DSC alarm without Arduino

I have a (old) DSC PC3000 alarm installed in my house. I did read about the option to fully integrate the system with SmartThings using Arduino. Despite that this sounds great, it involves replacing major parts of the alarm system.

To still be able to know if the alarm was triggered, I am looking for some input.

  1. Is there a way to detect if the alarm was triggered? There might be an way to use the siren connection with a low voltage z-wave / ZigBee trigger device?
  2. Would there be an app that can do something with this trigger (turning on lights, sending sms, etc)?

Looking forward for the ideas!

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I believe that you can use a z-wave Mimolite to detect when a presence sensor is triggered, but if you only buy 1 mimo lite you won’t be able to know which area was the one that it was triggered. Also I believe with the same mimo lite relay you could activate your alarm siren.

Anyway, in terms of usability and cost i definitely recommend using arduino.

@JITTO The idea would be to only tab into the signal from the alarm to know if it was triggered. So maybe the MIMOlite might be the device I was looking for. I can connect this to one of the outputs of the alarm and get a message.

Any thoughts on how to integrate this into SmartThings?

No, the Arduino solution involves adding to the alarm system, not replacing anything. It all still works just like before, with the addition of communication with SmartThings!

If you decide to just go with the MIMOLite, it will easily pair with SmartThings. I currently use one to monitor a driveway sensor that activated a relay: I wired in the MIMOLite to the relay, paired it with ST and set it as a “Z-Wave Motion Sensor”.

That is an interesting point. I understood it needed a specific model of the DSC alarm system for the full integration to work. Are you saying I have the option to use my (old) system and enjoy the input from all my sensors?

The MIMOLite option still sounds like a relative easy option. I will have a look into this one.

It just needs to be compatible with the IT-100. From their site:

Compatible with all PowerSeries control panels PC1616,PC1832 and PC 1864

In my case, my alarm it’s a DSC 1565 and even thou the official documentation said that IT-100 it’s not supported with my alarm, the only thing that i can’t manage to do is to disarm the alarm from ST, so official documentation is wrong.

Found the solution! Cant wait to install it.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nateclark/konnected-alarm-panel-revive-your-wired-alarm-syst/description

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