I am looking at getting Vera in the next week or so and one thing I would like to do is control my LifeShield security system. I have no clue what their wireless devices operate over and do not see any listed API’s from them. So what I was thinking is getting another key fob from them. Pair it to a unique user called Vera, open it up and get a zwave relay that has 3 outputs. The fob has a cancel, stay and away button, also if stay and way are held down for X seconds it sends panic.
Goal is going to be on certain triggers I want to disarm or arm the system, or even send panic(probably never).
But like setting up a at home in for the evening scene, I would want it to arm my system and not have to do it manually. The remote flashes green when it received a call back from the main unit that it armed or dis-armed. So I am actually thinking about mounting the remote to a sturdy device and using a servo to press the buttons and then another sensor to watch for the light color so it can report back correctly. Also hopefully able to hook up another sensor to the main unit to wait for the alarmed light so it will know the status if it was armed outside of vera.
From my understanding, none of the wireless devices from lifeshield will work with anything else… It is a bummer, because I really like their siren detector since all my smoke/heat detectors are hardwired to each other.
I’d be shocked and amazed that they would have an API… but if they did … you would still need to write a plugin or do some coding to connect to it… and then connect to it by what ? does this system have a network connection or some kind of Serial connection ?
Did you have any luck talking to LifeShield? In the past, I’ve gotten no where. It’s a real shame- if they simply opened up their API a tiny bit, they would probably get quite a lot of interest from the DIY community- I would probably hack together IFTT functionality if I had access to the API.
I don’t have time to implement a web scraper/browser emulator, but I suppose that would be the way to go.
Right now I watch a mailbox for armed/disarmed events and do things like turn off lights when armed, etc, but it would be great to have the ability to more fully automate.
No, I stopped trying to figure out a way and was going down the route of replacing my system with a custom DSC one. Still going to but it is like $750ish for me to do it. I have a buddy who thinks he can get the screen scrapper together. I will update this thread once I have more.
We have most of the functions working now via php, arming, disarming, checking status. Once we finish it up going to see how to write a plugin that can utilize what we got. Can pretty much get the whole LifeShield configuration including pin codes in plain text.
