Low cost way to add multiple dry contacts?

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1

I've just purchased my first Elevate hub and just wondering if anyone has a solution for adding legacy alarm style dry window and door contacts. Lot's of solutions using zigbee or Z-wave single contact magnetic door sensors, but I have the whole house wired to a "legacy" alarm panel (simple system, but EXTREMELY reliable... installed when the house was built, all concealed wiring, no batteries, etc).

I mostly want to use the dry sensors as triggers for scenes and to create notifications if door opened when away, etc. I may be asking for too much (basically a multi-channel dry contact device)... But purchasing a dozen or so of the Sonoff zigbee sensor devices seems like a brute force approach, and actually not sure how they would behave in mesh environment if they were mostly co-located?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

2

Many of us have used Konnected to transition legacy wired sensor systems into Hubitat. It works as advertised, although in the long run, I've been trying to reduce the number of Konnected boards I have.

3

The Zooz ZEN16 has 3 inputs for about $30. Another DIY option would be to use an arduino style board with the Hubduino application.

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4

Is your goal to sense if "any" sensor goes open? Or do you want zones or even individual contact reports?

Are your switches wired to a common location?

Are you willing to solder a simple breadboard?

5

I'd like to be able to support individual contact reports, it's handy to tell if you have left a window open for example, but if I go with a Zigbee device interface I could always series connect some of the contacts (they are normally closed) to reduce the total count.

All of the switches are home run to the alarm panel (which I plan on obsoleting eventually...).

In regard to building my own breadboard, it would depend on complexity vs. the cost of alternatives, but honestly I don't know where to start to accomplish that?

6

Hal9000, I'm just reading about the Konnected product... seems like a good solution if it's stable and reliable... wondering what the downside is, aside from cost? I guess it would be nice to have something simply hardwired without multiple wifi links, but other negatives?

7

If the contacts are part of an existing alarm system you may be able to use Envisalink which is an Ethernet board that connects to a DSC or Vista alarm system. There is a Hubitat driver that works well. I have a mix of wired and wireless connections which all appear as individual devices on Hubitat.

8

I can confirm that Konnected is working great for me for more than a year now.

9

I'm virtually sponsored by konnected. It's ace, the vast majority of my smart home is dome through this.

10

If you have an existing alarm panel, then Konnected is probably the perfect solution for you. Mine has been reliable and stable most of the time. The ESP8266 boards seem to be rather fragile, but then again, they can be replaced for about $8 each. Understand mine are first gen Konnected, not current gen.

This is a minor point, but I prefer something packaged like the ZEN16 set of dry contact relays. I've moved all my open/close dry contacts (to control status LEDs, sound alarms, control equipment, etc.) from Konnected to ZEN16. [Note: I'm not sure how one would use ZEN16 for wired motion/glass/contact sensors, but perhaps I just didn't research that since it wasn't my goal at the time.]

Finally, and this is minor as well, there is quite a bit of ssdpTerm logging in Hub events due to Konnected that I'd love to turn off, but there doesn't seem to be a way.

11

Only ones i know of are A) It doesn't handle wireless connections. B) You may need multiple boards depending on the number of contacts you have.

12

Thanks to everyone who have provided suggestions, it's really nice to see that Hubitat has such a friendly and accommodating user community.

I'm convinced that there are multiple ways forward connecting the legacy dry alarm contacts and the more I consider the options I can see many advantages to doing so. Thanks again for taking the time to point me in the right direction(s), I'm looking forward to learning a lot more about the Hubitat hub product, hopefully to the point that I can contribute in the future!

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13

Guys, I can also validate Konnected's reliability. Its never failed me! My only frustration is that I never wired every window individually when I built my house. Many windows are in series however this clearly isn't a failing in Konnecteds part :+1: