NX-8 new to home automation - help please

Plugins & Plugin Development Unmaintained
#1

Hello,

I am not an IT professional at all, and completely new to home automation.

I have a NX-8 and fully wired alarm system (no wireless). My understanding is that I can obtain some device to allow the NX-8 to get home automation and then connect to ethernet to get connection to my Vera Edge.

My primary questions are:

  1. What device is needed to allow home automation for NX-8?

  2. Once HA obtained and connected to Vera, am I able to use Vera’s home monitoring and get monitoring through Vera?

  3. I’ve seen some of the programming codes/etc. If I can follow instructions but am not a programmer, is the above something I can do myself?

  4. Is there anything I’m missing?

#2

Hi Kevin,

Sorry for the delay; I don’t monitor the forum much these days.

If you have an NX-8 (or NX-4 or NX-6) then you will at a minimum require:

[ul][li]Knowing the Go To Program code for your panel. This is 9713 on new panels but your installer may have changed it.[/li]
[li]An NX-584 (or NX-584E, whichever you can find) card, which you will need to connect to your alarm panel in the same way as your keypads are already connected.[/li]
[li]Cabling and adapters to connect the DB9 serial port on the NX-584 to your Vera. This page is still relevant.[/li][/ul]

All programming is done through your existing keypad. It’s super tedious but you only have to do it once. Are you capable? You can try it now, if you know the Go To Program code on your system. You won’t be able to program the NX-584 until you buy one but you can program the main NX-8 panel now using the same technique. Google nx-8 programming manual and find one of the PDF copies the search finds. eddie’s sticky post on this subforum is for the NX-8E (so the locations are different to your NX-8) but is quite accessible.

This subforum includes dozens of conversations which may be TMI at the moment, but if you encounter a problem it’s almost certainly been encountered before.

Unsolicited advice: I think you will be disappointed if you want to use Vera for alarm monitoring. The plugin is mostly intended to use your alarm panel’s state to assist in home automation (i.e., using your motion and door sensors, or reacting to your alarm panel partitions’ armed/disarmed state). While you could cobble together something using this plugin and some other plugins like VeraAlerts, it’s no substitute for a proper monitoring service. (Disclaimer: I am on an older version of Vera UI7 firmware and unlikely to upgrade, so my opinion may be invalidated by developments in the last two years.)

Good luck!