Alarms
A leak, smoke or gas raises an alarm in the whole home — even when no app is open. The Homer server watches the sensors: it doesn't sleep and always listens to Home Assistant.
Which sensors
Alarms are raised by sensors placed on the plan with the kind leak, smoke or gas. Nothing else needs to be turned on: the Homer server takes such sensors from the plans of all its homes and rereads the list after every plan edit.
An alarm goes on when the sensor switches to “on” and goes off when it switches back. If the Homer server restarted or lost its connection to Home Assistant, on reconnecting it goes around the home: it finds an alarm that started without it and clears one that has ended.
The alarm text has the kind and the room: “Leak — Bathroom”. In a multi-storey home, the floor is added to the room.
Where it arrives
| Where | What | Who gets it |
|---|---|---|
| App and web screen | A red bar on top of everything and a siren | everyone the home is open to, a guest too |
| Alarm guard on Android | A full-screen notification and an alarm-clock siren | phones and tablets with the alarm guard on |
| Telegram group | “🚨 ALARM, home “…”: Leak — Bathroom”, then “All clear: …” | the group linked to the home |
| Yandex speakers | “Attention! Leak! Bathroom!” | all speakers of the home or the selected ones |
| Home Assistant | A “Home alarm” notification | everyone who looks at Home Assistant |
A guest sees the alarm even though the sensors themselves aren't shown to them: a leak in the home they're standing in isn't a detail of someone else's life.
A flapping sensor shouts in Telegram and on speakers at most once a minute. The bar on the screen is always updated.
The Telegram group is linked in the bridge settings, see Home chat and Telegram. Without a linked group, nothing is sent to Telegram.
Alarm guard on Android
Without the alarm guard, the alarm is visible only on top of an open plan. At night, with the tablet screen off and the phone in a pocket, that's not enough.
It's turned on in Settings → Home → Alarms → “Alarm guard when the app is closed”.
- The alarm guard keeps its own connection to the Homer server. A quiet icon with the status sits in the notification shade: “Listening to leak, smoke and gas sensors” or why it isn't listening.
- On an alarm — a full-screen notification and a siren on the alarm stream. The alarm stream gets through “Do not disturb” without a special permission.
- The siren sounds until “Got it”, until the notification is swiped away or until the all clear, but no longer than five minutes.
- While the plan is open on the screen, the plan plays the siren itself and the alarm guard stays silent.
- The alarm guard comes back after a reboot and an app update. Google push isn't needed: it works on both a tablet and a TV.
- In demo mode, the alarm guard doesn't open a connection to the home.
Two Android settings
The “Alarms” card tells you if something is missing:
- Notifications are blocked — there is nowhere to show the alarm. The “Allow notifications” button.
- The system saves battery — at night Android cuts the alarm guard's connection, and the alarm would wait until morning. The “Don't put the alarm guard to sleep” button.
“Got it”
The “Got it” button is on the red bar on the plan, in the alarm guard notification and on the web. Anyone the home is open to can tap it, a guest too.
- The siren, the notification and the full-screen window go off on all devices of the home at once.
- The bar stays, with the name of who acknowledged it, until the sensor goes back to normal: “got it” doesn't mean “the water has dried”.
- Telegram gets “Alarm acknowledged by <name>: Leak — Bathroom”.
- Someone who connects later gets an already acknowledged alarm, without noise.
- The acknowledgement survives a Homer server restart: the same wet sensor won't howl again on all devices.
Which speakers speak
Settings → Home → Alarms → “Speakers that announce alarms”. Owner only.
| Choice | What happens |
|---|---|
| All Yandex speakers | all yandex_station speakers from Home Assistant. This is the default |
| Only selected | the ones checked in the list. A speaker that isn't connected is marked “offline” |
| No one | speakers stay silent |
If no Yandex speakers are visible, the speaker integration in Home Assistant isn't connected.
Test alarm
Checks the whole chain: whether it reaches the home, whether the siren can be heard in the next room, whether the bar is visible on the wall tablet.
How to run it: room card → the row of a leak, smoke or gas sensor → “Test” → “Run”.
What happens:
- The alarm flashes on all devices of the home, labeled “test”, and roars just as loud as a real one. In the app it goes off by itself after half a minute, on the web after a minute, the alarm guard notification after 10 seconds.
- Speakers say: “Alarm test. Leak, Bathroom. This is a test alarm.”
- Telegram gets: “Alarm test, home “…”: Leak — Bathroom. This is a test alarm, all is well.”
- Nothing is written to Home Assistant: the sensor stays dry the whole time, and there is no “Home alarm” notification.
The alarm doesn't go up right away on the device you tapped, but when the event comes back from the home, the same way it reaches the other devices. If the connection to the home is broken, the test will show exactly that.
Speakers speak out loud
A test alarm sounds on real Yandex speakers and goes to a real Telegram group. Warn your family or choose “No one” for speakers during the test.