Setting up alerts

How to build an alert in the four-step builder, set levels, understand the safety shield, and pause an alert without deleting it.

In the app: /alerts

Setting up alerts#

An alert is a standing instruction: watch one reading on one device, and tell you when it crosses a line you set. You build them on the Alerts page.

The page has four tabs:

Build an alert#

Open Alerts and choose New alert at the top right. If you have not built one yet, the Your alerts tab shows "Nothing is being watched yet." with a Set up your first alert button that does the same thing.

You can also start from a device: open the device page and choose Watch this sensor. That opens the same builder with the RV and the device already filled in.

The builder has four steps: What to watch, When to worry, How to tell you and Review. Use Next and Back to move between them. On a phone the step name appears as "2. When to worry" with dots at the bottom instead of the row of steps, the last button reads Save rather than Save alert, and there is no Cancel or Done button at all - you close the builder with the X in the top corner.

If Next is greyed out, a short grey line under the step says what is missing, for example "Pick what to watch on it." or "Set the value that should worry you."

Step 1: What to watch#

  1. Pick your RV, then the Device. The Device list holds that RV's devices only.
  2. If we recognise the device, a group called The usual ones for this device appears. These are ready-made alerts. Choosing one fills in the rest of the builder and jumps you to step 2, where you can still change anything.
  3. To build one yourself, use the chips underneath. The heading over them reads Or watch one measurement yourself when there were ready-made ones, and What should we watch? when there were not. Each chip is a reading the device is sending right now, with its current value, for example Temperature · 38 °F.

Ready-made ones are only offered while you are building something new. Changing an existing alert skips them, so on that path the heading over the chips is always What should we watch?.

If the device has never reported, you will see "This device hasn't sent a reading yet, so there's nothing to watch on it." Wait until it has sent something, then come back.

Step 2: When to worry#

The line at the top of this step is the alert as a sentence, and it updates as you change the controls:

When Fridge temperature goes above 40 °F for 10 min → Warning ▲

The controls under it are:

Under the controls is the last 24 hours of that reading with your line drawn across it. The caption is the most useful thing on the step: "Would have gone off 2× in the last day". If that number looks wrong, your value is in the wrong place. There is no caption at all when your line would never have been crossed, which is a normal answer rather than a fault. On a device that only checks every so often you also get a note such as "This device checks every 5 min - you'll hear within about 15 min of it starting."

The three levels#

One alert with two levels#

Most people want one line where they start paying attention and a second where it is genuinely bad. Choose Add an alarm level. That button is greyed out until you have typed a Value.

The Value box becomes Warning at, a second box called Alarm at appears with the same number in it to start with, and a line appears beside it:

…and it's an Alarm ◆ once it goes above

The number itself stays in the Alarm at box. On the Review step the two are joined up and read as "…becoming Alarm ◆ at 45 °F".

The Treat it as box goes away, because a two-level alert is a Warning that becomes an Alarm. That stays one alert, not two. It opens as a Warning and turns into an Alarm if it gets worse, so you are not told about the same problem twice. Remove takes the alarm level away again.

The alarm level has to be worse than the warning level, or the builder tells you so. On a "goes above" alert that reads "The alarm level has to be above the warning level."; on a "goes below" one it reads "The alarm level has to be below the warning level."

Two things at once#

and also… adds another condition, and all of them have to be true at the same time before you hear anything. You are not limited to two. Each extra row has its own Device, Measurement, What happens and either a Value or, for "shows no activity for" and "stops reporting for", a How long. The Device list on an extra row covers every RV on your account, not only the one you picked on step 1, so a combined alert can span two RVs.

The two ideas are offered one at a time, and an alert can only have one of them. Once you add an alarm level the and also… button disappears; once you add a second condition Add an alarm level disappears.

Under a combined alert you get a second count: "Together, they would have gone off once in the last day", or "Together, these have not both been true at once in the last day - which is the point of combining them."

One rule worth knowing: "Anything we can't see counts as unknown, and unknown never sets an alert off." A device that has gone quiet will not make a combined alert fire.

Step 3: How to tell you#

How often should we tell you? is a set of cards. Each card has a plain-English summary under its title that tells you exactly what happens, and that summary is the thing to read. The cards with plain-English titles are:

Two more cards appear whose titles have not been given plain-English names yet, and show as cleared_only and still_active_reminder. They work, but read the summary under each before choosing one. Some plans also offer Get louder if nobody answers.

If the card you picked repeats, two boxes appear: Remind me every and At most. Set these to taste, for example every 30 min, at most 3 reminders. If your plan does not allow what you asked for, the builder says so plainly ("You asked for every 5 min; on your plan: 15 min.") and keeps your setting for when it does.

Where should it go?

If you switch everything off, the builder tells you: "Nothing will be sent - it will only appear in the app and on your RV's screen. That never counts against any limit."

When should it be watching? offers Always, Only during certain hours (pick the days and a From and Until time), and, if you have quiet hours set up, Not during my quiet hours with your hours printed after it, for example "Not during my quiet hours (22:00-07:00)". Whichever you choose, we keep watching around the clock. This only decides when we are allowed to message you, and if something is already going on when the window opens, you hear about it then.

If your plan has a daily email limit, the meter here shows where you stand, for example "12 of 15 email alerts left today" with "resets 12:00 AM" at the end of the same line. That count is your own, not the household's.

Who gets told tells you before saving that you will get this one. Once it is saved it lists everyone with access to the RV, each with a chip saying where they stand: getting these, paused, opted out or not signed up. Copy a note appears only beside the people who are not already getting it, and it copies a message for you to send. Sending someone a note does not sign them up, because it is their own allowance being spent.

