[OBSOLETE] Convert Your Wired Alarm System into a SmartThings Smart Home Monitor System for Under $25 with NodeMCU ESP8266 (2017)

It was in the PM between me and him, apparently you can’t link to it. Here’s a copy.

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"I tried to use as less components as possible. These are low-current optocouplers, they work great. "

I hate asking questions when I know the answer is probably somewhere in the 407 posts before me, so please forgive me in advance. I just wanted to get a quick answer so I can put my kickstarter in.

I know I don’t have an alarm panel but I do have wires from sensors all over my house that terminate in our onq box. I just went into my closet to see how many zones I have based on how many wires I have, and I must have at least 18 unmarked pairs. Is that probably because they did a wire for each sensor instead of going the zones route? I’m trying to determine how big I need to go.

Yep, there is one wire for each sensor. The sensors are usually crimped together at the panel to make zones (not in the wall) so you can still do it. I would suggest counting up your doors and windows to figure out how many total zones you will want.

I just made a new installation video and I discuss zones at one point here: https://youtu.be/gIv5VdVrkys

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regarding “no Internet = no security system”, there is a solution for that.
You can look-up how big security companies dealing with that and you have two options:

  • add a cell to your system, for example freedom pop could cost you virtually nothing per month
  • add a ping alive from outside, for example put a free server on AWS to check your connectivity

Hey, been awhile since I’ve posted here, nice to see things sort of takeoff for you Nate. Unfortunately, with the most recent app update for iOS, it seems something about this system isn’t compatible. I haven’t changed my smartapp or device handler or code on the chip in forever. Everything has been working well for over a year. But now the app crashes before it finishes loading. SmartThings support told me it was the device handler causing the problem and I would need to remove it. I don’t believe that’s the true issue, that only brings the issue to the app. It all worked before the app update, so its something they changed. I don’t know if anyone else has experienced this yet, but wanted to put it out there. The iOS app, on 11.2+ doesn’t like something about this setup.

Take a look through this thread as the problem is clearly identified, as well as the fix for the errant DTH code. It could be another DTH, not necessarily one of Nate’s, that is causing the issue (unless ST support told you specifically which DTH has the problem.) In any event, the fix is quite easy and is documented in this thread.

Thanks, that was it. I think I must have edited some of the device handlers for this setup and put something other than “generic” for the type. I just checked the current files on the old and new github locations and don’t see any issues.

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Can you sent me a picture of your setup? I am having problems with my optocoupler and getting it to trigger. I looks like I have the same one as you do.

Here is a view of the relay

I use all 4 pins at the top of the relay and connect them to the NodeMCU board.

  • The light brown wire runs to my D8 GPIO pin
  • The white wire runs to a GND GPIO pin
  • The red wire runs to the 5V output on the baseboard (See second photo)
  • The black wire runs to 5V GND on the baseboard (See second photo)

The Siren is wired to the Alarm panel and Relay this way:

  • Alarm panel “AC” runs to one the two siren wires.
  • White wire from relay runs to the Alarm panel “AUX +” (bottom white wire in first photo)
  • Red wire from the relay is connected to the second Siren wire. (bottom red wire in first photo)

Hopefully that helps.

That’s how I have it hooked up. The problem is that the siren doesn’t sound right. As I was typing this I noticed that my base doesn’t have 5v pins on it like your’s does. It only has 3v pins. I can only assume it sounds off because it doesn’t have the correct voltage. Outside of buying a different base and waiting 30+ days from china have any idea on how to get around this?

I think I know what you are talking about… I recently purchased two base boards that were slightly different for a sprinkler project and a dog feeder project using the same relays. I’ll try to see how I wired those…

Ok… my newer boards also have 3v where my old one has 5v. I used the vUSB instead because I believe USB supplies 5v. The caveat is that you must be powering the board via the miniusb plug on the ESP for these pins to be hot, if I’m not mistaken. And I will also disclaim that my other projects using the vUSB may not be as demanding as a siren, so it may not matter if the voltage is lower on the relay.

Here’s a pic of the usbv:

Also, have you tested the siren by bypassing the relay to make sure there’s enough juice for the siren on a closed circuit?

I am powering via the U1 jumpers coming from my old alarm system.

I am not sure how to test the siren bypassing the relay. How do you do that?

Yeah, so you’d need to power the ESP with the microusb cable instead of from the alarm board.

What happens if you just wire the siren circuit without the relay(or ESP) in the circuit…just the power from the alarm board… does it sound ok when the circuit is closed? Or does it still sound funny?

So I bypassed the relay into and put the alarm wires into a 9volt battery and it sounds like it should. I will try to use the VUSB. I was really hoping that I could get around that but it’s either that or hope I can get a board with 5v instead of 3v. I order 3 different boards from different suppliers and they are all the same. Thanks for the help man! I’ve been beating my head against the table for way to long on this one.

Do you normally have the 9v battery involved in the circuit connected to the relay and siren?

No, I just used it to complete the circuit and power the siren for a test. I didn’t want to hook back on my keypads and a zone to test the alarm.

I’m not sure we are on the same page… In my previous relay photo, the red and white wires connected to the screw terminals (bottom wires in photo) are part of the powered siren circuit that gets closed/open depending on the relay state. Are you feeding at least 9v of power into this circuit from your old alarm board? If so, you should be able to simply touch the red and white wires together instead of screwing them into the terminals to test the siren.

(Hopefully I’m making sense.)

Here’s a bad drawing… :slight_smile:

It was my relay that was bad. I changed it for another one I had and it’s working now. Thanks for taking the time out to help with this!

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I just realized a couple days ago that the status of the sensors connected to my unit aren’t updating or changing state. When I try to view the status in smartapps I get a page saying webpage not available. So it appears it is no longer connect to the hub.
I can see that it is still connected to my router though. Anybody had this issue?

I have 4 Konnected boards that were on the old App and they all stopped reporting to SmartThings or responding to any commands, such as ON/OFF etc. All the boards had to be recently reconfigured with the new Konnected Apps (Connect and Service Manager) since there was no seamless transition between the old and the new Konnected App - I basically had to wipe clean all 24 devices to delete the old Konnected App from SmartThings and then re-install all the 24 devices again. I further had to reconfigure all of these devices in 5 other SmartApps and 8 Routines. It was a bit of a nightmare, however once I invested a whole day to it, the system went online a few days ago and was doing just as well as about the last 6 months. I just noticed today after a couple of days of the rebuilding from ground up that again NONE of the 4 Konnected boards are reporting their status or their sensor state to SmartThings nor are they taking any commands from the SmartThings App. Its the same scary state that led me to go through the Konnected App update in the first place. Is anybody aware of any issues that we should be aware of regarding the Konnected system? Thanks for all your help as usual. You all had started a great product and we are all still excited.