I’ll be using Home Assistant to control everything in my new construction home, and it’s almost wrapped up.
Before drywall was installed, I asked the low-voltage team to install a wired contact sensor at every window and door in the home, including all interior doors. My desire is to be able to react to any door or window open/close event in the house via Home Assistant for automation and alarm notifications.
There are a lot of contacts - probably a dozen exterior window/door contacts, and probably triple that for interior door/double door contacts, so maybe 50 contact switches in total.
I do not have any hardware from any alarm company yet, as it’s unclear to me if I need any.
Is it possible to have everything terminate to Konnected panels and then have that hardware integrate with Home Assistant?
My assumption is that I’ll need an Alarm Panel Pro kit:
Plus a bunch of additional interface modules to ensure all remaining contact wires can terminate:
But I’m a little confused: the above kits are marketed as ‘conversion kits’, but I don’t have anything to convert in a new home construction.
Is there anything else I need?
And after it’s all terminated to Konnected panels, how would I interface with a 3rd-party commercial monitoring system if I wanted to? (My goal is to get everything working in Home Assistant first, and then find a commercial monitoring system that can monitor my exterior contact switches and/or motion sensors).
We call it a “conversion” kit because most people are converting and older installed panel to a smart home panel, but it works just the same on a new install. You’re just converting from nothing
Check this video I did which is relevant to your situation, a new home install using the Alarm Panel Pro:
The Interface modules DO NOT give you additional terminations. The interface modules are only for interfacing in-parallel with a traditional security system. It sounds like you will not be installing a traditional security panel so you will not need any interface modules.
You will need one “zone” per sensor or grouping of sensors that you want to monitor. So, if you wanted to individually monitor all 50 contacts, you would need at least 50 zones, or five Alarm Panel Pros (12 zones * 5 panels = 60 individual inputs).
Of course you can group individual contacts into zones to reduce this number. For example, wire together in-series all the master-bedroom windows into a single zone called “Master Bedroom Windows” and use only one connection.
Fantastic video @nate ! This is exactly what I was looking for, thanks so much.
But I have a quick follow-up question:
Would all the Alarm Panel Pros connect to each other, i.e. ‘daisy chain’ so they’re seen as one system within Home Assistant? Or do I need to register/configure each one separately within Home Assistant?
That was the plan initially. However, if I want commercial monitoring, would they need this traditional security panel? (and then I’d go with the Alarm Panel Pro + interface modules?).
Or can commercial monitoring work directly with the Alarm Panel Pro?
They do not daisy chain. Each Alarm Panel Pro has its own network connection and communicates with HA. Home Assistant acts as the alarm system so it all acts as one system. You can incorporate sensors from other technologies and manufacturers and HA brings it all together.
You can use our Noonlight integration for smart home pro monitoring. Or it’s relatively simple to hook up an external cellular dialer to an output on one of the alarm panels (or via relay) to trigger it to call out to the monitoring station of your choice. You don’t need a traditional panel.
