Disarm Bosch alarm using garage door opener?

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gcorgnet

1078 posts

Uber Geek

#2819227 25-Nov-2021 15:56

linus:

"Other interesting things" is what I'm scared of, I guess ;-) There's the trade-off between the day-to-day convenience (I do love being able to shout at Google to make it open the garage door), and it becoming a black hole of time that keeps me away from things I'd rather be doing. I also guess I'm currently just putting things off, since I do really want to automate more. It'd be nice to not have to walk around and turn off what seems like a million light switches every night, for example.

With the interface, can you still use the alarm as a "regular" alarm? Because the other thing I don't want, is a house that 's so complex that my wife and kids can't handle it without me.

Konnected makes 2 products.
The basic Konnected device replaces your Alarm board and therefore leaves the PIN pad unused, which is IMO not great and as you say no wife, kids and future buyers friendly.

This is why the Konnected "Interface" product is IMO superior. It plugs "in parrallel" into your existing system and (provided you can program it, which sounds like you have been able to) lets you monitor and acto on it without disturbing the built in controls (PIN Pad, backup battery, etc..)

So short answer: yes. Anyone could use the Alarm normally. But again, I guess the end goal is for people to even have to use those things and have them turn on and off as needed (we did have a rather surprised baby-sitter who got the alarm armed on her as both my wife and I left the house with our phones... You live and you learn, I guess)

linus

15 posts

Geek

#2819556 26-Nov-2021 09:50

neb: One comment on this, depending on which end is the tail and which is the dog, you generally don't want a garage-door remote being the dog because the security on many of those is close to nonexistent, cheap Princeton 2262 encoders that can be trivially defeated, which means anyone who can toggle your garage door can also turn off your alarm.

You're then talking about the remote that came with the garage door opener? (Doorworks, in our case). I have wondered if there's any security built in to these, and I guess you're saying there's not, really. Not surprising I guess, given the poor safety record of any consumer oriented door locks, safes, etc.

This is part of the reason why I was thinking of isolating the Kogan WiFi remote from the garage door opener, so that it's the only thing that would disarm. Also, with the WiFi remote being isolated, I could still close the door using the remotes that came with the garage door opener, for opening/closing without affecting the alarm state.

I'll need to give this project some more thought, as it's not quite as obvious as I thought it would be. The input here has been very useful, and I think that Konnected will be the way to go, at least longer term.

linus

15 posts

Geek

#2819610 26-Nov-2021 10:05

insane: Can't speak for the Bosch, but have a Paradox unit and simply added the IP module to it.

Mobile app (Insight Gold by Swann) lets you control the unit from anywhere with a internet connection, the various preset zone combinations for when you're at home or asleep or out etc including the toggling of up to 15 other device.

Think the board and module together were perhaps ~$650ish. Installation cost more, but your sensors etc are likely fully reusable.I reused one sensor and the power transformer from the old Bosch alarm it replaced.

If you don't want to spend hours and hours tinkering, an upgrade could be an option?

Yes, I have seen that Bosch have an extension board, which could also be an alternative, and maybe slightly simpler. I think that provides integration with our Yale door lock, which would also need an add-on module for wireless communications.

FailedWOF

45 posts

Geek

#2833024 15-Dec-2021 20:10

You're on the right track. Configuring a zone as a keyswitch and setting it up for momentary disarm.

But you need to think about state sync. You only want to disarm the alarm when the garage door opens. What happens when the garage door is already open, you arm the alarm, and then press the button to close the door? Without knowing your exact setup I would expect the same signal to be sent and it would trigger the keyswitch to disarm the alarm. So now you need to add something that can work out whether the door is up or down (usually magnetic switches), hook that up to something that can process the logic like an ESP8266 or raspberry pi, and have that trigger the alarm keyswitch instead through a relay.

When I was automating my gate and garage door to hook into HomeKit and Home Assistant, state sync was the most complicated part simply because they could be opened and closed outside of the automation workflow. If the gate was opened with a remote, the automation still needed to know that the gate had been opened, etc.

FailedWOF

45 posts

Geek

#2833034 15-Dec-2021 20:40

Having thought further you might be trying to over engineer a solution. If you're like me and enjoy that then absolutely ignore the rest of this post 😁.

If you just want a really simple solution, you can look at changing whatever zone you're setting off when you first come in from the garage to a delay zone rather than an instant or handover zone. You'd then set any other zones you cross in the path to the keypad as handover zones. The Bosch installation manuals can be found online and you can reprogram with the installer code. There should be two delay zone types so you can have a short delay on the front door sensor zone, and a longer delay on the garage entry sensor zone. Handover zones simply transfer the remaining delay from one zone to another as they're triggered, provided a delay zone was triggered first, otherwise they act like an instant zone which is why you set the alarm off when coming in from the garage.

linus

15 posts

Geek

#2833377 16-Dec-2021 11:41

FailedWOF:

Having thought further you might be trying to over engineer a solution. If you're like me and enjoy that then absolutely ignore the rest of this post 😁.

Thanks for the suggestions, and as much as I'd love to over engineer it, I don't have the spare time right now 😀

I might eventually get around to my somewhat flawed initial thought, otherwise I'll just use the entry/handover zones, which need to be rearranged anyway, as the installer set the living room as an entry zone (where's my facepalm emoji?).

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