[OBSOLETE: NEWER VERSION AVAILABLE] Konnected Security 2.0 - Connect Wired Alarm System Sensors and Siren to SmartThings - big update and new name!

Fired off that email just now, hope it helps!

@jp12687, the stock has arrived and @heythisisnate is working hard to deliver them. Your unit has been sent out. Please email help@konnected.io if you need your tracking number.

@cucamelsmd15, THANK YOU for the kind feedback. We will continue to improve our product and the documentation too.

Yes, more inventory arrived yesterday. All orders will go to the post office today!

Standed wire here too, I just had to strip it back to new wire and twist it really tight to get it to fit. I would go the pin route if I had some.

I went nuclear. Allen Bradley mini terminals and a strip of din rail from my spare parts bin at work.:joy:

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A week or two into setting up the Konnected security alarm system, I have a few items to share:

This thing is great! It’s extremely well thought out and put together. What it does is it bundles up to six contact sensors together into a single piece of hardware which talks to SmartThings. The alternative is to purchase each separate device, then have them all talk to ST individually. What you save is the interface hardware, so if you already have several wired contacts installed, this thing makes sense from a financial point of view alone.

What you give up is simplicity. There are some software instructions that need to be followed scrupulously. Following that, wiring the dang thing can be a bit complex, but not overly so if you proceed slowly and methodically. Here are some tips
• The guys, Nate in Particular, are very responsive to questions. If you foul something up or something doesn’t work right, drop Nate a note at their help email address. My errors have been stupid ones, but Nate is very patient and understanding.
• Print out their instructions (I made PDFs, which I can edit), then go through them in detail. Be aware that, if your fonts don’t match up, you may get some items in lettering so small that you can’t read it. For example, the last line in “Connect to Wifi…” as reads “Select your wireless network from the drop-down menu…” is too small to read on my printout. I missed it, so my hardware didn’t pair with my hub. …not good! (Thanks to Nate for diagnosing this promptly.)
• Check off each item as you complete it. This way, you can be aware of some of the pitfalls. For example, in “Enable Github Integration…” I forgot to go to “…My Locations and click on your location. This ensures you’re on the right SmartThings server for your hub.” I didn’t, so the system couldn’t find stuff because it wasn’t looking on the right server, so “device discovery” couldn’t happen. (Again, Nate to the rescue.)
• You have up to six inputs available. Write them down, then group them into zones (by function), assign your contacts to them, then assign a pin to each. For example, here are mine:
o Front door (open/close sensor) (pin 1)
o Back door (open/close sensor) (daisy-chain to pin 1)
o Not used (pin 2)
o Motion sensors (open/close sensor)(daisy-chain to pin 5)
o Windows + Breakage (open/close sensor)(daisy-chained to Pin 6)
o Smoke alarm (smoke detector)(pin 7)
o Not used (panic button)
o (coming soon) Siren (siren/strobe)
o Not used (pin Rx)
• What is a daisy-chain? Well, suppose you have four windows in a room. Rather than tie up four contacts, hook them up in series so that opening any one (or more) breaks the circuit, causing an “open” indication. You can actually mix devices, as long as you chain the contact closure leads together and correctly power up any devices which require power. Go slowly and deliberately, here- - hook up a voltmeter or light-and-battery to the contact chain so you can tell if it indicates closure. Chain a group of contact closure sensors to one and only one powered device. Then power up the powered device. Hopefully the contact closure light or voltage indication works, showing a complete circuit. If it doesn’t, try reversing the power leads to the powered device. That should work. It’s probably a good idea to hook up the power leads permanently at this stage.

Now hook up the second chain, doing as before. When you get the chain to indicate closure, permanently install the power leads. Continue until everything in the chain is working. Then, install the contact closure circuit permanently.

