Setting up alerts that matter: levels, quiet hours, escalation, and why SOS always gets through

Too many alerts are as bad as none

A monitoring system that pings you every time the front door opens trains you to ignore it, and then the alert that matters gets ignored too. Birdhouse is built around a simple idea: every alert says how urgent it is, and the urgency decides how hard it tries to reach you.

Three levels

You choose the level for each alert rule under “How important is it?”. The suggested rules start with sensible levels, and you can raise or lower any of them for the person you look after.

The channels

• Telegram. Link your Birdhouse account to @BirdhouseHomeBot with a code sent to your email. Alerts, daily reports and access requests then arrive in that chat. It works on iPhone, Android and desktop.
• iPhone push. In the Birdhouse iPhone app, which is coming to the App Store. Alerts and SOS arrive even when the app is closed. You can pick a tone for each level (Alarm, Siren, Pulse, Chime, Bell or the iPhone default) and send yourself a test from Settings.
• Email. The fallback. Urgent alerts always use it if you have it switched on, and Important ones use it when you have neither Telegram nor the app.

Urgent alerts and SOS are sent as Time Sensitive notifications, so they break through Focus modes. If the iPhone is on silent, it vibrates instead of ringing. If you are the main person who responds at night, keep the ringer on.

Push notifications on Android are not available yet. On Android, Telegram is the fastest channel, and the web app at app.birdhouse.sg/app shows the same alerts.

Quiet hours, without missing what matters

Each person who looks after a home has their own settings: which channels to use, the lowest level they want to hear about, and quiet hours in the home’s time zone. You set them in the app under Settings › When to alert me. During your quiet hours, Just tell me and Important alerts are not sent to you. They still appear in the app’s alerts list for the morning. Urgent alerts and SOS ignore quiet hours.

These settings are personal. A brother working abroad can choose to hear only urgent alerts without changing what anyone else gets, and the person who lives closest can choose to hear everything.

Escalation: what happens when nobody answers

1. An urgent alert goes to everyone with access to the home, on every channel they use.
2. Anyone can tap I’ve checked and add a note for the family, such as “Called her, all fine”. Everyone who looks after the home sees the note.
3. The first acknowledgement stops the escalation for everyone, and the others are told who is handling it.
4. If nobody acknowledges within 10 minutes (an SOS: 5 minutes), the alert goes out again to everyone, and to on-call: whoever is on shift at the home’s care agency (or its managers), and the Birdhouse team for homes with a Birdhouse monitoring plan.
5. While it stays unacknowledged, on-call is reminded every 15 minutes, up to three times.

Some alerts describe something that is still going on, such as a gap in movement, a door left open or an offline hub. These close themselves when the situation ends, and show as “Cleared by itself”. An alert that cleared itself still deserves a look at what happened, but nobody needs to drop everything.

Why an SOS always gets through

The SOS button is the one alert where the person you look after is actively asking for help, so Birdhouse treats it differently from everything else:

• It is sent straight away to everyone who has access to the home, on every channel.
• It is never held back by quiet hours or by anyone’s lowest-level setting.
• It is sent even while monitoring is paused, for example while the home is waiting for the resident’s consent to be confirmed. Other alerts stop in that case. SOS does not.
• If nobody takes it within 5 minutes, it escalates to on-call like an urgent alert, and keeps going until someone does.
• Marking it as handled asks you to confirm that you have checked they are safe.

A sensible starting setup

• Agree on who responds first. For example, whoever lives nearest during the day and a second person at night. Make sure both have Telegram linked or the iPhone app installed.
• Give everyone access, but not everyone every alert. Relatives abroad can keep only Urgent, so they hear about what matters without daily noise.
• Test it. Send a test notification from Settings. Then, with your parent and the family warned, press the SOS button once and check that it reaches everyone.
• Revisit the levels after two weeks. If “not up by 10am” fires on every Sunday lie-in, move the window for weekends instead of muting the rule.

Keeping false alarms down

Most false alarms come from coverage, not from the rules. If a room your parent spends time in has no sensor, sitting in it looks like a long gap, and leaving the bathroom for that room looks like never leaving the bathroom. A sensor in each room they use, and batteries replaced when Birdhouse warns that they are low, prevent most of them. Read dynamic monitoring for tuning rules to your parent’s routine.