Hello, I was wondering if there’s a way to push notifications to the Alarm.com app for sensors that I do not want an alarm triggered. More like what the chime does.
Example scenario involves outdoor sensors on a gate or PIR motion outside of home. I never want an alarm trigger but a push notification regardless and independent of state of alarm. I’m using a GC3.
Happy to help! Yes, you can do this using a non-reporting zone type.
For the GC3, the important programming steps for the wireless zone are:
Sensor Type: 23 - No Response Type
Sensor Equipment Type: Contact, (for DW sensors) or Motion (for motion detectors)
Selecting No Response Type will never result in an alarm, but as long as reports are enabled for that zone you can use it for sensor activity monitoring notifications in Alarm.com, setting up a notification which will result in a push notification whenever it is opened (at all times or during certain times/days)
Perfect, this seems to accomplish exactly what I was looking for. Thank You.
I do have a couple of related questions after doing this:
What is really the difference on selecting “Sensor Equipment Type: Contact, (for DW sensors) or Motion (for motion detectors)”? Operations with a Honeywell 5800pir-res seems to operate equally on either setting.
About the Honeywell 5800pir-res, I did not have that consistent of Push Notifications despite the chime function working every time on GC3. In it’s operation is there some sort of timeout that pauses notifications? I did notice after leaving it alone for about an hour it did perform better.
What is really the difference on selecting “Sensor Equipment Type: Contact, (for DW sensors) or Motion (for motion detectors)”? Operations with a Honeywell 5800pir-res seems to operate equally on either setting.
This changes how it is treated by Alarm.com for activity monitoring purposes. DW sensors should always be contact. Motion Detectors should, for the most part, always be motion.
About the Honeywell 5800pir-res, I did not have that consistent of Push Notifications despite the chime function working every time on GC3. In it’s operation is there some sort of timeout that pauses notifications? I did notice after leaving it alone for about an hour it did perform better.
This is due to how Alarm.com activity monitoring is handled. Motion Detector activity monitoring is tricky, because on its face it is pointless to check the true current status of a motion detector. If someone didn’t trip the detector the exact moment the app/website refreshes it would show as closed.
Doors on the other hand open and remain open until physically closed.
Thus to offer any meaningful insight from motion detector status, the Activated status is delayed 30-45 minutes, showing that activity has happened in that recent time-span. If you program the Equipment Type as contact, it will be treated like a door instead, and report open/closed instead of activated/idle, and won’t be subject to the longer delay.
This doesn’t affect local function. Locally battery operated motion detectors typically have about a 3 minute reset delay between being able to activate under normal operation.