Hello! In an effort to smart-ify everything, I thankfully found Konnected.
I have an old Risco Gardtec/Eurotec CPX alarm. Some sensors are wired, others are wireless (and I understand I can’t do much with those).
My question is - could an interface kit be used to do two things:
Set/unset the alarm
Get a notification when the alarm is triggered?
I have other sensors and cameras in the house, but the ability to set/unset and get notified would be a great thing, and let us keep using the alarm the way everyone (family, guests) are used to.
Thanks!
So long as your Risco Gardtec/Eurotec CPX alarm, is hard-wired, that is, the contacts, PIRs etc. around the property, are wired back to your alarm panel, then yes, you can do two things.
You can either install our Pro Interface Kit in parallel with your existing alarm, or if it’s ancient, you could always replace it altogether, and install the Konnected Conversion Kit. There are differences in both, though. With the Interface Kit, you need to be able to program an output on the existing panel so that it acts as a key switch. To achieve this, you or the person carrying out the installation will be required to know the “installation code/engineer code” of the existing alarm system, as programming is involved via the existing keypad, and this code is needed. Once programmed, the key switch will enable remote arming and disarming of your alarm system through your smart home platform. If you cannot program an Output to be a key switch, please do not buy the Interface Kit, you should consider the Pro Conversion Kit instead. This is a direct replacement for your existing alarm system, and therefore, does not require any key switch programming. Note, that with the conversion kit you cannot use your existing keypad, but you can arm/disarm from say Home Assistant, or SmartThings for example, or you could install a tablet, such as a Fire Tablet, and use that as your new modern keypad.
I would recommend that you navigate to our site here, and where it says, " Find the right Konnected device for you!", click on Alarm Panels, and the quiz will guide you to the right solution for your needs.
The current alarm is 50/50 - half wired, half wireless. I’m aware this means I can’t ‘use’ those wireless zones with Konnected, and that was why I asked if it could be used simply for arm/disarm (I believe I have the engineer code to program a spare zone as a keyswitch).
I assume then that I can use one of the custom outputs to act as a trigger when the alarm is tripped, or is Konnected wired in parallel to the bell/sounder output?
Please reach out to help@konnected.io and let’s go through your exact setup, and what you want to achieve. We can then recommend the right solution for you. Thank you.
I have the same alarm system, two remote keypads, remote fob, tag readers, and several wireless as well as wired sensors.
I bought the interface kit (two circuit boards etc) and proceeded to set it all up. What I found is that YES you can do what you ask easily, see if the alarm is set or unset, and also you can set or unset it -that works really well.
What doesn’t work is reading the sensors already in the alarm system. Risco/Gardtec use a two-wire sense input, but Konnected read only one. Risco/Gardtec has a 0.5v difference between the Zone +/- when a sensor is triggered., but Konnected compares either Z+ or Z- with Gnd and Aux+, and it can’t “see” the 0.5V changes. That makes it impossible to ‘tune’ the sensitivity reliably.
Thanks to the team at Konnected who worked with me through testing and trying it.
Summary - YES it works for Alarm On/Off but you can’t reliably interface to the existing alarm for the sensors. Maybe you can use those inputs for something else.
Below: Konnected panel in my Home Assistant. PIR’s on and off at random. Set-unset switch, and indicator of alarm running or off. I’m working on detecting “triggered” but haven’t had time to do this yet.
I have a RISCO Eurosec CPX alarm which I successfully interfaced with Konnected a year or so ago. As well as the arming/disarming features I was able to interface the wired sensor zones. I did have trouble at first because it doesn’t work using Konnected’s documented method, and they weren’t able to help when I emailed them.
If I remember correctly what I found was that the high side of each zone has a very small voltage change between closed and open, which is too small to tune the interface board. I think it was something like +4.75 to +5.01 V. However the low side of each zone goes from +4.75 when closed to 0 V when open. I wired to the low side of each zone and basically reversed the tuning procedure and the state of the zones.
It has worked perfectly since I set it up.
I hope this helps.
Steve
