Hi, I’m looking for a UI configurable alarm for HA, a replacement to manual alarm_control_panel which handles all automations internally.
Would like some extra behaviour like:
While arming (pending), as soon as I close the front door, proceed to armed_away
Allow armed_away ↔ armed_home transitions (for allowing my vacuum to work)
Send push messages when something is going on (like tell me which sensors are active when arming)
Was hoping that BWalarm offers such functionality. But from the docs I read that focus is more on frontend (with floorplan, weather report, clock etc.)? Is there any documentation regarding the state machine and configuration options?
If BWalarm is not a good match perhaps I will make a new integration.
Currently I use the MQTT panel with a node.js backend (since I always thought that HA doesn’t offer anything that fits my needs, and I was scared of python). Now I would like to have something more integrated in HA.
Also I’m reading this:
Since HA 0.115 until further notice this component no longer has a GUI panel and can only be controlled via automations/MQTT commands/Lovelace Alarm Card.
What’s the problem here exactly?
Maybe I could help fixing it (since I also play around with creating custom_components and cards)?
So, if you can convert the HTML include files (panel) to a JS include (single file panel), then do a pull request, we would all benefit! Supposedly it is a straightforward conversion. Unfortunately, this is not a skill area I have.
@ceandra I did an attempt, could get it as far as showing a dark grey screen with some blue icons in the bottom.
But the code seems to depend heavily on Polymer and jQuery, while the HA frontend is made with Lit.
I think it needs quite some extensive work to be made compatible again…
Personally I would rather take the route of making a Lovelace Card, with all the essentials to set up an alarm (configure timings, triggers, actions etc.). I see some references to weather, camera, keypad etc.
All of this is already integrated in HA now.
The Manual Alarm route has some limitations compared to BWAlarm, the main one (IMHO) being the issue of the instant vs. delayed alarm. I am not sure if the Lovelace card approach you suggest would retain the neat features of BWAlarm over existing options?
Unfortunately, my JS and HTML coding is very very limited. Wish I could contribute!
That was because the original author had created the side panel to be used as an initial interface whereby (this was/is an option you can set) the alarm panel would block access to the rest of the HA GUI if the alarm was armed, however it then gave us the option to show a weather screen and camera feeds. The idea was that you could use it as your primary HA view. As you say, the weather and cameras are already in HA and this component didn’t recreate that, simply brought them to the side panel. We can do without that if it makes it easier, I personally never enabled those items on the alarm screen and I don’t think too many people did.
My use case for this (other than the nice customizations) is for a larger alarm panel. I use a 7" fire TV for a secondary panel land the default alarm card is very tiny by comparison.
I also used to use a nest hub, but google stops it from casting after a few minutes so it’s not all that useful for that, but same issue. Manual alarm is tiny.
I’ve looked for alternatives, but nothing compares to bwalarm. Would love to see a panel come from this, but if there is a way that I missed to modify the current panel I’m all ears.
I have a question, could the bwalarm be uploaded to HA so that it would be native in ha and thus not have problems with some HA updates?
More and more people are introducing their custom components in HA and it becomes native, it would still improve everything
The short answer is “NO”.
I’ll clarify it a bit later.
I’m also going to explain my vision of what the panel might become based on my thoughts and users’ feedback.
Just bear with me, time is a bit of an issue now :\
It is not my intension to make promotion for my project or whatsover, but I believe a lot of people are looking for a long-term solution to replace BWalarm, and find that there isn’t a real solution currently.
I decided to develop a new alarm integration, perhaps it would interest others here.
The idea is the following:
Starting point will be the manual alarm_control_panel, followed by cherry picking the best of BWalarm’s feature set.
It will be set up as an integration, meaning that it can be installed through the ‘integrations’ page in HA. No yaml.
It will be UI managed. There will be a Lovelace card for configuring the alarm. It can be placed in a panel, or perhaps just in a Lovelace view. Not sure yet. Note that this card is only intended for settings, not for every day use.
The it will be compatible with the lovelace alarm panel card. If there is a need for anything else, a new version could be made.
The focus will be on user-friendliness (besides the reliability you can expect of a security alarm).
Meaning that it will be made possible to set up the entire thing through UI. No additional automations needed (only for customization that does not fit in the integration).
Setup will include defining which sensors are active the away/home/night modes, as well as state transition actions (siren, push notifications, etc.), delays, etc.
There will be no attention given to weather, clock, camera, etc. I think these shouldn’t be part of the alarm system. There are a lot of options for this now.
My intention is to work together with @AhmadK and others here, to make it a worthy alternative for BWalarm.
Hope you guys appreciate the initiative. I’m very much open to your ideas.
Sounds nice, following closely now. Hoping for something like vera had where you said what were door/window sensors and the home/away modes decided on what to listen for. Please update when you have a git page i can follow.
Well, I think this project is pretty much alive as soon as at least one person (myself) uses it.
That’s why I’m going to keep on working on it as much as my circumstances allow (considering it’s not a paid work and the “new normal” has its impact on all of us).
Therefore, I find it a bit awkward to participate in any replacement activities.
It is ok if people have choice. I just think that BWAlarm’s audience is a bit broader than users looking for GUI-only experience.
I’m interested in seeing something come together. Honestly the core of bwalarm has worked very well though. I don’t think you need to reinvent the wheel there. @AhmadK did great work keeping it going after the original dev (who also did a great job) disappeared (never did hear what happened there, I hope he is well). You’re right about the non-core features needing to be dropped though.
I do think you should start a new thread so we don’t pollute this one.
Ok, here’s what I wanted to say about the situation with HTML panes deprecation and the future of this project.
In fact, there are two custom components - the core Python alarm with all its functionality and the panel with some nice features like displaying/overriding open sensors, countdowns and ability to change settings without editing YAML.
As we can see, the core component works fine and can be used on its own.
The panel needs to be changed - most likely, a new custom Lovelace card should be created that will implement features that are still in use while dropping obsolete/unused ones.
Not sure we can have an option of hiding HA sidebar, it’s most likely will be done separately using something like Custom Header.
Don’t think the panel can work as a separate web page though as it relies on information pushed by HA.
So as a way forward the component might become a set of components - the core one, the panel card, the settings card etc.
Then one can decide what components apart from the core one to use.
Actually, after discussing it here a while ago I created a test set of core and custom LL cards that together give ability to see a list of open sensors and override them upon arming.
I am going to study the recent examples posted on this topic and see what can be used.
my 2 pence worth is that sounds good, i would say not to work about the pannel hiding as it is possible to set the cards up in their own Tab or Lovelace panel and the use the custom headers component as others have done for Wall panels.
The functionality of setting the alarm, multiple users, override sensors, sensor states, are what i would love to see and then a way to link to cameras using existing panels/custom components would be awesome and make your development effort in the long term may be easier unless one of them gets dropped.
I apologise if i am underestimating the requirements, but logically it sounds ok in my head.