By permanently, I mean that you will need to make sure all the intermediate connections are permanent too. A big thank-you to the Konnected guys for their push-in connection leads, but there aren’t enough to do this for all connections, so consider soldering intermediate leads and using the push-on connectors only to connect to the circuit board. This makes for reliable connections. In particular, if you have contacts which use stranded wire, you just about have to solder them. Push connectors don’t work well with stranded wire. No big deal, though: for the final connection to the circuit board, pull the connectors off one end of a pair of leads, then solder your contact wires to them, and use the push-on connectors to connect to the circuit board.
• Which push-on connectors go where? I had to ask Nate:
o One quick (dumb) question. Your photos of wiring connections to the board always show the upper right ground pin in use, plus a connection in the right-most column. Where do the 2nd and later connections go?
Nate replied with the following information:
o All the pins in the same row are equivalent. The columns don’t make a difference. There are three rows of GND pins on the right side of the board, making a total of 12 pins. You can use any of them.
o Similarly, any pin in the same row for the input pins will work.
o Pin D0 does not work. Check the documentation and the configuration screen for the valid pins: D1, D2, D5, D6, D7 and RX
• Using that guidance, I was able to knock out the rest of the contact input wiring in little time. As to the siren… well, I’m not there yet. I’ll add on my experiences as soon as I get it going.

Meanwhile, get busy building. This thing isn’t that hard. In fact, it’s a joy to find something so well-designed and well-built.

Buy this! It’s a steal! I wish they’d have a talk with Elon Musk about building Tesla cars. If cars were built this way, we’d all have one within the year and the price would be… Well, you know…

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Hi Nate,

Let me start by saying - WOW! what a transformation 2.0 brings, and with a cool rebrand.

As you know, I’ve been using your system for some time and I’m upgrading to 2.0 as we speak.

First of my two NodeMCU worked a treat - fantastic. Second, didn’t :frowning:

I get the following error.

  8:39:13 PM: error java.lang.NullPointerException: Cannot get property 'mac' on null object @ line 323
 8:39:13 PM: info updated(): Updating Konnected Security SmartApp 

The only difference between the 1st run and the 2nd is that I was rotating NodeMCU’s - as in I had two running v1 in my panel, I bought a 3rd. Flashed the 3rd with v2 - pulled out one in the panel and placed the 3rd into it’s base board.
The one I took out, I flashed with the new source-code - however this time, I didn’t need to visit 192.168.4.1 because it connected to my WiFi directly. Now it looks like I have a mac addressed error? Can you help.

p.s see PM as well.

I’ve answered my own problem.

If you’re upgrading, you need to delete the Cloud Sensor SmartApp.

Looks to be all working now - going to rename everything again.

Thanks

Hey @heythisisnate, so i got my ST hub (v1.0), got it on eBay for $25, took like 2 weeks to get here though. I have everything connected up (not to the actual alarm yet). I get the status changes in the ST app, I get the push/text messages etc through the SHM, but i cant get the “siren” to work (i selected it in SHM). I have a relay connected, it is the 5v one i told you about a while back, so i have it connected to the 5V pin on the baseboard, not the 3V. When everything is connected, (i am using two NodeMCUs, both connected separately one to usb, the other to a 12v adapter) both the red and green light are lit on the relay, and the green goes off if i disconnect the “IN” cable (the relay is connected IN - D7, GND - GND (next to UI), VCC - 5V (next to UI), on the board connected to the 12V adapter). Correct me if i am wrong, but even without the siren or anything connected to the relay, the green light should reflect whether it is activated or not right? What am i missing? Cheers in advance, and v2.0 is looking great.

Hey @MexicoMatt,

It sounds like you’re pretty close. Two ideas here:

  1. Make sure the GND of the relay is connected to the GND next to the 5V pin on the board. It shouldn’t matter which GND, because they’re all a common ground as far as I know, but just to be sure.

  2. The relay that you have may, in fact, be a low-level trigger relay. Our software was was written assuming a high-level trigger (relay activates when voltage is high). You can confirm this by tapping the alarm on/off in the SmartThings “My Home” view and see if the relay actually turns off when SmartThings thinks it’s on. If this is the case, then you just need to modify the code in a couple places to reverse the on/off logic:

    1. In the “Konnected Siren/Strobe device handler” simply reverse the 1 and 0 in the on() and off() functions.
    2. In application.lua line 19, change the initial value of the actuator pin to gpio.HIGH instead of gpio.LOW and re-upload this file to the device.

