I’m UK based and have a Texecom Elite 12w alarm panel using Ricochet sensors in the house, with a separate slaved wired alarm system securing the detached garage. The alarm system has a COM-IP installed used for remote control via the Android app, and the panel is running v4 firmware with encryption enabled.
I’ve burned a fair few £s trying to integrate the alarm using z-wave which failed and, short of replacing the system I’m now wondering whether the Konnected interface boards might be a reasonable option.
I understand that they will not provide the ability to read the sensor states, however all I’m actually looking to do is grant HomeAssistant the ability to read the alarm state (armed / disarmed) and set the state without removing the standard Texecom control methods.
If I’m understanding the Konnected.io documents correctly, the interface board should offer me the ability to read the programmable outputs from the Texecom panel (possibly requiring a Texecom relay module to achieve this), and arm / disarm the panel (with the addition of a 1 channel relay module).
If anyone has experience of using these boards I’d appreciate a heads-up if I’m missing something fundamental - I lack the electronics experience myself so need a sanity check.
With our alarm panel INTERFACE product, you can tap in to any wired sensor zone or program output on your traditional alarm panel to get the zone status or on/off status of the programmed output. I don’t have specific knowledge of the Texecom panel that you have, but our solution is designed to be universal to any brand of wired alarm system. Yes – you can read the sensor states!
In order to arm/disarm remotely, you’ll need a spare zone that can be programmed as a keyswitch to arm/disarm. Then, you can use Home Assistant to define a switch which triggers either momentary or latching relay to activate that keyswitch.
If you haven’t already, check out my INTERFACE installation demo video here:
If you’d like to post a photo of your alarm panel and wiring, I can try to make a recommendation on the size of the system that you’ll need.
Thanks so much for posting - the video was very helpful.
Unfortunately I don’t currently have a photo of my wiring - the system is managed but I have a great relationship with the engineer and he’s happy to help me tinker with this kind of thing.
I think (from the video) that a simple 6 zone kit should be fine for my needs. I’m simply interested in knowing whether the alarm is armed / disarmed / triggered, and the ability to arm / disarm it.
IIRC from when I tinkered with z-wave integration my panel has 8 programmable outputs that can be set high / low as as required. That part of the z-wave integration attempt went fine - we stalled on issues with the z-wave nodes (one of which turned out to be broken). I’m pretty confident that my alarm engineer can cover off the wiring side - he’s great with electronics, I’m just a software / networks guy.
Am I best buying direct from the site and importing (and does international shipping include a declaration of value for customs duties)? Or do you have an authorized UK sales outlet that would work better?
Our 2nd generation products are in production now. We’re working with a company in the UK for local distribution for next year. If you’re not time sensitive, you can wait for that or pre-order now here [https://konnected.io/collections/pre-order-2019-new-products]. You’ll need the 6-zone Alarm Panel kit (with relay-capable board) plus the INTERFACE module. We’ve separated these out into two different components in the v2 generation.
Thanks so much for your help @heythisisnate - I’ll put my order through in the next couple of weeks I think and then it’ll just be a matter of co-ordinating with the alarm engineer.
Looking forward to grafting some intelligence onto my existing system.
3 years later on, but I’m interested as to how to get the alarm state from the same board. I’ve tried programming one of the 3 Digicom outputs, and the one Panel output, but can’t get anything to show on HA (my 3 door zones work fine). I notice the manual says those outputs go negative, so not sure if I need to set the potentiometer to just off rather than just on, since the voltage is likely going the other way to the zones.
Also, could be I have the programming wrong. I’m setting it to Area/A/Part Armed (or Armed). I’m not getting showing at all.
For those that find this later. The answer was, for the Panel Output I needed to have the Pontentiometer light just off, rather than on. I believe this is because the output goes negative rather than positive. If you want the light on, then you can invert the output on the panel (I’m doing it via Wintex).
I plan to try the Digicom outputs (which are 100ma rather than 500ma) in the morning. EDIT: This worked.
To be honest a couple of things I went through in relation to my Texecom board seemed new to the Konnected support team, hence my write up. Mostly this seemed to be because the programmable outputs go negative when enabled, which meant the pots were the wrong way round (when looking at Nate’s videos). Also the wiring for the zones on my Texecom board had black going high when triggered rather than Red, so I have hooked the zones jumpers into the wrong connection.
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