I have spent sometime looking through old and recent posts for a solution to there being no Outdoor Siren’s under the Smartthings supported devices article available in the UK.
As a total rookie I have found a few threads that look promising but confusing, and I am hopeful that someone who has successfully implemented such solutions in the UK come across this post and can offer some advice.
The only requirements I have is that the siren will be waterproof, or at least modified to be waterproof and the configuration/setup is reliable that once done, there will be little upkeep required to keep it running.
I am new to these protocols used and platforms so I appreciate your help.
@Dan_Newcombe
A lot of so called smart home alarm systems only have indoor sirens which is not what one ideally wants. A lot of other consumer alarms systems only have battery and/or solar powered sirens as they are sold as ‘wireless’ alarm systems, e.g. Yale.
Since a siren ideally needs to be positioned high enough to be out of reach of your average knuckle dragging crim I totally agree with the desire for a siren with a wired power connection even if it has the signalling done wirelessly. This avoids the need to get a ladder to reach and swap any batteries no matter how infrequent this happens.
It should be noted I have had both battery powered and solar with battery backup sirens fail completely.
A fair number of traditional wired alarm systems still offer wired sirens but obviously these are intended to be powered and controlled via the matching wired alarm panel. I have however seen some suggestions which involve using one of these standard wired sirens and powering it via a transformer but controlling it via something like a Fibaro Z-Wave switch/relay.
You would need to look carefully at the wiring and power requirements as sirens run off something like 5 to 12V DC not 220v AC.
A different approach would be to get a battery powered smart outdoor siren but custom wire power to it to replace the battery by soldering wires to the battery connectors.
You might want to look purely at Zigbee options as Zigbee unlike Z-Wave uses the same standard globally. Accordingly I found the following.
The following seems the same but from a different brand.
It appears to be an outdoor rated Zigbee siren with battery backup and a 5V DC power supply. Almost certainly the power supply will be a US only design but again almost certainly will have a standard mini-jack plug at the siren end meaning you should be easily able to obtain a UK 5V DC power supply to use with it.