Consider adding Repeat with Wildcards

[andjones132]

I know this request has been requested previously, but would like to explain why I think it is still important. Your suggestion to someone who asked for this previously was to use a standard HA automation script. This works ok if I just want to send a generic message, but it gets more complicated if I also want to include the wildcard of the friendly name of the sensor that triggered the Alarm. I am sure there is probably some template function that I could use to pull the name of the sensor from the Attribute of the Alarm when in Triggered State. However, this adds additional breakpoints when Alarmo already has almost 98% of what I need. Alarmo can through Actions to send messages via notify to mobile app or text-to-speech with the wildcard name of the sensor. However, to the best of my knowledge, it currently cannot repeat the message x number of times with an x number of seconds delay between each message. If it is 2 am and the Alarm goes off, and Alarmo sends a TTS announcement to all the media players in the house, I doubt I will hear the whole message the first time. It would be nice if there were two more options:

1. Number of times to repeat the message: e.g. 3
2. Delay in seconds between messages: e.g. 15

My current workaround is to turn on the MQTT option in Alarmo and have Node-RED listen for a Triggered event. I use information in the MQTT event to pull out the friendly name of the sensor that triggered the alarm and use the Loop function to repeat the message x number of times before triggering the siren. The workaround works but with risks that it could break at any time by some “breaking change.” One of the reasons I switched to Alarmo is that I must have missed some breaking change from several months ago that broke my homemade NR notifications. I only discovered it when I finally got around to doing a full systems test and then figuring out how far back I needed to go to find a version of HA before the breaking change. It would be nice if this were built-in to help reduce the number of breakpoints that any Node-RED or HA automation would add. Thank you for your reconsideration.

On a personal note, I wanted to Thank You for the tremendous amount of time and effort you have put into Alarmo. It must be at the top of the list for the most helpful and potentially lifesaving integrations available for Home Assistant. With my old Node-RED alarm automation, I had to worry every time I hit the upgrade button in HA if a known or unknown “breaking change” would break a system I rely on for the health and well-being of my family. I understand the "Use at your own risk" clause, but I am not sure why anyone would spend the time, energy, and money to set up HA and create a custom home security solution if they didn’t intend to rely on it. It would be fantastic if the HA Dev team would recognize your contribution and make Alarmo a fully supported HA addon. Then, we could have some confidence that it would be a part of the test package run before each release to ensure it s working as intended. I will happily be contributing to your Patron/Paypal account regularly if for no other reason than the time Alarmo saves me from needing to maintain my DIY solution. It still needs to be tested regularly, but having fewer breakpoints makes this process much easier. Thanks again, and keep up the great work.

[github-actions]

This issue is stale because it has been open 30 days with no activity. Remove stale label or comment or this will be closed in 7 days

[nielsfaber]

I'm sorry, I did not have any time to work on this project recently. I will see if this can be added.

[github-actions]

This issue is stale because it has been open 30 days with no activity. Remove stale label or comment or this will be closed in 7 days

[taucher4000]

Is there any change to get this feature implemented? I'm currently in the process of migrating my Alarm panel over to Alarmo. However, the missing feature of repetitive notifications currently preventing me from migrating completely to Alarmo. I would really appreciate if you could focus on this request.

[ckcollab]

@taucher4000 this may not apply to your situation, but I just did this simple dumb solution to repeat the TTS warning:

service: notify.family
data:
  message: TTS
  title: "{{open_sensors}}"
  data:
    tts_text: |
      {{open_sensors}}
      {{open_sensors}}
      I repeat, {{open_sensors}}

..it works, heh :)