House + Seperate Garage. Garage is connected by Ethernet and there is a single spare Cat5 between the buildings (I used the rest).
I want an alarm system that I can use as a normal traditional alarm system with RFID tags or codes. 2 locations (House / Garage) that can be set / unset seperately or (optional) together. 1 Panel in the house and 1 panel in the garage
Phone App to set / unset the alarms
Plus Home Assistant - so that I can monitor individual sensors. Set and unset via HA and other good stuff.
This way the alarm system will work as a traditional alarm system AND I can mess around with HA, use the PIR’s as presence detectors that sort of thing
I already have seperate alarm systems in both areas. The house system is very old (25 years) but still works well - just the keypad is getting tired. The garage system needs complete replacement - it was cheap and cheerful and doesn’t work properly
Yes, this is actually an ideal use case for Konnected + Home Assistant.
With one panel in the house and one in the garage, each panel can take advantage of our standalone alarm system feature (see announcement) which will make two “Alarm Systems” show up in HA that can be armed/disarmed independently.
All the individual sensors from both panels will also automatically be available in HA.
You can easily create an automation in HA that would arm both systems in tandem if you want.
As far as I can tell in the case of 1. above - Konnected will NOT satisfy insurance requirements (not that I tell the insurance that I have an alarm anyway) - but it may become nessesary that I have an (insurance qualifying) alarm system at some point.
With 2. I just have to have an alarm system that Konnected can work with and I technically get the best of both worlds (yes there may be some issues here - but I think its close enough)
So looking at case 2 above:
I am getting some quotes for traditional alarm systems which are essentially the following:
Control Panel to replace existing control panel
Using existing door contacts and PIR's (max 9)
Expander in garage - using cabled connection to house
With new PIR's and door contacts (max 5)
Keypad in hallway/house
Keypad in garage
The garage and the house will be treated as seperate zones and alarmed and set seperately or together.
I have PoE and wireless available in all locations
How will konnected work in such a scenario? Some of the PIR’s / Contacts would be connected (I assume) to the expander in the garage, whilst some would be connected to the main board in the house so not everything would gho through the same piece of konnected kit.
This really depends on your insurance company’s requirments. Most of the time, the insurance wants to see that your system is professionally monitored and they don’t particularly care what equipment is being used. Via our partnership with Noonlight and the Noonlight for Home Assistant integration that we maintain, you can get a certificate from Noonlight that may satisfy the insurance. I know that LOTS of our customers have done this successfully.
One neat thing about Noonlight monitoring via Home Assistant is that you can create automations to trigger Noonlight for any reason, not only the physical alarm system. Also, it’s only $10 per month.
If you go the route of a new traditional system and expander in the garage, then you would just need a Konnected Alarm Panel + Interface Module at each location, so one in the main house and one in the garage to tap into the zones there. Or, if you don’t care about monitoring the individual garage zones in Konnected, you could get away with just one Konnected panel wired to the main control panel. This would give you arming/disarming/status without the granular visibility into the garage sensors.
Unfortunately, no, we don’t have a UK based service at this time.
What exactly is your insurance requirement? Is it a requirement or just an discount? Is the insurance requesting specific equipment or only 3rd-party monitoring?
If monitoring is the requirement the traditional system + Konnected Interface kit in both main house and garage would work, but that’s a lot of equipment to buy.
Another option is to DIY the monitoring piece alone, and use a standalone communicator/dialer that works with your local monitoring service and has a dry-contact or relay input. You can use Konnected/HA as the complete alarm system and trigger relays or outputs to trip the communicator to notify the monitoring station.
Currently the alarm is NOT a requirement. But it might become one - its becoming more common.
As for what is the requirement - that depends on the insurance company - they all have different requirements centering around things like monitoring or not to all sorts of unintelligible standards
If the alarm is to be monitored that produces a whole host of requirements that are a pain in the proverbial
My personal opinion: Unless you have specific requirements from insurance, just do what you want. Sounds like you want to self monitor and leverage HA for security and automation. I think a Konnected panel in the garage and the main house, each running standalone with strategic automations in HA to coordinate them is the most flexible and cost effective.
If I use Konnected in its standalone mode - is there a phone app (Android) that I can use to set / unset the alarm zones.
This needs to work as a standard alarm, on top of which I can then use HA. I do not want to use HA to (under normal use) set / unset the alarm