Repurpose wireless alarm system components?

Devices & Integrations
1

Hey everyone. I purchased the SmartThings Home Monitoring Kit and looking forward to using it. I’m new to the community and new to DIY home security and was wondering if anyone had advice or could point me to a similar post. I just move in to my home and noticed it has wireless contact sensors on every door and window throughout the house as well as wireless motion detectors. I found the control panel and it is a PC1616, but the keypad is no longer hooked up. I found it laying on a shelf near the control panel. The keypad is a DSC RFK 5501. I believe the wireless contact sensors are 2gig DW10. If I am able to hook the keypad back up, is there anything I could add to have it communicate with SmartThings? Or is there a standalone device out there that could pick up the frequencies of the wireless sensors/motion detectors and communicate with SmartThings (Essentially bypassing the current control panel in the house)? I don’t know if this will help any, but i believe Vivint did the initial setup, but ADT was later used by the previous owners. Any advice would be much appreciated.

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I don’t know any details of the specific hardware, but you could either get lucky or be “out of luck”, when it comes to wireless sensors. Unlike hardwired sensors which are “easy” to hack (with the ingenious Konnected.io kit!), wireless compatibility is a crap shoot.

  • Unless they are Z-Wave or ZigBee HA; the SmartThings Hub can’t talk to them.

  • Even if they are Z-Wave or ZigBee HA; they have to have firmware that is not customized and is compatible with an existing Device Type Handler and/or issue a signature with enough information to write a custom Device Type Handler.

  • Finally, it might be possible to hack it at the Control Panel; but that’s a very long shot. I think the software is locked down and doesn’t have an open API.

So… Unless I’m missing something, you have only a slight chance that these are Z-Wave or ZigBee HA compatible and do not have customized firmware. Pretty low odds.

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4

Unfortunately The individual sensors are not compatible. These use a frequency which is not supported by SmartThings.

Thin Door/Window Contact is designed for use on doors, windows, and other objects that open and close. It communicates with the control panel using the 345 MHz frequency.

See the following article in the community – created wiki:

http://thingsthataresmart.wiki/index.php?title=Supported_Network_Protocols

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That said, if you can get the DSC control panel working again, there are some members who have created a partial integration between the DSC control panel and SmartThings (rather than between individual DSC sensors and SmartThings) but it will require buying some additional hardware and a rather complex set up, and I didn’t check your particular model number to see if it would work. But this would be a place to start if you can get the control panel working.

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Thanks for the responses. I’ll start researching.

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