@mweston It seems like you got the hard wiring of contact sensor to work for individual zone. In my case, I have 2 doors hooked to Zone1, the third door hooked to Zone 2, all downstairs windows hooked to Zone 3 and all upstairs windows hooked to Zone 4. What I want to do it combine Zone 1 and 2 , and combine Zones 3 and 4. So use just two of the z-wave contact sensors , where one detects any door opening and the other detects any window opening.
How do you think I can connect 2 zones to a single zwave door/contact? Do you think its even possible? I dont want to spend $30 for each zone.
You should be able to. Iām not sure what alarm panel you have but mine sounds very similar. I thought I had wired mine to work for only one zone but it is actually working on 2 zones and only 1 contact sensor. So Smartthings reports as open if I open any door or window on my Zoneās 2 or 3.
Iāll have to go look to tell you exactly how it is wired but I believe what I did was wired the + wire to the zone 2 positive terminal and the - wire to zone 3 negative terminal.
You could probably figure it out by trying a few different wiring configurations and opening a door or window to see what goes off. Iāll see if I can take another photo for you. I also plan on switching out the contact sensor for an Arduino to isolate the zones individually and it will probably be ab it cheaper than buying a bunch of contact sensors.
Thanks! I am waiting for my contact sensor to arrive, after which I am going to get my hands dirty on this. I have DSC panel and I am working on a simple circuit that will accept multiple zones as input and if any one zone is active the relay at the output will be activated. I will connect the NC of the relay to the zwave sensor. So that way if I trip any zone then I will be able to trigger the contact sensor. It will also make sure that I am isolating the alarm panel and the rigged set up completely. Also planning to have a on board power supply to the contact sensorā¦so that way I wont need batteries. Let me see how it goes, will update if I have anything good.
If you could send me the pic of your set up that will be helpful. Thanks once again.
OK, So I have finally made a circuit that successfully integrates my existing DSC panel zones with an external zwave door/window contact. The good thing is that I do not need to have an individual door contact sensor for each door or window. With this circuit I am able to trigger the door contact sensor when any of my doors are opened/closed (and really that is all I need, I dont really need to know which exact door was opened, especially when used with a smart app such as SmarAlarm)ā¦And I have a second door sensor hooked to trigger, when any window in my home is opened. I also tested the circuit with the zone which have motion sensorsā¦and guess whatā¦It works there tooā¦so i can use my existing motion sensors as wellā¦may need to expand the circuit to a 3rd door/contact sensor which will support motion sensors (may be later). I chose the cheaper door window sensors (Everspring - $30), because all I needed was a door contact sensor that reports status and is compatible with ST.
Posting some pics of my PCB (home made), circuit board and the interface
So for $60, some components and circuit design skills, I was able to use all my existing hardwired sensors.
The circuit is powered using the Aux ports of the DSC panel - Designed to draw the rated current and also has onboard 4.5V supply which powers the zigbee door contact sensor (no need to have batteries)
As the hardware zone loop is powered by a constant voltage level delivered by the burglary
control unit or a zone expander, it is very easy build and to apply a devices that can read and remember the voltage level in the zone loop, and later, on a request, feed it back to the zone loop. I did project āArduino Uno project burglar zone input testerā and can be found on http://cjjconsultant.my-free.website/Articles
CJ
