Integrating alarm system with Home Assistant

I have no idea, but I have heard such stories too (that IDS is local). In any case, I believe the comms between the panel and the main board is RS485, so in theory you could hook into that and do whatever you want, if you knew the protocol. Being a security system, one would hope this is not easily hackable!

I have a scope that can decode UART comms, and I have a RS485->Uart board I can use for snooping. Question is… am I that invested in this? Uuuuhm… probably not :slight_smile:

Main reason is simply that the LED outside my house that is supposed to show that the alarm is on stopped working. The correct solution is to trace the lines and figure out what happened… which I kinda did.

I finally figured out that they (the installers, who made a complete mess of it by the way) wired the PGM output on the panel (which by default mirrors the armed LED on the panel) from the panel back to the outside LEDs (of which there are three bright blue ones). Not what I would have done, by the way. I would have wired and configured one of the other three programmable outputs on the main board to do the job, since they have better current capabilities.

Reason for this thinking, is that I can see the PGM output pull down to 2.5V when I connect the outside LEDs (but they do not turn on anymore). So either there is damage to the panel, or something on that line started to draw more current than it should (could be one of the three LEDs). I have reason to believe the PGM output on the panel isn’t meant for more than one LED. The idea is probably that the panel sits by your front door, and the LED is mounted on the other side of the door.

Now I can get the alam company back to do this properly… but it is December and all, and I always wanted to hook the security system in a way so that I can also remotely access it.

The next thing to do now, is to make a new outside indicator. Not necessarily an LED though. A bright LED on the front of the house is like an invitation: Hey crowbar gang, these guys are away… you’ve got 5 minutes until armed response show up, how about it?

:slight_smile:

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