Read Ademco Devices with Insteon???

[bbruck]

I have a 15 year old Ademco alarm system - too old to connect to much of anything.. I do not use the 3 hard wired motion sensors; but we do use the hard-wired door sensors (as well as glass breaks and window sensors) when we set our alarm. The alarm guy made it so the motion sensors don't set off any alarms - though we still see them blink when we enter their zones - because we got large dogs after the system was installed.

I would like to "eavesdrop" on the state of the motion sensors and door sensors to trigger home automation events. I am using Indigo and Insteon devices.

I have been wondering if it wouldn't be possible for me to use a EZIO6I or some other Insteon low voltage input device for this purpose.

Could I, for instance, simply attach an additional wire inside the Ademco box from the terminal where a motion detector or door sensor connects to the Ademco system, and run that additional wire to my Insteon interface? Would I need an additional resistor or anything like this - or is it possible to make this work at all?

My desired state would be that the selected motion and door sensors would be recognized by Indigo via the EZIO6I, and that they would also continue to serve their current function - which for motion detectors is pretty much nil, but for door sensors to act as Ademco triggers as well.

 

[CollinR]

What model alarm panel?

It's probably too old but the proper way is to use something like the 4204 relay board to close the contacts on the EZIO6I (i guess I know nothing of that device). You could reconfigure the panel without EOL and run the IO in parallel but then problems between the IO and the alarm could cause an actual alarm. Vista20 and better the Vista50 are rather cheap and have more output then the very common Vista10 and Vista15.