alexa's allow triggering using voice, time, some sensors (see above), location, alarms, echo button presses and "Guard state".

Pros:

• The devices list in Google does seem to use the room from Homeseer. However I had to add each Wyze and Wireless Tag device to a room during the setup process manually. 

Dakota mailbox and driveway alert system

I started this awhile back. Then the Dakota receivers became unavailable so I thought I'd wait till the new model came out. Unfortunately after talking to Guardline it appears that will not be happening. It sounds like there will be no compatible receiver coming. Probably no new model with multiple relay outs either though they hinted a model that talks to home automation might be in the works. So I figured I should go ahead and post this for those that want to snap 2500 up before they are gone. Guardline does make a model with 1/4 mile range and talks to 16 sensors but only 1 relay out. You are expected to memorize which tone means what of  those 16 areas was triggered.

Most Dakota 2500 receiver bundles are now going for several times the MSRP.  For example the receiver / contact sensor I used in my mailbox was just $75 a little while back. At the time I'm writing this the cheapest option is to get the underground bundle from Guardline directly for $240 and toss the sensor unless you need it and add contact sensor for $35. (While you can. Some are already trying to get over $80 per sensor.)  After a fair bit of research I'm not finding any decent replacement options as Dakota seems to have been to only one with multiple relay outs much less also supports contact sensors or talks directly to home automation. So you best option now for a mailbox sensor is to buy a 4000 bundle for each sensor you wish to install at like $90 a piece though those have no relay out. After distributors clear the last of the Dakota 2500 stock there might not be an option for awhile so I broke down and bought a "backup receiver" and several sensors. I wanted to add more sensors to the south field anyway with all the "interesting creatures" (deer, cows, wild? pigs, coyotes....) passing through there lately so finding them on video is easier. PIR motion sensors can be way more sensitive without the false alarms most video systems can give you since they see heat diffs. Of course you want both for best results.(See Paranoia definitely pays when it comes to recording.) Hopefully by the time one goes there will be better options. Or at least by the time both go. Kind of amazed there isn't one already.

Update: after ordering the above mentioned receiver / probe bundle I found the receivers on their own for just $70. The site is damn slow. I ordered yet another one at that price so I should be good and well covered. But they just cancelled the order.

Update: Dakota has release a 4000 series receiver (RE-4000 Plus) which has 2 relay outputs. It support 16 sensors each with its own chime type. It still not the one relay per sensor of the 2500 but better than 1 for all of them. And it still will not use 2500 series sensors of course.

Update: 10/17/2019 Google Buy had a receiver for sale for under $70 but that order too was cancelled after a week. I did find a 2 pack of motion detector on Amazon for $105 for spares. I setup the spare receiver I bought with 4 of the motion sensors I had bought previously and caught this guy on video trying to steal one. Makes me think I need some more monitoring the north property line as this is second time someone has come in that was and I did not get and alert quick enough to get down there before they were gone. How good are the motion sensors?

Motion sensor on large tree center caught this squirrel running across the clearing before jumping on the table. Though they are generally not tripped by wind or shadow since they watch IR light.

Here are the parts I used:
Dakota Alert UTDCR-2500 Duty Cycle Universal Kit, One UT-2500 & One DCR-2500 (see update above)
Dakota Alert DCMT-2500 Transmitter 2500' (Green)
Dakota Alert 2500 Wireless Motion Detector, Black (PR-2500)
Dakota Alert UT-2500 2500 Wireless Universal Transmitter
Dakota Alert DCPT-2500 Duty Cycle Probe Transmitter 2500'
Dakota Alert BBA-2500 Break Beam Alert Kit, One BBT-2500 & One DCR-2500 (Note was same price as beam sensor alone)

Step2 531700 MailMaster StoreMore Mailbox
Ecolink Z-wave Plus Rare Earth Magnets Door & Window Sensor, White & Brown (DWZWAVE2.5-ECO)
ALEKO 5BS-MC13S-M 5 Sets of Magnetic Contact Reed Switches Security Alarm Contacts For Doors Windows and Other Applications
I would suggest upgrading the door switches to
SM-226L-3Q Seco-Larm Overhead Door Mount N.C. Magnetic Contact w/ 3 Wires for N.O./N.C. Applications
And adding a deck box for parcels with signage.

Battery life

In the just weird department, the battery ran out in my first Dakota Alert DCMT-2500 Transmitter after almost a year. I stuck in a new battery and it kept tripping constantly. Even though the battery tested OK I put a newer one in and it worked fine. I'm guessing I just got a bad battery. Almost two years on now I've only needed to replace a battery in one of the motion sensors since.

