Manual alarm is a pretty good start to an alarm control panel, but it’s missing some things that the “professional” ones have.
One thing in particular that would really elevate the sophistication of this integration would be different ways to trigger the alarm. There needs to be something like an instant trigger, regardless of what arming mode the system is in.
Example 1: glass break - Let’s say the system is armed in “home” mode with the delay_time=0 and a burglar breaks a window and a glass break sensor detects it. Well done, it works. Now let’s say we’re out to dinner and the system is in “away” mode with a delay_time=60 and the same thing happens. Nothing, nothing happens for a very long time.
Example 2: protected door - Let’s say I have a front door of course but also a door at the side of the house. This side door I will never enter through when the alarm is armed in any mode. It should be able to instantly trigger the alarm\siren regardless of the arming mode.
These 2 example just highlight one shortcoming of the Manual alarm. I really want to switch over to it, but I don’t want to downgrade my home security to do so (my current system can handle these scenarios).
The solution to this isn’t in the arming modes. I think the concept of the modes is fine. I think the solution is in adding a new action to the alarm_control_panel. Like an alarm_trigger_instant action. It would actually be pretty easy to do since the modes wouldn’t need to change. Just a new action that doesn’t consider any modes (other than the system is armed in some way) or delay times and goes straight to “triggered”.