First post so take it easy,
Watch this video to see the current keypad in action!
Photos:
Kincony A16 security panel with Adafruit CAN PAL
Chinesium Keypad modifications, removal of original STM32 MCU and wiring of esp32, including CanPal, 5-35v to 5v voltage regulator, and data lines to CH340 for the original USB-C port on the keypad to work for uploading code.
Final images of potted components with jbweld.
My old man came to me and said he’s moving his business, and wanted me to sort out the alarm system for the new office.
Easy as I thought, home assistant plus esphome for the sensors and I’ll “just grab a keypad”. What a rabbit hole I was about to venture down into.
Before I jump into the keypad side what I ended up doing for the alarm system itself.
Home assistant hosted on our Hyper-V server, a Kincony A16 dev board inside of DSC alarm metal wall box. If you guys haven’t seen the Kincony stuff or been sceptical of it, it is a master class device and I cannot believe its feature set for the price. Really do recommend it!
So that’s all of the motion sensors, tamper sensors. Door sensors all sorted.
So what about the keypad? That is when I found a disturbing lack of… well… anything? Some obscure keypads that might work via Zigbee and a GitHub repo for repurposing DSC keypads.
I spent a very…. Very… long time trying to get the dsc keypad to work, and whilst it did work 90% of the time there were issues with the dscbus getting hung up. Symptoms included unresponsive led’s or the worst yet a constantly stuck on buzzer.
Whilst very cool yes, it’s not something practical for a workspace environment, especially not one that I’m not always there for to resolve issues.
More disturbing is the response from Konnected, which basically read: “No you cannot use an alarm keypad from a legacy alarm system, no we do not have a replacement, stop being a dinosaur and put a tablet on the wall”. I may be paraphrasing, but that is the sentiment.
I don’t want a tablet on the wall? Maybe for my own house but I purely need something that people can use day in day out to punch in a code and disarm the system, without needing to use their phone or a tablet on the wall.
My solution. I bought one of these Chinese keypads online off aliexpress. Compatible with “SecPanel”. First up, I was amazed with the hardware quality, really good feeling and looking.
Has a mmWave sensor if somebody is within a meter to turn on the backlight, rfid, battery and USB-C powered. Awesome bit of kit.
Unfortunately no ESP based MCU.
Not a problem, my eyes are grainy and hands shake like someone with Parkinson’s, so i immediately bought a microscope and some thin gauge copper wire.
After spending some time I have broken out all the pins that I care about.
3.3v,GND,4 row and 4 column keypad pins, buzzer, tamper switch, backlight led, mmWave “out” pin (it has an internal chip and only uses a single wire to the MCU rather than spi), status led’s for each button, and the 3 colours of the battery led.
Unfortunately I couldn’t get the 433mhz working or the rfid. With that being said my plan for the rfid is to just mount a commercial daughter board and wire that in rather than using the original one. That being said it’s not something I need in this application.
The current implementation is for testing, writing out the code for it.
Communication methods will be
Wireless via esphome
Canbus
Why canbus? Well I’ve got an automotive background and have spend many hours with can, I love the protocol. It also solves a particular issue.
There is not enough room for an rj45 port to use Ethernet,
So as a wired alarm system goes we can run cat6 to it. Use two wires for 12v power and 2 wires for canbus.
Why 12v? Well that’s what the rest of the alarm system runs on.
Then I will either use a canbus transceiver on the kincony A16 turning it into the one stop location for the security system, or use a second wt32-eth01 inside the alarm enclosure, to then run Ethernet to the switch and keep it all wired.
Now my question for everyone else, has machine been disappointed by the lack of alarm keypads? And secondly would anyone want to purchase something like this?
The reason I ask is because that will determine if I use off the shelf parts and lots of tedious micro soldering for my old mans use case, or if I developed either a daughter board specifically for this, or even a full replacement pcb.
The physical housing is awesome we just need the software part.
How many people would be interested if any? What kind of price point would people think is suitable? For reference the keypad originally costs me $50AUD. There will need to be some costs involved in the daughter/mainboard, plus some profit for myself to cover R&D costs.
I literally just finished up the wiring last night so the software side is very bare currently with no esphome integration whilst I develop input/output relationships.
I want to bring a product to market not just because money makes me happy (I’m an honest man) but also the apparent void in the market for a product that can do this. With no ugly 3D printed housings etc.
I’ll keep this forum updated with my progress either way!
Cheers
