Paradox Alarm Interface + Homebridge integration for dummies

Forums › Home Workshop DIY › Paradox Alarm Interface + Homebridge integration for dummies

taylorjamesbarr

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#298488 21-Jun-2022 13:56

This is a follow-up thread for State of Paradox Alarm Self-Monitoring. I'm quite technically minded, but all of the config files, code and the like are very confusing. I'm hoping that by having this thread, it'll help people who want to integrate their Paradox alarm system with Apple HomeKit, or Home Assistant, Homebridge etc.

I'm starting totally fresh without anything installed, so would appreciate guidance on the matter from the beginning and this should be a pretty awesome step-by-step guide.

My set up includes:

Paradox MG5050 panel
3 motion sensor zones, 1 smoke/fire zone and 1 zone for the panel tamper
IP150+ internet module, and Insite Gold app along with the subscription
M1 Mac mini, running Homebridge.

I have tried to go down the route of using Docker, but that got very confusing, very fast. I guess first off, can someone please advise what installation method I should use?

I would then like to use the Homebridge integration to get this connected. Thanks in advance!

ashtonaut

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#2932503 21-Jun-2022 14:13

I used the ‘manual’ install method for PAI and it worked fine on a Raspberry Pi.

davidcole

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#2932504 21-Jun-2022 14:17

So you've not used docker before? Probably the way to do it. One compose file with pai, mosquitto and homebridge in it.

ha-shared - Pastebin.com

I've edited mine a little.

Via docker....it creates a mosquitto broker. This handles the communication between paradoxpai and homebridge.

Paradoxpai handles the connection to the alarm panel and outputs to mosquitto (mqtt).

The homebridge watches the mosquitto queues for messages.

You can run thse things individuallly in docker with docker run statements, but ultimately I find that harder than tweaking a compose file and running docker-compose up.

So maybe do it like this.

Take my compose file. Comment out everything but paradoxpai

Run the compose, and try and get connection to your panel. As there is configuration etc needed to talk to it. I never went gold insite, but I believe it supports that now. mine is really old firmware before insite existed.

In teh pai config, I think you can turn off the mqtt interface, so it wont try and talk to that as it wont exist yet.....

So ignore everything else till the pai connnection is working.

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taylorjamesbarr

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#2932522 21-Jun-2022 14:48

davidcole:

So you've not used docker before? Probably the way to do it. One compose file with pai, mosquitto and homebridge in it.

ha-shared - Pastebin.com

I've edited mine a little.

Via docker....it creates a mosquitto broker. This handles the communication between paradoxpai and homebridge.

Paradoxpai handles the connection to the alarm panel and outputs to mosquitto (mqtt).

The homebridge watches the mosquitto queues for messages.

You can run thse things individuallly in docker with docker run statements, but ultimately I find that harder than tweaking a compose file and running docker-compose up.

So maybe do it like this.

Take my compose file. Comment out everything but paradoxpai

Run the compose, and try and get connection to your panel. As there is configuration etc needed to talk to it. I never went gold insite, but I believe it supports that now. mine is really old firmware before insite existed.

In teh pai config, I think you can turn off the mqtt interface, so it wont try and talk to that as it wont exist yet.....

So ignore everything else till the pai connnection is working.

I've attempted to use Docker, but it overwhelmed me pretty quickly. A fresh macOS install has been done this afternoon, and I have now installed Docker Desktop.

I understand most of your post, but now that I've got Docker installed, where do I use your compose file? Apologies in advance as you may have to simplify the instructions a little bit in terms of what to click or what options to select.

Docker Desktop for Mac screenshot

davidcole

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#2932572 21-Jun-2022 15:01

I assume you can drop to a terminal and run things like docker --version or docker run hello-world?

That a good start....I dont use the desktop apps, and so not sure where a compose file will sit in that.

taylorjamesbarr

32 posts

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#2932582 21-Jun-2022 15:19

davidcole:

I assume you can drop to a terminal and run things like docker --version or docker run hello-world?

That a good start....I dont use the desktop apps, and so not sure where a compose file will sit in that.

I can confirm that I am able to use Terminal and the --version + docker run hello-world commands:

Terminal screenshot with Docker command --version

Now that I can confirm those are able to be run, what are the next steps with the file you've provided? Do I need to put this file into a particular directory in macOS, or does any old folder work?

davidcole

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#2932589 21-Jun-2022 15:35

Crash course in docker compose coming up.....

no not a particular directory. But anywhere. But it does need to be logical, as based off that will be the config files used by each for the services.

So you might see in mine one some variables ${basedirectory} that is set to /hdd/docker-data for me and the compose file will exist in /hdd/docker-data/ha-shared.

From ha-shared will be a

paradox directory with teh paradox config file.
a homebridge directory with it's configuration files

etc.

then from the "ha-shared" directory, you run docker-compose up (or docker-compose up -d for detached mode)

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taylorjamesbarr

32 posts

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#2932591 21-Jun-2022 15:51

Honestly, the simpler you can explain, the better it makes sense in my mind. I've created a folder to hold all things Docker/PAI under /Users/Taylor/ha-shared to keep things simple.

What's not adding up in my mind is how to now use the ha-shared info you've given. I've gone through and adjusted the base path to be the above directory in the ha-shared file, but now what? Is there a particular command I need to run?

Homebridge is currently not installed, but I can follow Install Homebridge on macOS without issue. Does the default path for this need to be changed? (if so, I honestly have no idea how to do so).

Also, does the ARCH=amd64 need to be changed to reflect my own system?

Apologies if I am simply not understanding.

davidcole

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#2932606 21-Jun-2022 16:07

taylorjamesbarr:

Honestly, the simpler you can explain, the better it makes sense in my mind. I've created a folder to hold all things Docker/PAI under /Users/Taylor/ha-shared to keep things simple.

What's not adding up in my mind is how to now use the ha-shared info you've given. I've gone through and adjusted the base path to be the above directory in the ha-shared file, but now what? Is there a particular command I need to run?

Homebridge is currently not installed, but I can follow Install Homebridge on macOS without issue. Does the default path for this need to be changed? (if so, I honestly have no idea how to do so).

Also, does the ARCH=amd64 need to be changed to reflect my own system?

Apologies if I am simply not understanding.

grab the ha-shared file and save it to /users/Taylor/ha-shared/docker-compose.yml

then from that directory /users/Taylor/ha-shared/

run

docker-compose up

This will do a couple of things:

confirm docker-compose binary is on your system - if not you'll need to find the mac instructions for adding it.
if you've not edited that file in any way probably not do a lot as the paths with be wrong And it will start downloading images to mosquitto, paradoxpai and homebridge.
or if you've edited as suggested earlier, the paradoxpai image will start downloading, and at the completion it will try to run, but then probably fall over as you don't have a config file - yet.

re the archivecture, hopefully mac is amd64 - it's not arm (raspberry pi etc) nor arm64 (64 bit arm)

taylorjamesbarr

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#2932610 21-Jun-2022 16:19

Okay, this is starting to make more sense - thank you for your patience.

I now have the docker-compose.yml file in the /users/Taylor/ha-shared/ folder. This file contains the information from your pastebin link.

Now what I'm stuck on is how to run a Terminal command from a particular directory/folder. How would one do that?

davidcole

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#2932662 21-Jun-2022 16:40

didn't you drop to a terminal before? navigate to where you have saved that file and as stated before run:

then from that directory /users/Taylor/ha-shared/

run

docker-compose up

this would be must easier in discord, especially for screen shots etc. As this forum is a little painful for uploading pictures....you;ve done well with it.

taylorjamesbarr

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#2932665 21-Jun-2022 16:44

Have since learnt about CD and ran the command, but received the following output (errors?):

If you'd like to move to Discord, I'm happy with that. Then, when I figure it all out with your guidance, I can do a step-by-step recap back on this thread. If you'd like to do that, let me know or flick through a DM with your Discord username.

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davidcole

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#2932667 21-Jun-2022 17:07

ok, I think fastest way round that is remove the entry for paradox_logs at this stage. That's going to a volume mount - which is not defined in the compose file (I'd ripped it out of a larger one I had for my system). The other entries are called bind mounts, which expose a directory to a container.