DSC Alarm and My Sensors/OpenHAB

[pwatt01]

Hello All,

I have a DSC PC2550 (8 zone and 2 fire) alarm system that came with my house. I was thinking that I would like to hook it up so I can access it from home via mysensors to OPENHAB (or another controller...)

I was thinking that I have 3 options

1. rip out all the existing control boards and replace with Arduino Mega. Use the existing sensors (motion and fire alarm) as basic sensors (open or closed), stepped down to 5v high to not destroy the arduino. Then using this as an example to send the info back to openhab. Then setting rules in open hab to arm/disarm, activate siren & strobe etc. Reverse engineer keypad to work as is but with the new 'contollor'

2. It seems that there has been some work done in using an arduino to interface with DSC systems. Does anyone think this might be easier.. It seems you need more hardware (DSC IT-100), which according to the specsheet is not compatible with

3. Reverse engineer the keypad and create a 2nd 'keypad' using an arduino and mysensors and/or openHAB that can control the system as needed, keeping the existing controllors as is.

Any thoughts?

Thanks

[soward]

The 2550 is pretty old, dates back to the 90s I think. You could pick up a newer panel and IT-100 for not much $ and fit it in place, possibly using the same keypads. The serial protocol is semi-well documented. I'm using an 1832 and IT-100 though the VERA ( plug-in exists ), and it works reasonably well. I do not know if they use the same 4 wire keypad and same protocol, but I think that has been decoded and hacked as well. That all said it might not be a huge amount more work to just try to use the existing sensors with something home-grown and either get rid of the keypads entirely or roll your own there as well.

[pwatt01]

Thanks for that advice. I reckon ill get started with some hacking and see how far I get! Thanks!