Monitoring doorbell activity

I'm trying to monitor a doorbell press using an ELK-930 via the elkm1 control perl library.

According to the ELK M1 manual setting the zone definition for the Door Bell zone to 16 (non-alarm) won't work (and it doesn't) as no activity is logged. The other option was setting the definition to 13 (Aux1 24Hr. Alarm). This works and I can capture the event but the problem with this is that the alarm is not reset which, according to the manual, it should be as it "resets upon restoral". The siren and keypad are not affected but I have a rule which is "WHENEVER EVERY 10 SECONDS AND ANY ALARM, ANY AREA IS ACTIVE" and this rule fires until I disarm the system which resets the Aux1 24Hr Alarm.

Is there any way to create a rule while using the non-alarm definition which will force the M1 to log the event to signal the elkm1 control library?

Otherwise, is it possible to stop the alarm when using the Aux1 24Hr Alarm definition without disarming the entire system (obviously this would be less then ideal on a doorbell press!).

Thanks for your help.

Just a quick follow up.... I tried setting the Aux1Duration timeout to 0 and 1 second to hopefully avoid the continuous rule firing but that doesn't seem to affect the alarm duration at all.

The zone status is reported out the serial/ethernet protocol for my doorbell which is confiugred as a non-alarm zone . So maybe the problem is you need a new library.... The M1 has an ASCII protocol, it is very easy to work with directly. Or maybe you could write a rule to trigger a phantom output and monitor that...

Wuench: adding the phantom out seems to work. Oddly enough now I can capture both the doorbell zone (defined as a non-alarm type) and phantom output. If I don't have the rule with the phantom output I don't seem to receive either. I can watch the ASCII stream right from the XEP and nothing comes through. I also have to turn off, then turn on the Elk before any changes above are active. Very odd. Thanks for the help.

If it sparks any creativity in anyone else... I'm using a perl script to monitor activity on the Elk M1 which then pushes a message to Growl on my mac and Prowl on my iOS devices. Hopefully this way I won't miss the door bell when music/tv/etc is too loud.

gregyyc said:

Hopefully this way I won't miss the door bell when music/tv/etc is too loud.

Click to expand...

Why not have it mute the TV/Music?

Work2Play said:

Why not have it mute the TV/Music?

Click to expand...

Possible but would need to interface it with several different devices and I may just be in the backyard when the door bell is hit so this seemed to solved several problems fairly easily.

Probably - but overkill is what we're all about! ^_^