Integrating Boundary Alarm with Home Assistant

This post is aimed at UK users only I’m afraid as Boundary is currently only sold in the UK

Disclaimer
For the purposes of transparency, I am employed by boundary.co.uk and am head of the customer experience team. I’m a keen HA advocate though so this post is to share a method to integrate Boundary with HA rather than self-promotion.

About Boundary
Boundary is a UK based smart home alarm manufacturer that has designed, developed and manufactured one of the UKs simplest yet most powerful graded alarm systems. We’ve taken the approach that Boundary should be part of your home and lifestyle rather than just a loud shouty thing when someone tries to break in!

As the system is a graded alarm we don’t currently allow external access through a local API but we can still expose the system via SmartThings.

In order to integrate Boundary with HA you will need:

  1. A Boundary system with a paid subscription
  2. Your Boundary system connected to a Smartthings account
  3. A working HA installation with external access either through Nabu Casa or your own domain

You do need to ensure that your Boundary installation is integrated with Smartthings correctly before proceeding further in this guide as it is integral to the HA integration.

Home Assistant Integration

The first step is to bring your Boundary sensors and hub into your HA system. HA has a native integration available for Smartthings that is quick and simple to set up. You can find full details on how to add the integration on the HA site.

Once you have connected HA to Smartthings, your sensors will now all be available in HA. Although this is completed through a cloud connection, the speed is actually pretty good for automation.

Boundary Alarm Status and Activation

The one area that is not exposed through this Smartthings > HA bridge is the current state of the alarm or if it is currently activated. This information is only available on the Smartthings side. To get around this, you can create a virtual switch in Smartthings to store the status of the alarm and then expose this to HA.

The Smartthings virtual switch is simply a sensor not attached to a physical device. The steps for creation are very simple:

  1. Login to your Smartthings account console
  2. Create a new device handler by selecting Device Handlers and Add New
  3. On the new handler page, select the From Code option
  4. To get the required code, visit https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bjpierron/SmartThings-Alexa/master/devicetypes/bjpierron/simulated-alexa-switch.src/simulated-alexa-switch.groovy and select all the code, copy to your clipboard and paste into the code field on Smartthings
  5. Tap the Create button and then publish the handle using the Publish button

What you have done here is create a method to handle the switching on and off of a sensor/switch. This switch can also be used in Alexa routines but that’s a different story. Now it’s time to create the switches that will use this handler to control the alarm states:

  1. Select Devices in the IDE and then Create a New Device
  2. You will now see a form with several fields. If they are not mentioned in the instructions below then just leave them blank:
  3. Name: A name for the device so you could call this one Boundary Armed
  4. Label: Set this to what you like or just the name of the device
  5. Device Network ID: Again can be anything but it has to be unique, letters and numbers and no spaces e.g. BoundArmSwitch1
  6. Type: Dropdown this field and scroll to the bottom and you will see Simulated Alexa Switch as the handler you created above
  7. Version: Should be set to Published
  8. All done! You now need to repeat these steps to add a second switch to handle if the Boundary alarm is activated. Just complete the fields as before using the same handler but make sure the name and network ID of this second switch is different.

If you have got this far then you should now have two new switches in your Smartthings app. Just assign them to the same room as your Boundary hub in the Smartthings app. We now need to create a couple of automations in Smartthings to control these switch states. Again super simple to achieve.

  1. Login to the Smartthings app and select Automations
  2. Tap the plus (+) symbol at the top right and select Add Routine
  3. There are a few routines we need to create, four in total so just create them as below:
  4. Boundary Armed: If Boundary Hub status is Armed then set the Boundary Armed Switch to On
  5. Boundary Disarmed: If Boundary Hub status is Disarmed then set the Boundary Armed Switch to Off
  6. Boundary Activated: If Boundary Hub Alarm Activation Status is Alarmed then set the Boundary Alarmed Switch to On
  7. Boundary De-Activated: If Boundary Hub Alarm Activation Status is All Clear then set the Boundary Alarmed Switch to Off
  8. Now, of course, you can add other conditions in there and your switch names may be different but as long as you have a method of switching the switches on and off then you’re good to go.

Finishing Off

Head back over to your HA installation and you will need to refresh the Smartthings integration to include these two new switches:

  1. Select Configuration > Integrations > Smartthings
  2. Reload the integration
  3. The new switches will be added to HA

All done. You can now create automations in HA using Boundary sensors and the alarm status!

Hi @Phil-Boundary thanks for kindly notifying all your users that you’ll be pulling the plug on everyone’s gear here: https://boundary.co.uk/

Will the smartthings setup still work afterwards or not?

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With respect, I was an employee of Boundary that was made redundant four days before Christmas last year and not a director or founder.

I also cannot comment on the communications (or lack of) from the liquidators who are actually the owners of Boundary now.

Regarding Smartthings, some people have had some success, I myself have reset all the sensors and added them into HA via a Zwave stick. The hub is bricked but all the sensors, sirens and extenders will work on a Z-Wave network. You can then use something like Alarmo as a plug-in for HA and you’re back in business.

Note: For the record, I have no access to any of Boundary’s systems or data and cannot provide any support or insight into the future of Boundary. I am just as much in the dark as you are.

Thanks for the advice/ suggestion @phil.williams very useful I will give this a go.

I have made great progress I have reset all the sensors and the siren and linked them to a z-wave usb stick. Alarmo recognises them all and I am in the process of setting up my zones, actions and notifications. Thanks for the great advice @phil.williams

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I realised the alarm had stopped working earlier in the year but never got round to figuring out why until recently, so I am a little late to the liquidation grumpiness party. Thank you kindly to @phil.williams for taking time here and on the Smarter Things forums to give people pointers about re-using the sensors. I’ve re-paired all of my sensors with an Aeotec USB stick as suggested… it was actually slightly quicker/more reliable than setting up the Boundary hub was.

Has anyone investigated reflashing the Hub with some different firmware, or making a GPL request to the liquidators (on the presumption it runs Linux…?!). If the chip it uses has an Android port it might not be too far-fetched to have it be device for running Android MQTT Alarm Panel for Home Automation Platforms | MQTT Alarm Panel on given it has all of the right peripherals…? Might be me clutching at straws a little because I really really hate generating e-waste… :frowning:

I have recently set up my old sensors with Home assistant. Just wondering if you could shed some light on the different config options for the sensors? I realise ‘BLED-ENABLE’ is the blue LED lights that each device has. But other than that, the other config options don’t make much sense to me.

Thanks!