Step 4: Review#

Read the sentence at the top. It is the sentence the message will use.

A chip says where the alert runs:

On a brand new alert this chip is a prediction and reads Cloud-watched ☁ until you save; once saved it shows what your RV actually got.

Call it is the name, pre-filled from the sentence and editable. If you clear it, Save alert greys out and nothing on this step explains why, so leave a name in the box. Then choose Save alert.

After it saves you will see "Saved. Send yourself a test to be sure it reaches you." Use Send a test and check that the message actually arrives. Before you save, that button is greyed out with "Save first, then send yourself a test to be sure it reaches you." beside it. The test runs the real delivery, so a wrong or switched-off email address turns up now rather than during a real problem, and the line beside the button explains what happened. Then choose Done.

A worked example: fridge too warm#

  1. Go to Alerts and choose New alert.
  2. Pick your RV, then Fridge as the device.
  3. Under the measurement chips, choose the one that reads Temperature · 38 °F.
  4. Choose Next.
  5. Set What happens to "goes above", type 40 in Value, and set Hold for to "10 min". The sentence now reads: When Fridge temperature goes above 40 °F for 10 min → Warning ▲.
  6. Choose Add an alarm level. The Value box becomes Warning at, and an Alarm at box appears already holding 40. Change it to 45.
  7. Check the caption under the chart. "Would have gone off once in the last day" is about right for a fridge that gets opened. "Would have gone off 14× in the last day" means 40 °F is too tight, or 10 min is too short.
  8. Choose Next. Keep reminding me until it's over is already selected; leave it, set Remind me every to 30 min and At most to 3 reminders, and leave Email on.
  9. Choose Next. The name is pre-filled as Fridge - temperature goes above. Replace it with Fridge too warm. The line under the sentence now reads …becoming Alarm ◆ at 45 °F.
  10. Choose Save alert, then Send a test, then Done (on a phone, the X in the top corner).

Safety alerts and the shield#

It is the measurement you pick that makes an alert a safety alert, not the device it sits on. Choose a carbon monoxide, propane, smoke, leak or alarm reading and the alert is classified for you automatically and carries a red shield, for example Life-safety (Propane). Choose the battery or signal reading on that same detector and you get an ordinary alert, because a flat battery is not a gas leak. A combined alert is never a safety alert either, whatever it watches. The app describes the shield this way:

Never limited, on every plan, automatically. We set this one up for you and it can't be turned down - it works offline, ignores quiet hours and never counts against your daily limit.

The lock lands when the alert is saved. Open a saved safety alert to change it and the What happens, Value, Hold for and Treat it as controls are greyed out, and Add an alarm level and and also… are not offered at all. It is always an Alarm ◆, and it always ends up Works offline ✓ even though a new one predicts Cloud-watched ☁ before you save. It ignores quiet hours and any watching window you set, and it never uses up your daily email allowance. When you snooze a safety alert we also cap how long the snooze lasts, and the card shows the time that was actually applied.

Pausing without deleting#

There are three different ways to go quiet, and they are not the same thing.

Mute one alert - on the Your alerts tab, each card has a mute button, the bell with a line through it. Choose 1 hour, 4 hours, 24 hours or 3 days. The button is then replaced by a chip like "Muted until 10:45 PM", and the x on that chip un-mutes it. Muting stops the messages only. We keep watching, anything that happens still appears in the app, and an open item says "Notifications paused for this alert until 10:45 PM - we are still watching." When the mute lifts you get one catch-up if it is still going, not the backlog you missed.

Snooze one situation - on the Active tab, Snooze on a card quietens that one episode for 30 minutes, 1 hour, 4 hours or Until 7 AM. It is yours alone: snoozing never silences anyone else in the household. Acknowledge is the shared one, and it stops the reminders for everybody, which is why the card always names who did it.

Stop watching entirely - the On / Off chip on the alert card. Off means we are not watching that condition at all. Switching one back on can be refused if your plan has no free alert slot, in which case a dialog headed "No free alert slot" tells you how many are in use and confirms that nothing was deleted.

You do not set a waiting time between messages yourself. How often you hear is decided by the card you picked on step 3 plus Remind me every and At most, and repeated readings of the same problem stay one item on the Active tab with a counter rather than a stack of new ones. If a reading bounces in and out, the card says "It has been bouncing in and out, so we are grouping these together."

Changing and deleting#

On the Your alerts tab each card has three icons: a clock icon for what that alert has caught, a pencil to change it, and a bin to delete it. Changing an alert reopens the same four-step builder with your answers in it, and the last button reads Save changes.

Deleting asks first. The dialog is headed with the alert's name, for example Delete "Fridge too warm"?, and says "We'll stop watching for this. What it already caught stays in your history." Choose Keep it to back out or Delete to go ahead.

What to do if#

Nothing arrives by email. Open the alert, go to Review and use Send a test. The result line explains what happened. Also check the alert is On, is not showing a "Muted until" chip, and that step 3 has Email switched on.

You get too many messages. Raise the Value, or increase Hold for so a brief blip does not count. Lowering At most on step 3 reduces the reminders without changing what is watched.

You want fewer messages overnight. Turn on Quiet hours in Settings rather than changing each alert. Warnings are then held until morning and arrive as one summary, and alarms and safety alerts still break through.

The chart says "Not enough history yet to show what this would have caught." The device has not sent enough readings for a preview. The alert still works; come back in a day if you want to check your number against real history.

Some of the choices described here are missing. The Webhook switch, the Every measurement chip, and the "is exactly" and "is anything but" entries in What happens all appear only when Interface mode in Settings is set to Full control (everything).