Out of curiosity which panel? I had upgraded to the Lyric controller and at that time the alarm service had installed a wireless conversion card that just converted all my wired zones into wireless zones. When I switched to Konnected boards I just went in and moved my wired sensors back in to the old ademco enclosure; the nice thing was I was able to even split up a few zones the company had consolidated (I had something like 8 windows in multiple rooms on one zone). I had a few wireless contact sensors that just straight up had to be replaced, but frankly they were getting to be a PITA, and at $50 plus the $120 service charge to replace I was just done and happy to replace then with a few $25 Homeseer z wave sensors.
As for points of failure... Serious consideration, I agree. Again, I didn't have much choice since our service provider was looking to force another equipment upgrade and a contract, and I'm just not a fan of contracts. From a failure standpoint in my scenario:
Original setup (Lyric and TC2 seperate from home automation)
-Pros: monitored and maintained by a third party, no real involvement myself; only point of failure was the hardware itself really
-Cons: associated costs for service and monitoring; wireless contact sensors frequently fell off the grid and set off the alarm (usually in the middle of the night while on vacation) and were a constant failure point for us; automation was supported by TC2 but was clunky and rather limited; geofencing in the TC2 app (at least while we had it) was iffy and not reliable for arming or disarming
New setup (Hubitat/Konnected):
Pros: all automation under one umbrella; geofencing works and arming/disarming occurs reliably; low monitoring costs ($10/month); ability to self service equipment; robust automation options
Cons: multiple potential failure points (one for each interface, hubitat, Noonlight, and Konnected); no professional service support if needed; design and implementation of the system may be more involved than many people want to get into.
I'm biased because I really like my current setup and the tinkering, but I do have to say overall it's pretty nice to not have to call the monitoring service every time I need to change a battery in a contact sensor or smoke detector.
Once you have the itch for home automation... It just never stops lol
