Hey all, wondering if anyone has seen a relay (not for garage door openers in this case) where it can do supervisory monitoring of a 12v circuit and signal open/closed status back to smartthings?
The use case is that I have a security panel terminal that signals high with 12v in case the unit goes into alarm. The only thing I want to do is tell smartthings the panel has gone into alarm so an app could automate other functions. (Turning on lights for example.)
There are other projects looking to attach sensor communication from the panel but really I only want to signal state on the circuit.
That would be pretty easy to wire up but I haven’t found a contact sensor with an external link. I thought about buying one and just ripping it apart and replacing the reed switch with a relay. Do you know of a link to this product?
Several contact sensor reveal extra dry contacts when the case is open. People use them to add a zwave or zigbee antenna to all kinds of projects, including pressure mats, outdoor gate sensors, etc.
Here’s one project example using the Ecolink.
The Schlage sensor is another. @trotsky40 has used one to connect to his hardwired nonnetworked smoke alarms, for example.
Search the forums for “dry contact” and you’ll find other examples.
If you’re connecting directly to the panel, though, rather than one of the sensors, you may have to check the voltage compatibility. See this discussion:
Also if you search the forums for DSC, you’ll find descriptions of projects where people have connected to existing security systems in various ways.
I saw that but got the impression from others use case that it was more for programmable output than state/input. Perhaps I had the wrong impression? I’ll take another look at that too. The contact sensors described above have reviews where people have said that wired input is difficult or non-functioning out of the box. Still gotta start somewhere!
Reading up on the fortrezz website directly (http://www.fortrezz.com/index.php/products/mimolite) this is potentially a perfect fit. The use cases presented perhaps led me wrong on it. Thanks for repointing.
I had looked at it before for exactly the same purpose - tying SmartThings into my old alarm panel. Besides reporting armed status, I also thought you could use the MIMOs output contacts to allow ST to trip the alarm if, for example, there was activity on a ST motion sensor. Essentially, it would be a way to extend the alarm system with non-proprietary sensors.
That’s an interesting use case as well. While I’m a believer in separation of duties (I wouldn’t use home automation to create a security monitoring system) there’s a variety of potentially colorful scenarios that brings to mind. However the way I would see automation helping the system would be more process oriented because most panels lack programmable logic. (Perhaps all of them.)
I’ve been looking for a Driveway Sensor that has Smarthome integration… I have yet to find anything that is built for outdoors that would trip a Zwave (or preferrably Zigbee) notification…