Alarm Panel interface

Community Playground General Discussions
1

I am really looking into centering my entire home around Vera, I hope, and am looking for an alarm system that can be installed like a normal alarm but that Vera can pick up on the individual sensors and the status and whatnots of the alarm panel. I would like to put contact sensors on all the doors and windows and be able to see their status in Vera as well as see the status of whether the system is armed/stay/away etc or not. I want something that would be able to report to a traditional monitoring company as well as be accessible via Vera, an added benefit would be to be able to program user codes or arm/disarm through Vera.

What I’m looking for here are suggestions on a system or brand of system to look into that people have used and work.

2

Although I have not used one myself, the Omni line of alarms by “Home Automation, Inc.” (HAI) has been around for a long time, allows a vast choice of extensibility (including networking and whole-house audio), ties in well with HA systems, and enjoys a stellar reputation.

Check out:
http://www.homeauto.com/main.asp

Let us know what you decide.

3

Boyo,
A number of modern Alarm systems have interface modules that’ll let you physically hook up to an external HA interface, in addition to whatever service-based offering the panel is also notifying.

I have a Paradox Digiplex/EVO 48 hardwired into the house (although it also supports wireless modules) which currently has:

a) 3x Keypads
b) 16 Hardwired Zones (48 possible), including motion sensors, window and door sensors etc
c) 2x Remote controls (Arm, Disarm, Panic)

It has expansion options/modules for Serial/USB HA Controller interface, Ethernet/Web interface, GSM/SMS Interface, Voice Modules, Zone doublers (etc). I didn’t chose this panel, it’s just what happened to be in the house, and it was “open” enough that expansion was possible.

I have it hooked up to my Vera, and have been Developing/Debugging the Alarm Panel interface for it. It’s currently about 800 lines on Lua/Luup code.

This interface turns each of the Alarm’s Zone inputs into a “MotionSensor” that Vera can use, like a switch, to trigger scenes, lights and to send notifications (etc). I can also check the Alarm & Zone status remotely via findvera.com.

I could enable it to be remotely Armed/Disarmed etc, but haven’t done that yet (my focus has been on stabilization)

Others could port the code to Alarm Panels from different manufacturers as long as they have the Vendor-specific API Documentation (the Wire protocol for the USB and/or RS-232 interface).

It takes time, patience, research and a lot of experimentation to do this from scratch. But it was the Alarm/API Documentation that took the longest to get, since my manufacturer doesn’t expose it (generally) … but Google is a wonderful thing.

You’ll also want to check your local Alarm operators, since they likely don’t support all vendors and/or models, so it might end up being a compromise between Alarm Models/Vendors with API’s, and what your Operator can support.

4

Well I’ve been surfing the net since I posted that, and found the HAI and found one by Elk Products, the ELK-M1EZ8 seems like it would work, and it has a really nice Windows interface, but I don’t know how easy that would be to take over. Using their ELK-RP software it looks like you can go as far as change users, zones, it has automation built into it, but the big problem that I would see with it is getting the API to interface it with Vera, say I open the front door alarm panel sends signal to Vera which sends to zwave to turn on foyer light, then Vera takes over and after 2 mins turns the light off. So I guess the biggest part is the API of any of the systems that you can get, I guess I could dig a little more and see if I can find it, if not then I may look for another company. I have a little bit of background in programming so I may be able to grasp LUA enough to play with it, and have actually played with it a little bit for addons for a game I play, but that’s only been modifying others code.

I know of a small company around here that does alarm monitoring and i’m sure that they would support just about any panel. Have a friend who use to work there.

It will probably be a little while before I will be able to get it all up and running, but I want to do my research and take my time in making a decision.

Edit: After looking for the API for the Elk M1/M1EZ8 I found it and it seems fairly simple on the assumption that Vera will be able to just send out the plain text as necessary (I think, lol). I didn’t look to deep into the documentation but I found it at http://www.elkproducts.com/pdf/ELK-M1_RS232_PROTOCOL.pdf if anyone is interested in developing the LUA plugin for it. Maybe someone can create a “standard” interface for Vera and just modify it for each individual system. Would be nice to be able to add and remove user codes, as well as disarm the alarm simply by entering your code on the Schlage lock. Dreaming big…