After long consideration of many options, I find that I need a simple notification system for our cabin, not a full alarm system. I am now looking for elements to make this work.
Our house in the woods is already wired with door, motion, and smoke sensors, but the system is archaic and not at all useful. My plan is to re-purpose each of the sensors as inputs directly to Vera to get a notification system. But, I need to find the right interface modules.
Do you folks know of any zwave-enabled input/output modules that I could interface to these sensors? I have not found any generic ones, but am hoping there may be some out there. All I need are binary inputs to a module that will give a simple on/off indication, on which I can then trigger actions.
Barring this, I can get the zwave components from Digikey and make my own. Board design is not that hard. But this may be a bit problematic since the business model of Sigma designs (as of a year ago) was to extract high licensing and development fees for anyone trying to use their modules. Interestingly, their latest module (4102) would be a great fit: zwave radio/software stack and 10 GPIOs. That’s about the perfect number as it corresponds to the number of sensors already in place.
I even offered a business deal to Sigma Designs to get enabled modules out to hobbyists for more experimentation, but that did not go anywhere. I’m now making contact with them again to see if anything has changed.
This is not a hard problem and a simple concept. However, the solution has eluded me for over a year now and I’d appreciate any pointers.
Yes, I’d have to write the plug-in and other interface code, but that would also allow a springboard to other sensors I want around anyway (such as a snow-depth alarm and strain gauges for deck overload).
I have Vera2 UI4 version 1.1.1245. I wired independent baseboard heaters with solid-state relays so each floor could be controlled by a thermostat, and use 4 Wayne Dalton thermostats in the zwave network. Started with Vera1, which was incredibly unstable, but this configuration has been extremely stable for the last year. HomeBuddy is a great interface app, and it’s great to have the heat on when we arrive, but also to be able to shut down heaters that were inadvertently left on.
Vera is a great control/maintenance solution for a second home, and intrusion monitoring and smoke detection would be great additions for my particular use.