Home Automation to notify when a door is unlocked

TidBITS Talk
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I thought I would document my experiment here (partly for my own record)

Task: To trigger an iPhone/Watch notification if both residents leave home and a door is not locked.

I have a smart lock on the front door. Home Automations does not currently support notifications based on logic, such as “the last person leaves home” AND “the door is not locked”.

The Pushcut app (subscription required) does support this, in a roundabout way. You can assign a shortcut to an automations and insert a URL link in that shortcut that will trigger a notification from Pushcut

1 Create a new notification in Pushcut. This generates a unique URL for use in the Home automation. Copy the URL.

pushcut_url
pushcut_url424×918 33.1 KB

2 Next create a Home Automation that monitors an accessory. In my case I am using an unused power outlet called “C5 Lock Status”.

automation_C5-status
automation_C5-status802×788 42.8 KB

The shortcut looks like this, after pasting the Pushcut URL

shortcut_trigger-url
shortcut_trigger-url682×779 27.5 KB

3 Now create another Home Automation that activates another shortcut when “the last person leaves home”

automation_trigger_url
automation_trigger_url765×665 35.3 KB

4 The shortcut tests if the door is locked. If not it turns the power outlet on for 20 seconds (Status “on”, wait 20s, *Status “off”)), which is enough to trigger the Pushcut notification

shortcut_test_if_locked
shortcut_test_if_locked752×820 37.5 KB

There might be a way to simplify these steps but at least I know this works.

Thank you to Rosemary Orchard for Take Control of Shortcuts and the Pushcut developer.

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Update…

I just created a similar notification to alert me when an Eve motion sensor detects movement outside. I had tried the notification using the Home option for this sensor but it did not work so I used Pushcut.

At first I couldn’t get it to work but eventually I opened the Eve app to check for a firmware update. None was available but then I noticed there was an option to only trigger at night. I don’t know how this was set to “on” (nothing evident in Home settings) but once I turned it off the Pushcut notification started to work. So maybe the Home notification setting will now work?