Outdoor Lights on with an Alarm

My quest started with a simple vision ... my alarm system would turn on exterior lights when the alarm is tripped (or panic is pressed) While it sounded like a simple thing to do, I am perplexed at how to accomplish this simple task.

The house has an existing alarm system that I am not ready to replace. (DSC Power 832) It works well and although I like the ELK M1 Gold I am not sure I am willing to spend the money today. I have open relays on the DSC alarm that can be used to control "something external." I even manged to get the DSC to control a Potter & Brumfield relay to turn on and off a light in the basement. Of course turning a light on in a windowless room in the basement does not impress many people :-O

Around the exterior of my home I have several lights. Above the driveway is a motion detector based flood light. In the back is another flood light (not motion based) Near the front door is another light. I have wanted to do something better with the flood in the driveway. Is is a cheap light and when the kids want to play basketball at night they endlessly flip the switch to try to magically get the light to not turn off after the motion detector times out. Those of you with children can surely imagine that after one of the late night basketball games the flood lights are left on until dad comes home the next day.

I have looked at many technologies to try to automate the lights. I threw out X10 because of the challenges I had years ago. (we just don't have clean power. Maybe I can blame my neighbors?) I am not a fan of Insteon because it seems like fancy X10. (maybe you can change my mind) I like Zwave however I keep hitting the same two bumps:

1) Having the floodlight motion controlled and home automation controlled (how can I have both turn the light on?)
2) Using a 12v relay to turn on home automation based lights?

I hate to imagine that I need to invest in a computer to receive a message based on the relay on the alarm to then run a task to turn the lights on. Isn't there an easier (more reliable) way? The ELK M1 keeps looking better and better ... Your thoughts or advice is appreciated.

Pat
 
you should be able to use a UPB IO module to detect the output from the alarm turning on, and the IO module could send signals to UPB controlled lights.
 
You can do this with a EZIO8T from Simplehomenet that will take a contact closure and issue an insteon command. http://simplehomenet.com/EZIO8T.asp. I wouldn't rule out Insteon for your project without having a look at whats available. My Insteon network has been solid and I had stopped trying to deal with X10 for the same reasons you gave.
 
Thank you both for your feedback.

I found that both the Insteon and UPB IO solutions will handle the alarm relay. Now the only challenge with both solutions is enabling the flood lights to be controlled by either the motion detector or the (Insteon/UPB) solution. There are X10 floodlights - why not Insteon or UPB (or zigbee / zwave) floodlights?

Pat



You can do this with a EZIO8T from Simplehomenet that will take a contact closure and issue an insteon command. http://simplehomenet.com/EZIO8T.asp. I wouldn't rule out Insteon for your project without having a look at whats available. My Insteon network has been solid and I had stopped trying to deal with X10 for the same reasons you gave.
 
I think you could mimic the floodlight solution with z-wave using a z-wave motion sensor directly controlling a switched floodlight controlled by a z-wave switch.

however, you could also use the UPB I/O module for that purpose as well as long as the floodlight is switch controlled (I'm guessing you might have to replace your floodlight at some point...). Just use a regular motion detector and use it with the I/O module the same way you were using it from the alarm panel
 
Thank you both for your feedback.

I found that both the Insteon and UPB IO solutions will handle the alarm relay. Now the only challenge with both solutions is enabling the flood lights to be controlled by either the motion detector or the (Insteon/UPB) solution. There are X10 floodlights - why not Insteon or UPB (or zigbee / zwave) floodlights?

Pat



My guess is because X10 has about a 30 year head start on all the other solutions. You could use screw-in modules if the floods are protected from the weather. Z-wave has one. An Insteon version was released and is now on hold due to problems with coming on after power failures. You could also use Insteon inline lincs if you don't want switches.
 
I also have an 832. I added an IO card on the 832 bus. It's outputs feed into a digital io card. I use LabVIEW to issue Insteon commands. When my alarm goes off, all exterior and interior lights turn on. I also have my video surveillance system tied in. Whenever there's motion that meets certain size and duration requirements, the surveillance system(all pc based) fires off outside lights in the appropriate areas. Every now and then, I'll check the video logs and I'll see some mid 80's small car pull up in our cul de sac(ours is the only home on it) at like 2:30 AM, the various lights in the front go on in sequence, and then the video shows the car speeding off. You know it was someone casing the neighborhood. I threw together this system 2 years ago after our house got busted into in the middle of the day. It consists of various Pelco extreme low light cameras and several hi def Toshiba ethernet cameras.
 
