I’m looking for recommendations for a replacement alarm. The situation is that my daughter has just moved into her first house, which is fitted, with a rather old a flakey alarm system. My take on it is, the sensors are all working, but the keypads are knackered, and the batteries have had it. Now we could probably get it serviced, and fixed up, but my son-in-law has seen some of the automation stuff at our house, and has long term plans when money allows. So ideally we are looking to rip out the old control box, and keypads. And replace with something new, while keeping the old wiring and sensors. I looked at Konnected but ideally we need to replace the keypads, and still use the outside alarm box, while adding smartphone integration and future hassio integration.
You could replace the panel and keypad with a Paradox one. I have mine intefaced with HA via a Wemos D1 mini and some custom code by Maragelis, Github.
Just be aware of the home insurance implications of modifying your existing alarm; they may not cover you for a burglary if you’ve tampered with a standard install. Also in Ireland it has to be a licenced person to work on the alarm or you can be fined (if any money changes hands).
I’ve a bog standard Irish wired alarm system that is about 12 years old and I was quoted hundreds of euro to upgrade it to a smart system, but that would also require a monthly subscription and no home assistant integration. It seems that UK and Ireland alarm systems are still a few years behind the rest of the world but they’re slowly catching up.
My solution for now was to buy a load of wireless door and motion sensors from xiaomi and integrate those into home assistant and essentially run a separate smart alarm system. So I have my ‘approved’ dumb alarm system armed at night and while I’m away, keeping the insurance company happy, but I then also have my DIY smart alarm system that let’s me know if theres motion at the front door or garden when nobody is home, send me alerts if the alarm is tripped, triggers recordings with the cameras, automatically sets and unset etc. It’s great piece of mind and it wasn’t too expensive either as each xiaomi sensor is less than a tenner and I needed all these sensors for my home assistant setup anyway (motion sensors for lighting, door and window sensors for the climate control etc)