Dear Cocoon folk,
First post here! I moved into a 20 year old house with a malfunctioning central alarm system which is 20 years old. I think the panel's batteries died- the sensors seem OK. I would like to upgrade the panel to something more modern. For example I would like to set the alarm with a key fob, and get text alerts when the alarm goes off. I was hoping to use the existing wired sensors. I see the "end of line" resistors all in the panel so I guess those are easily accessible. I would like to install a system through an independent installer where I can use inexpensive monitoring service. I have a lot of technical expertise with electronics and home automation but not much with alarm systems per se. I don't have time to learn a whole new system and install it myself. I will tinker with it once installed, though! I found a local guy on homeadvisor and he installs DSC systems. I also saw on the smarthome forums that a lot of people use Elk to interface with Insteon.
I also have 2 Nest thermostats and about 20 Insteon light switches. My automation goal would be to press one key fob to turn on the alarm, turn off all the lights, and set the Nest to away. And similarly to press a disarm button and turn alarm off, and turn off Away mode on the Nest. (Maybe integrate lock / unlock of the garage door deadbolt too.) Am I dreaming? Seems like homeseer is on the edge of doing this but the nest plugin only works with homeseer 2 an obsolete version (??? not sure on this). If I had to pick one system to talk to (nest or insteon), not sure which one, probably Nest. I would prefer to have this part of the system run stably without periodic reboots of one box or another.
What would you all suggest? Many thanks and sorry for the long post.
First post here! I moved into a 20 year old house with a malfunctioning central alarm system which is 20 years old. I think the panel's batteries died- the sensors seem OK. I would like to upgrade the panel to something more modern. For example I would like to set the alarm with a key fob, and get text alerts when the alarm goes off. I was hoping to use the existing wired sensors. I see the "end of line" resistors all in the panel so I guess those are easily accessible. I would like to install a system through an independent installer where I can use inexpensive monitoring service. I have a lot of technical expertise with electronics and home automation but not much with alarm systems per se. I don't have time to learn a whole new system and install it myself. I will tinker with it once installed, though! I found a local guy on homeadvisor and he installs DSC systems. I also saw on the smarthome forums that a lot of people use Elk to interface with Insteon.
I also have 2 Nest thermostats and about 20 Insteon light switches. My automation goal would be to press one key fob to turn on the alarm, turn off all the lights, and set the Nest to away. And similarly to press a disarm button and turn alarm off, and turn off Away mode on the Nest. (Maybe integrate lock / unlock of the garage door deadbolt too.) Am I dreaming? Seems like homeseer is on the edge of doing this but the nest plugin only works with homeseer 2 an obsolete version (??? not sure on this). If I had to pick one system to talk to (nest or insteon), not sure which one, probably Nest. I would prefer to have this part of the system run stably without periodic reboots of one box or another.
What would you all suggest? Many thanks and sorry for the long post.
