Possible to set a zone as keyswitch?

Smart Home Integrations HomeKit (via Homebridge/HOOBS)
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G’day all

I’ve set up my new Pro panel to replace my Bosch Solution 16i with PIR sensors, strobe and siren, using Hoobs on a Raspberry Pi 4. Works great and I had a blast setting it all up. Excellent work on the plugin, @Mike.

Our Bosch setup had two keypads but we NEVER used them. We only ever armed and disarmed using RF keyfob remotes. A button press triggers a relay connected to a zone marked as a keyswitch to arm or disarm the alarm. The relay and remote device is sold as a gate/door opener and works the same way a garage door opener does, by momentarily opening.

Is it possible to get the same result with Konnected, either out of the box or via the HomeBridge/HOOBS plugin? All mentions of a keyswitch in the Konnected documentation seem to be about interfacing with a legacy system.

I’ve currently got it configured as a Contact Sensor and it displays as open on HomeKit momentarily when the button is pressed.

I can even arm the alarm by setting up an Automation in the Home app (when a sensor is triggered, arm the alarm).

But what I really want is to arm/disarm when pressed. But there doesn’t seem to be any support of conditionals in the Automation setup (eg when the contact opens, if the system is armed then disarm it, else arm it).

Am I going about this the wrong way?

I know that there are other ways to arm/disarm the system, but not everyone in the house has a phone, and the RF remotes are important for WAF.

I’d appreciate any suggestions or thoughts on how I could achieve the desired outcome!

Thanks!

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I like that you lock and unlock your house with a keyfob like a car – that's cool!


So essentially you're saying you need a sensor to act like a momentary switch and retain its state.


As far as I know sensors only report their state based on the power running through them and don't have any sort of logical state built into the firmware. Likewise the Homebridge/HOOBSs plugin doesn't really have any concept of retaining state built in, only because I simply pass the sensor state directly through the plugin to the HomeKit API.


I could add logic for that, but I think there's a solution here that may already exist and that's by using Shortcuts.

(note: for this to work for everyone, you will most undoubtedly need a HomeKit hub like an AppleTV or HomePod)


This video has a pretty good working example that you probably can slightly modify to your scenario:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixc4GgRKUzw&t=41s


If you're having trouble setting up the shortcut I may be able to figure it out but I haven't tried it so I would be starting fresh like you.


Let me know if that helps.





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Thanks so much for the quick reply, Mike! I’ll watch that video as soon as I can and I’ll report back with the results

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So, it turns out that a HomeKit Automation Shortcut is exactly what I needed!

The RF remote and relay device wires up to the Konnected board just like any other sensor. It’s a NO circuit that momentarily closes and then opens again on a button press.

I set this up in HOOBS as a Contact Sensor (and ticked ‘invert sensor state’.

Then, in the Home app, I created a new Automation triggered by “A sensor detects something” and chose my new contact sensor as the trigger.

I chose the ‘open’ state as the trigger and chose the Konnected alarm as the accessory to automate, and then chose ‘Convert to shortcut’.

I created an If statement that basically says “if the Konnected alarm is in the Off state, change it to the Away state, otherwise change it to the Off state”.

Unfortunately, due to what I suspect is a bug in the Home app or Shortcuts, I wasn’t able to get this to work. It DOES run successfully if you ‘Test this automation’, but the Shortcut doesn’t run any other time.

There are Reddit threads about this bug at various times over the past year or so (like this one https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeKit/comments/p76g07/shortcut_automation_not_working). For reference, both my phone and my Apple TV 4K (which is my Home hub) are on IOS/TVOS 14.7.

So what I ended up doing was installing the HOOBS/Homebridge plugin that creates a dummy switch as a go-between.

I have an Automation Shortcut similar to the one above, but instead of arming/disarming the Konnected alarm, it changes the state of my dummy switch.

Then I have two more Home app Automations (NOT Shortcuts) that say “when the dummy switch turns on, set the Konnected alarm to Away” and the other is “when the dummy switch turns off, set the Konnected alarm to Off”.

I still don’t know WHY I can’t arm/disarm the alarm directly through a Shortcut. Is this a security measure on Apple’s part, similar to requiring a FaceID unlock to trigger a garage door open command? Perhaps, according to this thread https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeKit/comments/luqvh6/secure_device_status_and_shortcut_automations/

If anyone’s got thoughts or answers on this, I’d love to hear about it, but for now I’m just happy I got this working.

Thanks again @Mike for pointing me in the right direction. If anyone wants more info about my solution, I’d be happy to give details.

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Great news! Happy that helped.

I have used the Homebridge Dummy Switch plugin as well for certain automations to work around the security measures Apple enforces in HomeKit – it's really the only way at this time to do what you need to do.

What's interesting is if you use Apple CarPlay (wired or wireless) and have your phone's screen closed and locked, it displays an option to open the Garage when you approach your house and you tap it on your CarPlay screen and it doesn't require your passcode or faceID. I get that they assume your phone is with you, but if someone was following you and then they stole your phone and your car keys .. basically they have access to your house too.

I'm still confused on your full solution but for others it would be nice if you could break it out with bullet points to help understand the process for sure!
Regardless, happy to see you have some semblance of a solution.