Let me know if this helps!

hey @heythisisnate, thanks for the reply. Ok so, i put the 5v & GND next to each other. My relay IS a Low-Level (it is printed on the bottom, so no doubt there!). So i made the changes in the code(s) you said. Uploaded the updated application.lua file (to both of the NodeMCU, just to be safe), and still the same. Again, do i need to have something connected to the relay for testing, or should the green light just go on and off? Also, i might be not understanding, but when i press the “ALARM” button on the “Things” tab (in "My Home) should that switch on/off the relay right then, or does it mean it is ready to activate when a contact is opened or closed?. Either way the green / red lights are always on, unless i disconnect the D7 wire.
Cheers
PS - Not sure if it helps, but when i press the ALARM button on the “Things” tab, the blue led flashes on the NodeMCU, so it is getting a command, but nothing happens to the relay.

UPDATE - ok, so i just to try connected the VCC of the relay to the 3V pin on the right side of the board, under the GND, and now it seems to be switching on and off when it should, either when i press the ALARM button, or when a contact is opened! did work on the 5V though, would it still have enough power to make the siren sound?

Hey @MexicoMatt, sounds like you’re figuring it out. I don’t know the specifics of the relay that you’re using, but 3.3V may be enough to power it. I’ve been experimenting with other 5V relay modules, and usually it works perfectly to power it with the 5V output from the base pins, so I don’t know why you had trouble with that setup. As long as the relay clicks over reliably, it should be enough to turn on the siren. The siren has a separate 12V power supply that it draws from the alarm panel, if you wire it according to our instructions. When the relay clicks over, it completes that circuit and the siren will sound.

@heythisisnate this might be another silly question, but the siren connected to my alarm has 4 wires, i see the instructions for 4 wired sirens, but i dont have the TRG, TR-, H/O- and H/O+ connections (i dont think) the siren has a black/red connected to -/+ on the alarm panel, but it also has a green and white with are wired into Zone 7 of the panel. I am assuming i should tap into the positive wire, but should i leave the zone wires connected or disconnect them? Cheers again.

Hmm, this doesn’t sound like any setup I’ve seen before, but I’m sure it’s not too hard to figure out. If the red/black wires are constantly receiving power because they’re connect to the aux +/- , then I would assume that the two other wires are the trigger signal. You could try touching the two green/white wires together and see if the siren sounds.

If that does it, then just connect the green and white wires to NO and COM on the relay.

Is there any way to do this and retain something like a door chime feature?

There are a number of ways to implement a door chime when specific doors open using some available Z-wave devices. See: https://community.smartthings.com/search?q=door%20chime

We have on our to-do list to work on a built-in solution for this via the Konnected board. It’s not ready yet, and unfortunately I can’t promise exactly when it will be, but this is definitely something that’s asked for often and we’re working on it.

Have you tested your smoke detectors to see if a signal is sent?

Cool - we set up the aeotec door chime, but it’s a little slow. If there’s a way to trigger faster, that would be awesome.

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@heythisisnate just to let you know, I figured out the siren / 4 wire issue. I climbed up and took a look at the siren box, the Red/Black are the siren wires, and the Green/White are wired to two sensors inside the Siren box, one for if the box is taken off the wall, the other if the box is opened, and they are wired into Zone 7. Just in case anyone else sees a similar setup. Ok everything labeled up, now to test the siren, and if it works, then time to wire everything up. Cheers for all your help let you know how it goes.

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@heythisisnate So i hooked up the siren and the relay green light switches on and off with the ALARM button (when connected to 3V, on 5V it is on all the time), but no sounds from the siren, not even a chirp. The relay i have has Chinese symbols on it on the side that connects to the alarm (English the other side, stupid!) so i tried swapping between the two outer connections (pretty sure the middle is the COM) but same result. I tried touching the Siren wires to the 12V input to the Alarm panel, to see if it worked and it chirped as i touched the terminals, so the siren is working. Don’t know what to do now…