I’ve been a long time X10 user. I am glad to say that using my new VeraLite is just great. I am trying to automate a lot of things. I need some advice on an security alarm trigger. Right now I have a X10 device that connects to my alarm system. When the alarm goes off this device turns on all of my lights that have X10 lamp modules.
I would like a Zwave device that does the same. The trigger can be 12 volts or just a contact closing. I can use this device to trigger all of my Zwave light modules.
Does anyone know of a device I can use for this application? Thank you.
I use a Fibaro Universal Binary Sensor for this. It has two dry-contact inputs. I use one input for the Armed state and the other for the Alarm Tripped status. I power it from the alarm’s 12V supply.
I just read that the Vera when it does some re-fresh happens to false trigger this Binary Sensor device. Are you having this problem?
I haven’t had any false triggers but, because of the way Vera works (on UI5 anyway), I can get repeated triggers when it is tripped. Depending how you use the triggers this may or may not be a problem.
If you use PLEG to implement your logic it should not be a problem. PLEG will normally only act on a trigger when it first occurs.
If you use scenes to send some device action when triggered, it will just repeat the device action which may not cause any issues.
If you need to prevent repeated actions in a scene, you can use a little Lua code. See Scenes Firing Twice.