The power is still running through the alarm panel, which in most cases outputs 12V DC. If you have an existing alarm panel, you can easily draw power from it to power the NodeMCU. The wires on the left side of the alarm panel contacts are mostly for power out. My siren, motion sensors and glass-break sensors are still powered through the alarm panel, but the sensor/trigger wire has been moved over to the NodeMCU.
The wires on the right side of the alarm panel are for the analog phone line. I just never disconnected them, just lazy. It doesn’t do anything … I don’t even have landline phone service.
If you want to completely remove your old alarm panel for the “cleanest” installation, you can totally do that. In that case, you should power the NodeMCU device with a 12V DC power adapter and you can use it to send power to the motion detectors, siren and other powered sensors throughout the house.
Yea i think the only problem is where those wires come down, I wouldn’t know which is which. Its wired for window/door sensors, smoke detectors, motion etc…
I configured version 2.0 yesterday. I do have to say that I’m quite happy so far. Automation involving my contact/motion sensors seems to be way more responsive than with v.1. Great job, guys!
Since i dont have an existing panel how would I know how many “zones” i have? I would like to purchase the kit but im not sure which one I would need size wise.
How many wires are coming out of the wall? That is basically the maximum number of zones. This can be reduced if you wire some of the magnetic sensors together in series (at the alarm panel location) to truly create a “zone”. A zone is just a grouping of sensors that are wired in series. A zone can have as few as one sensor or as many as you’d like to combine. The downside of creating zones with many sensors is you do not know which one triggered. So, people typically combine all of the window sensors from a room to create a “zone”. Then at least you know which room tripped the alarm.
Awesome! Thanks for the info! Makes sense. I should have looked at the forums first. I just bought like 180.00 in zigbee open/close sensors for the all the windows, mounted them, and got rid of the boxes…
Is there anyone else that isn’t seeing the device on WiFi during initial setup? I had version 1 (pre-Konnected) installed on the board, but flashed konnected-security-2-0.bin. Thinking that the old files might stilll be there, I did a Format via Esplorer, and sent the firmware again. Still, I’m not seeing the device broadcasting on WiFi.
Nope. I had done that with the prior version, but wasn’t sure if that was required with 2.0. Thank you!
Edit: Working now. The GitHub integration is very cool btw. Glad that you named it properly as well. Almost all of the ones I have setup are named “SmartThingsPublic”.
I think because you migrated from that pre-konnected, your Wifi SSID was saved in your NodeMCU device. Your device should automatically connect to your WiFi. Try checking your router to confirm.
The WiFi settings were preserved, even though I had clicked on the format button in Esplorer and received a message that it was successful. It connects to WiFi very quickly!
One question, the app shows that 7 pins are configurable. Were you able to get a 7th pin working?
Thanks for all of your help. Nice to see that the documentation is building up. I imagine that some YouTube videos would be popular. FYI: the link for Windows drivers is 404.
The 7th pin is D8 which is only usable as an output (for a siren), not a sensor. I also have seen some issues with D8 triggering the siren upon reboot or power failure, so I’m not really recommending using it right now, although you’re welcome to try. I need to do some more experimentation on this and will update the docs.
Youtube videos are on the roadmap . There’s a lot of work to do!
Ah yes, pin RX works for sensors. The only caveat is that it will interfere with serial connection by USB. So you cannot use it when hooked up to a computer, but works fine otherwise.
I had done that with the prior version, but wasn’t sure if that was required with 2.0. Thank you!
Almost all of the ones I have setup are named “SmartThingsPublic”.
. There’s a lot of work to do!