I’m looking for a simple alarm to integrate with Home Assistant. I wanted to go the route of building my own with classic alarm hardware but leaning away from that.
If I used SimpliSafe as an alarm, what comes back sensors wise? I wonder if I had say 4 sensors from SimpliSafe on doors, if I connect it as an Alarm in home assistant, do I get the status of those 4 sensors in home assistant or just an alarm panel for arm and disarm?
I don’t want to have 2 sensors on every door.
I guess the other way is keep my door sensors in home assistant, just setup simplisafe with no sensors, and then trigger it myself in home assistant through the integration. Not sure if SimpliSafe integration will let you do that or if SimpliSafe would activate with no working sensors.
I use SimpliSafe and last I checked their API was pretty locked own. The only thing I could get was alarm status and be able to arm\disarm the alarm via Home Assistant.
I use to have some of their products available like Co2, temp but never the door\window sensors or the status of motion detectors. So I’ve unfortunately opted to have multiple sensors around and on windows and doors.
I do like your idea of having Home Assistant sensors and then trigger an alarm if set, that should be possible.
Hi all – I’m the codeowner of simplisafe-python and the SimpliSafe integration in HASS.
As you can see from simplisafe-python, it’s possible to get sensor values via the undocumented, private REST API. The challenge is that these API calls aren’t local; they go through api.simplisafe.com. Considering that things like door sensors are only useful if they provide near-real-time data, I’d have to query the API once every 1-5-10 seconds. Simply put, because we are using an API that’s undocumented, I’m concerned that slamming SimpliSafe with thousands of new API calls every day will compel them to block access to the API altogether. Therefore, I’ve elected to refrain from implementing sensor functionality for now.
Believe me, this is my white whale – I’m constantly on the lookout for new, more appropriate methods of interacting with the API. Until SimpliSafe changes from their current model (in which (a) we interact with their cloud API and (b) that API only provides updated data when the connection to the base station is refreshed on-demand), we’re stuck.
I wish. We’re able to make the arm/disarm action appear fast because we (a) fire the request to the cloud API and (b) modify the UI immediately without waiting for a response.
I’ve port scanned the v3 unit, but it doesn’t have open ports (beyond 53 for DNS). I think the real nail in the coffin is that neither the SS web app nor the mobile app are real-time: in both cases, users have to manually trigger a refresh. This doesn’t give me confidence that SS has even an unpublished local API.
@bachya
Checking in on if there have been any changes to their API in the last 6 months that would make you comfortable with retrieving sensor states.
I would be happy with states even if they were on something as long as a 60 second refresh delay to be honest.
@tbrock47 Unfortunately, I haven’t seen any changes. That said, if you feel that non-real-time updates would still be useful, I can look into it. Stay tuned.
I haven’t setup Homeassistant yet. I currently run smartthings but thinking of switching. Just one question. Does this implementation support websockets and push notifications. I would like to get real time updates for arm/disarm if possible.
The current HASS integration uses polling of the SimpliSafe cloud API. That said, my underlying library has rudimentary support for a very basic websocket that communicates real-time alarm arming and disarming, among a few other events. It’s not substantial enough to move the entire integration to it, but it’s something that I discovered recently. Going to think on it a little bit before I implement it into HASS.
I’ve been using the built in simplisafe in HA and if it’s polling, it’s plenty fast and works great for my automations for arm home/away, disarm, and trigger. Having the alarm integrate with everything finally really makes it all come together.
Make sure to do a delay on arm, if you do away and have a 2:00 exit delay, add 2 minute delay to your automation, before that it was locking my door the second you entered arm on keypad and locking me in the house. You get the arm event before the count down is over, easy fix, just added a for with time to automation.
I just keep seperate zigbee door sensors and motion sensors in places straight to HA for other automations. I can’t imagine getting fast sensor info from Simplisafe, there own app can’t do it, if you open a door, it shows nothing most of the time until you go to settings, devices, refresh, wait like 20 seconds, and then see it. So if they can’t do it effectively, I wouldn’t try to poll too fast and have them they to make our integration not work
The home-assistant documentation indicates that there is an integration of Simplisafe.
I put the lines in the configuration and nothing happens. Is there more or does it no longer work or what? Thanks
Oh, and I completely forgot to ask about camera integration. I got one for free with my system and thinking about acquiring another.
Is this a feasible request?
Things have been awesome with my integration so far, I didn’t realize how nice alarm integration would be until I had it.
I get the alarm away, home, and disarm events, but I don’t get triggered… I thought I got it once, but not sure. Does it not come right away? When I’m testing, in arming, opening a door, I get the notification from Simplisafe, but I disarm before it has time to notify for a call.
We’re able to make the arm/disarm action appear fast because we (a) fire the request to the cloud API and (b) modify the UI immediately without waiting for a response.
Stay tuned.