Security System: Surprise number 1
By john on Jun 17, 2008 in Home Automation, Home Security, featured
Back when I was ordering my security system from FrontPoint Security (Which utilizes Alarm.com), I knew that it was capable of X10 control of your lights. At the time, though, I didn’t really think much of it. You see – I stopped using X10 a few weeks ago when I upgraded all of my home automation components to Insteon. Thus, while I thought it was cool that the alarm system was capable of performing X10 control – I just didn’t see it as very useful.
I was wrong.
Tonight, enjoying a nice quiet night at my house, I decided to play around with my home automation system. The heart (or perhaps brain) of my system is a Mac Mini (with OS X 10.5 Leopard) running Indigo 3.0, from PerceptiveAutomation. I wanted to clean up a lot of the clutter and kludge that has seeped into my configuration since I’ve been piecing this system together. While doing that, however, I noticed some stuff showing up in the logs – specifically, X10 commands. It was about this time that I made the realization that my alarm system was sending out X10 commands…. and my home control server was seeing them.
I then grabbed my keys and pressed the button on my security key fob that has a light bulb symbol on it. Sure enough, Indigo registered an “All lights on” X10 command (for house group A). I set up a test trigger action that triggered when it got that specific command, and executed a Insteon Group / Scene command (specifically to turn my great room lights on). I then tested. Sure enough, when I pressed the key fob button, my great room lights turned on. Awesome!
That was half the battle. The second half was – how to use the key fob to turn the lights OFF. Turns out, each time you press the key fob button it alternates between on and off – I think this is actually done based off what the panel thinks is the status of the lights. Initially I figured it would send the All Lights Off command, but instead it sent the All Units Off command. Once I figured that out it was easy to get the key fob to be a simple remote for my lights. No more stumbling into a dark house fumbling to press the right switch to turn the lights on – now I can do it before I ever open the door.
So far I *really* like my alarm system. This was just a bonus that made the system even more valuable to me. I’ve been very impressed with the quality of service from FrontPoint, and the technology provided by Alarm.com is amazing.
It was rather funny – a rep from the alarm company that handles the physical security measures at my office was out talking to me today, and he was all excited and wanted to show me their new system. He had me fire up a browser and took me to their new web portal which was…. powered by Alarm.com. He was a bit surprised that I already knew about it, but was happy to know that I loved the service.
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