Oh, forgot to mention, DSC now has a serial module which hooks up to the bus. This would be a lot better alternative as you can get a lot more data. The digital output card is limited. I have 4 outputs programed for 1) alarm away, 2) alarm stay, 3) Phone disconnected, 4) power disconnected. If someone turns off the circuit breakers and the alarm is armed, the UPS which powers the video and computer systems blurts out a warning through speakers outside the house that AC power has been disconnected and switching over to battery backup. If the phone line is unplugged, it blurts out that it's switching to cellular backup which I don't actually have, but figure it would be enough to scare anyone off.
 
You should try using one of the DSC plugins with a 30 day trial of HomeSeer and then you could control any device you need weather it be X10, Insteon, Z-Wave, UPB, etc.
 
I made a motion / computer controlled floodlight which is functionally equivalent to the X10 variety using a UPB UMI module and a Visonic SPY-1 PIR. What you find is that if you depend upon the PC/Homeseer to generate the ON/OFF commands when the PIR is triggered you will have delays that are too long between motion detection and light activation for most applications.

What is needed is a hardware-based solution to achieve the desired response time. I wanted notification of motion at all times, but only want the light to be automatically activated at nighttime when motion occurs. The UMI input link is routed back to the UMI output so immediate motion-activate control of the light occurs while at the same time the computer is informed of the motion.

The light fixture can be run in series with a photocell that is typical of outdoor dusk-activated lights so the light only comes on at night. The approach I took was to use a second UMI output to provide day/night moding from the computer and a second UMI input so I had different links for daylight motion and nighttime motion where the nighttime motion link was the one controlling the UMI output for the light. This was the lowest part-count solution for me and provided total flexibiltiy as to when the computer can turn on/off the light.

I am not aware of any Z wave IO module. Z wave for outdoor application could easily have range issues as well. I am not as intimate with Insteon, but I believe the link/group concept can be applied here to achieve the needed low latency. A little more hardware conditioning on the motion sensor input will be needed to fit into the 0-5 V range of the EZIO8T.
 
"What you find is that if you depend upon the PC/Homeseer to generate the ON/OFF commands when the PIR is triggered you will have delays that are too long between motion detection and light activation for most applications."
Hum.. I wonder if it's dependent on the speed of the PC hardware used? My new Z-Wave motion sensors ( HSM100) to HomeSeer and back to light switch is less than a second. In addition you can have the Z-Wave motion sensor directly control the light if you desire. These new Z-Wave motion sensors are not rated for outdoor use but we'll see how long they last in the south. Add the fact that they report their battery status, light level (which will take care of the day/night issue) and temperature and they are a nice little device. Unfortunately, they are out of stock at the moment. http://store.homeseer.com/store/Z-Wave-Mul...er-P438C57.aspx
 
There is considerable distance traveled in 1 second when driving down a road/driveway . At 5 mph that is about 8 feet if my math is correct. You will either have the light flash in your eyes or it will illuminate your tail. If you are trying to scare-off intruders then this might be good. Of course if you are walking around the house then 1 second will not be noticable and the light will shine ahead of where you are walking.

Propagation time for X10 is about 1 second each way, 0.25 seconds for UPB, and I assume effectively 0 for ZWave or other RF technologies. The 0.5 second difference between UPB and Zwave can make a difference. I have found the PC to be a flexible solution that usually does the job but frequently its time-share environment has it doing other things rather than idling waiting for a motion sensor input. While I have not benchmarked it, I know my interior lights that are controlled by the PC and motion sensors have considerable variation between when walking into an area and the light turning on. This is easily more than 1 second variation.

I was not aware Zwave modules were smart enough to control the light only when it is dark yet still provide notification during the day that motion is present, but then I am not close enough to that particular HST product to know its capabilities. I also had the impression that Zwave is a social animal and it shuns members that want to exist in remote areas such as down a road.

There are good applications for Zwave as there are for most technologies. It is the users job to assess which is best for their specific situation. Places such as cocoontech can help the user see there is more than one way to solve a problem.
 
Get a PC5580TC for your DCS-832, it has many home automation features and you can have it
turn on X10 lights. I had one in my previous home and ran all sorts of things with it. They are a little
tricky to program, but do work well. In 6 years never had a problem with it.

Note: it is a small board called a voice escort and available at many do it yourself
alarm sites.

Cliff s
 
Thank you everyone for all the great ideas. I ordered a couple of UPB switches to try this out. On the motion detector lights I ended out taking the simple solution. I added a second set of lights - Leaving the motion detector lights in place and adding another set on the other side that will be UPB controlled.

Thanks again.

pat
 
The second set of lights is the best solution as it is the simpliest. With only one set of lights then you need logic/moding to know if the light should remain ON or turn OFF after someone leaves the motion field. In your case you do not need the motion notification to do anything other than control that one light so there is no point in trying to integrate it into a HA system.
 
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