Setup

Should be pretty straight forward. Just follow the instructions for setting channels on the sensors to pair the with the receiver. Wire the Ecolink sensors to the relay outs on the receiver and pair the Ecolinks with your home automation. Here is an example of how trigger Blue Iris cams when a Dakota sensor is tripped.

Pic of Ecolink insides with terminals showing.

Sensor mounted inside. Running the wire inside the shell would look better and probably hold up better but there is not easy way to do it without making some good sized holes in the shell. Note a switch on each door wired in series to sensor.

After being swiped by semi truck pulling out.

Snapped back together almost cannot tell it was hit.

I turned it around after this (effectively moving it back close to a foot) and added a more signage for all the delivery drivers that could not figure out all mailboxes in rural areas are on one side of the street.

I also have a similar set up in the parcel box just inside the gate along with motion sensors to tell me if some one / thing comes through the gate and if they decide to go up the driveway to the house.

Why 2 signs? Because with just one things like this happen.

I suggest you seal the holes in the parcel box as things may nest in there. I almost grabbed the snake that left this skin behind when I reached in for a package the day before. Note the sand looking stuff is Snake-B-Gon.

Updated version / info:

Got tired of the switches sticking so I upgraded them. I used these which had worked so well on the garage door.
Alarm Center Seco-Larm SM-226L-Q Mount Magnetic Contact, NC

I also did a cleaner job this time running the lines inside the walls instead of taping to the sides.
I removed the magnets from their mounts and glued to the doors. I added a bolt just to be safe. Note I had to  cut the door a bit to make them fit.

Note this is the door that got hit by the truck which is why the cross support is twisted.

 See how much cleaner this looks plus there is less to snag on when they deliver the mail. And screws hold it much more firmly in place that the stuck on ones I used before.

The fit does not even need to be that tight since it is made for garage doors which tend to vary over the seasons.

I decided to go horizontal with the transmitter this time. I would have liked to stick it the side channel but it was slightly too thick. I used mounting tape and single screw to let it have some give if hit hard by something.

Here is what it looks like in place. Note these pics are pre mounting on the post but to mount on the post I need to remove the screw.

Lastly here is what the wiring looks like inside viewed from the post hole. You can see the transmitter mounting screw which will go into the post once the mailbox is on the post.

Now for the bad news. I thought I'd double check the 2 spare transmitters that did not seem to work when I tried them. Since I had the mailbox in I checked the switches matched, they did. Then tried flipping them back and forth to make sure they were in place, still nothing on either transmitter. Lastly I tried multiple batteries including the one working in the mailbox still no go. I sent off and email to support to see if they have any ideas.

I must be missing something

Seems like the world is following in the footsteps of a Rube Goldberg comic.
For instance I've seen posted, multiple times now, people putting Echo Dots in their cars to stream music despite the fact it need to use their phone's data to stream. Why not just use the phone?
Another example is one going around of people BUYING the OLD (no longer made) IR to X10 interfaces and a Harmony hub to control X10 devices from their Alexa! I mean you can get a version 2 SmartThings hub for $50 and Z-wave switches as cheap as $25 for a single or $37 for a double outlet so why buy a Harmony hub for $75+ (more if you want it with the remote) PLUS for another $30-$50 to control up to 16 devices max? Not only more cost, unless you have many devices to control, the extra hops make it more error prone, X10 itself has serious issues with many modern things interfering with it's power line signals and if anything breaks you are probably going to have to dig up a used replacement on Ebay and hope it works.
Let me be clear, I used X10 for decades generally working fine till around 2010 when it started driving me nuts being generally being flaky. And automation is my thing so I have all the test equipment and such. I'd often spend a day back then running around with test equipment, plugging and unplugging stuff while monitoring signal levels, tracking down what device was messing my signal that day. In the end I had noise filters on almost as many devices as I controlled. Insteon tried to keep things going by adding RF connections into the X10 mix but it did not help my set up stability at all. Either because of legacy X10 stuff in the mix or something else I could not see. In 2014 I finally decided to try one of the new hubs and never looked back. So it boggles my mind people are still trying to work with X10. It is like someone trying to explain how a PDA and a flip phone are better than a cheap smart phone. BTW a nice write up on the diffs between Insteon, Z-Wave and ZigBee can be found here. Note the chart at the bottom showing what the top 10 security company support. You really want to keep what devices are going to work with your next hub since odds are you will be upgrading at some point.

I can even see stuff like this Google Home built from a Raspberry Pi as a learning project but don't tell me it is a cheap Google Home. $54 for the kit is cheaper than a Google Home but assumes you have a Pi 3 you do not need for anything else or you need to add another $50 to that and what you end up with is not near as easy to use as the $100 - $129 Google Home. Rumor is there a Dot like Home in the works that will be as cheap as the $35-$50 Dot. So if you want a Home instead of an Echo but have an issue with the cost, you might want to just wait for that.