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

I’ve never personally experienced a false detection event. I’m not saying it can’t happen, but it seems rare. I suspect it’s due to loose wiring.

I’ve been running this setup since January and it’s been super reliable. The new version about to be released is even more stable.

As best I can tell, it’s only been on one circuit - the daisy chained window circuit. The individual window circuits are soldered, but I may try to solder their connections to the board or relocate the pins. It’s admittedly a very long circuit, traversing every window in the house, so it’ll be real hard to find if there’s a wire fault.

Happened twice in about a month - both times shut the ac off, which made it pretty easy to track it down to the window circuit.

Hi Nate,

I am very interested in your “Wired Alarm System Complete DIY Kit”. If i have let say 20+ sensors (new house came preinstalled with a hard wire system thats about 17 years old, every window and door has a sensor plus some motion sensors etc.) . Any ideas on how to get this many sensors hooked up together? If i buy the “Wired Alarm System Add-on DIY Kit” does that get me a total of 11 sensors or 6? The wording is a little misleading to me. Also lets say I get your starer kit and then decide to add and build my own based on your code is it easy to integrate?

Thanks
Peter

Also have you looked into getting this to work with the Wink 2 Hub? I was comparing WInk to SmartThings and it seems to be compatible with more technologies, and was leaning towrds the Wink, but if i can take control over my existing sensors SmartThings is a no brainer.

-Peter

You can fit at most 6 sensors per board, or 5 sensors and a siren. So assuming you want to connect your siren to one board, if you get both the complete kit and add-on kit you’ll have enough inputs for 11 sensors.

You can also wire a few sensors together to create a “zone” and use only one input. This is commonly done for multiple window sensors in the same room.

Yes, if you want to build your own using the open-source code and add it to your system, it’ll work just fine.

I haven’t looked into Wink or any other platform integrations yet. It is possible that with some modification this could work, but I don’t even know if it’s possible.

Each would get you 6 sensors. if you’re using siren, then only 5 sensors, as 1 pin would be used for the siren.[quote=“Szultzie, post:298, topic:84285”]
Wink 2 Hub?
[/quote]
I don’t think Wink is as open as SmartThings. You can’t just create your own version of device types with Wink like SmartThings does

UPDATE I had started writing this post yesterday, but noticed just now that someone asked a very similar question in the past 24 hours. Sounds like I do need to buy some more hardware to hook up the additional sensors.


Thank you for this awesome article! I have been wanting to convert my alarm system to SmartThings for quite some time.

This all makes perfect sense, except for what to do when using more than 5 or 6 sensors. I’ve got somewhere around 12 that I am looking to configure this way, and am admittedly a bit lost there.
I’ve got the supplies, including the ESP8266 board, plenty of wires, micro-USB power supply, relay switches, and breadboards.
Do I need one or two of these as well?
https://www.amazon.com/WINGONEER-NodeMcu-ESP8266-Testing-Development/dp/B06XHGYPLY/ref=pd_sim_23_91?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B06XHGYPLY&pd_rd_r=E038EZQKSC65H274R6C3&pd_rd_w=BpbRC&pd_rd_wg=mLQz7&psc=1&refRID=E038EZQKSC65H274R6C3

And do I need an additional ESP8266 as well to handle the additional sensors?

Thanks so much for your help!

You may have that many sensors, but do you have that many zones? My house has 14 sensors, but only 6 zones because some are combined (master bed/bath windows, etc).

@copyninja is right - Smartthings has probably double the number of compatible devices that Wink has. The community-driven handler codes ensure they’ll always be on top. I would guess that a third of the devices I have in my house are not compatible with Wink.

Apart from the compatibility, free (or not free) codes allow a ridiculous level of automation. By far the best one, that happens to be free, is CoRE/WebCoRE. Smartthings automations run circles around Wink.

Hey A few questions as i’m trying to do this and its slightly over my head but i think i’m making progress.

I got the firmware flashed and appears to be the right firmware and i got ESPlorer open and connecting to the MCU.

When i try to upload files i get “Uploading to ESP file alarm.lua…Waiting answer from ESP - Timeout reached. Command aborted.” what am i doing wrong?

also am i missing in the readme instruction what variables i’m supposed to fill into the variables file before uploading?

thanks for the help looking forward to getting this working!

I am setting it up currently for 5 contact sensors (doors) and 1 motion sensor. I will eventually add more MCU’s to the system to control window contact sensors and smoke alarms…

thanks for the help!

Each board can support up to 6 sensors/zones so just buy two boards or combine sensors to keep it under 6.

There are two versions of the NodeMCU. It sounds like the one you bought with a breadboard is the smaller Amica model. You don’t need the base with this one. The base is for the LoLin version boards which are slightly larger.

I think the base makes more secure connection to the wires than the breadboard, which is why I recommend and sell this version in my kits. a breadboard works fine too. Just beware of loose connections.

So how many add on can I add on? My panel is full as I have 24 connections

You can have as many boards as you want. Each can handle up to 6 sensors.

This might be useful for adding more gpio pins?

It’s in the works :wink:

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Hey not sure if you saw my post above but do you have any thought?

"Hey A few questions as i’m trying to do this and its slightly over my head but i think i’m making progress.

I got the firmware flashed and appears to be the right firmware and i got ESPlorer open and connecting to the MCU.

When i try to upload files i get “Uploading to ESP file alarm.lua…Waiting answer from ESP - Timeout reached. Command aborted.” what am i doing wrong?

also am i missing in the readme instruction what variables i’m supposed to fill into the variables file before uploading?

thanks for the help looking forward to getting this working!

I am setting it up currently for 5 contact sensors (doors) and 1 motion sensor. I will eventually add more MCU’s to the system to control window contact sensors and smoke alarms…

thanks for the help!"

I’ve experienced upload timeouts because of the pins I had connected at the time. If you haven’t already, remove all your pin connections before you connect and upload.

Got it
It’s also not letting me select multiple files for the upload I can only do
one at s time

The variables are the name of your WiFi network, your password, and one other piece of information… I’d have to look at the instructions to remember it all, but I’m pretty sure all the details were there somewhere. You’ll need them entered if you want it to connect!

For the timeout issue, I may have run into that as well and it took a few firmware flashes. There was another way to try to upload, I’m pretty sure @heythisisnate had another post somewhere here… Save files or some other permutation to upload?

Hang in there, it’ll all click one of these times, and you may not know what you did exactly. I had zero experience at all, and I eventually got it all sorted out!

Hey Josh,

I suggest you wait another day or two for me to release version 2.0 which will solve all of the setup complications. It’s coming very soon, just finishing up some documentation and polish.

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