Voice Prompt of door opening or motion detected in 'Home' setting

@Sriram​ Home Mode is intended for when you're home, but want your system to be armed and ready to trigger a full alarm. The main difference is that by default, the Motion Sensors are disabled, so you're able to walk around inside. But your doors and windows are still protected, and you can even choose which Motion Sensors will stay active.

We would recommend setting Home Mode for times when nobody in your household will be going in and out multiple times, like when you're going to sleep. Otherwise you'd have to disarm and re-arm the system every time you open the door.

If you're home, and don't need the alarm to be set, that's what the Off Mode is for.

@Sriram​ I enable home mode when we are in for the night and not planning on opening doors again and disable it when we get up. The doors chime when the system is off so that would alert you to someone entering but, although pretty smart, it can't differentiate between "friend or foe."

If you are at Home, how do you differentiate between home members and intruders 

The person who turns off the alarm first before open the door is a home member. The person who doesn't turn off the alarm first before opening the door is an intruder or a home member who forget to turn off the alarm first. :)

That sounds snarky but that's literally how you would tell and as you can see it's incumbent on the home member coming through the door when the alarm is on to disable it first. There's no foolproof way to make sure this happens properly every time - it's susceptible to human error.

shouldn't there be a way to get a chime or notification alert, without an alarm ?

There is - you get this behavior when you turn off the alarm. 

@cflls1 , @worthing ,
Thank you very much for the inputs. Few follow-up questions :

1. I understand the chime is available when the alarm is off, but for the reasons mentioned above, I would like to get the chime available when Alarm is set in 'Home' mode too. Is this something that can be added in to the product ?

2. Other home systems have option of mentioning which door was opened (based on the description of the sensors in the setup), to be precise, rather than just a chime. Is that something that Simplisafe has (or) planning to add to the product functionality ?

3. Is there an option of getting an SMS notification when a particular door was opened in 'Off' and 'Home' modes, just like how i get notifications when motion is detected on Camera in 'Off' and Home' modes. For example, sensor to the side door to the garage. Is that something that Simplisafe has (or) planning to add to the product functionality ?

Thanks,

Sriram

@Sriram ,

You might be taking the meaning of "home" a bit too literally. You use Home Mode when you want the system to be armed and ready to trigger an alarm. If you're at home and don't want the alarm to trigger, that's when you want the system to be in Off Mode.

Right now, no, SimpliSafe does not have a feature where the system can announce sensors by name when triggered.

But yes, you can get notifications when a sensor is triggered, without setting off an alarm. That's what we call Secret Alerts. It's a per-sensor setting, so you can find the option in the Devices section of the app. However, it does require that you subscribe to either the $27.99 Interactive Monitoring Plan, or the $9.99 Self-Monitoring with Camera Recordings plan. For more info, check out our Help Center page here.

My system used to announce out loud which door was opened & this was necessary for my household! I’m upset that this feature is no longer an option. & there seems to be no explanation as to why. Can you help me?