I am looking for advice on a 12-volt relay I can put into existing alarm circuitry to repurpose the existing sirens. The rest of the alarm is scrap as far as I can tell. It uses wireless sensors and I cannot find a replacement controller board for them, so I'm going to go with a Simplisafe setup, poll it every minute, and then trip the existing sirens if theirs an alarm. I'm doing this since the single base-station alert isn't loud enough to reach the basement or the master BR. I've confirmed that shorting across the siren lead at the box causes the sirens to trigger, so now I just need a relay to put into that circuit.
Any advice will be happily accepted, even if you tell me I'm chasing the wrong fox
Quibino will do the job, but if you want full integration and you haven't already bought fully into Simplisafe, this community Ring integration is very good with their alarm.
Thanks for the quick reply, the lead, and the alternative. I must admit though that the publicity surrounding the recent takeover of Ring cameras has put me off that brand. Still, I'll review the board.
If you plan to use it with Simplisafe, I'm not sure how many people here will be able to tell you which relays will work. If you where using it on Hubitat I'd suggest either the Konnected Relay kit for $49 which can also handle 6 wired contacts for open/close, water, motion, buttons, ... or Quibino
I will be using it with Hubitat. I've been using the SS driver written for Hubitat for about 30 days now and its been quite solid. Not as integrated as the ring suite that @SmartHomePrimer references, but it alerts me to any alarm states, I can use those to trigger the relay for the sirens.
Unfortunately the GE alarm I am retiring uses wireless sensors for motion, glass break, entry, CO, and smoke. The only wired elements are the keypads and the alarms. Konnected Relay doesn't work with wireless sensors as best I can tell. If I'm wrong there, please correct me though
The Ring camera hysteria that continues to be pumped up by certain media channels because it’s click-worthy, has absolutely nothing to do with their alarm system. So there’s no cause for alarm (pun intended ).
Ouch such severe punishment was not warranted, anyway it seems that even if I changed horses and went with RIng (which a quick review of that board does seem very well integrated) I would still need the same type of relay to pull my existing sirens into the loop (frugal old Yankee here).
No, unfortunately Konnected won't work with the wireless sensors. I'm guessing they are not Zigbee or Z-Wave where they would work with Hubitat? With the Konnected board you could connect your siren and add some wired sensors if you wanted to save battery and cost, if your house makes it easy (false basement ceiling) I recently wired multiple water leak sesnors, contacts, and a Siren to one of those boards. The Konnected board communicates over the local LAN so an internet outage wouldn't affect it however only the yet to be released Pro board will eliminate the WiFi from causing an issue if you don't have multiple wired APs.
You do realize that polling it every minute will mean up to a 1 minute delay before your alarm will sounds. If you are going with simplisafe, why not use a Simplisafe siren? The whole point of having a separate alarm system is that your system is not dependent on Hubitat. Your solution is the worst of both worlds. You're trying to have simplisafe to be your sensors but hubitat your alarm. If anything, it should be the other way around.
I would stick with a Simplisafe (or Ring if you choose to go that route) sire rather than trying to move one in from Hubitat. Either that or build out hubitat and use HSM as your alarm.
A legit question - The main base-station has a siren built in which covers most of the living area, the Smokes also have alarms built in, should it be a fire event. SS wants $69 a pop for the remote sirens (you tell me why, I don't see it) and the cheap yankee in me can't see spending that if I can repurpose the ones I already have. 60 seconds isn't that long for a secondary system (in my estimation), but if I change my mind (and after you asked, I might), I can always increase the polling frequency.
I don't want to go with HSM since I cannot get monitoring for it If there was a good monitoring & keyboard option for HSM I would consider that strongly
The publicity surrounding the recent takeover of Ring (AND Nest cameras) shouldn't put you off the brand. In all researched cases the cameras were not hacked. Instead, the user was at fault for reusing credentials and a breach at some other location provided the credentials or weak passwords were to blame.
I'm also not saying I love Ring cameras though. Be wary of Ring (AND Nest). I'm just saying the the media coverage is targeted at the same demographic that left themselves open to vulnerability and they are, for the most part, ignorant of the real issues.
There are tons of problems with the Ring cameras. I have a huge laundry list of changes and problems... I'm probably more qualified than most to make that statement as well. I've been using their brand since the very beginning. I own almost every one of their products... and I'm the one who created the community Ring integration.
The Ring Alarm, on the other hand, is pretty fantastic. Sounds like you are going to re-purpose what you have and I think that's cool too. Keep on rocking.
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