I spoke too soon
By john on Jun 19, 2008 in Home Automation, Home Security, featured
Last night I wrote how I was disappointed that my home security system’s X10 controls weren’t robust enough to allow me to trigger lights and other actions off of output from the various security sensors in my home. For instance, having lights turn on near a particular door when it opens. I did a cursory inspection of the X10 output from the alarm panel when I triggered these sensors, and saw nothing that would really help me.
It would appear I spoke too soon.
While on the web portal today to set up a reminder that will send me a text message reminding me to arm the system at night if I’ve not armed it by a certain time, I noticed a section I had not previously explored – primarily due to the fact that I’m not USING the X10 features. Specifically the “Automation” tab. That tab lets me set up “lights” as X10 devices, and assign them names to track them on the portal. I thought “well THAT is neat… ” and started to get interested in what I was seeing. A subtab of the automation was “sensor-light interaction”, which is where all of the magic happens.
Once you define the light devices (in my case I’m not using this as it was originally intended – I’m not defining lights, but doors) you can set them to trigger when certain sensors trigger – in my case, my doors. Then whenever you open those doors or trigger the sensors, it sends the X10 command.
What was interesting, and REALLY cool, is that this isn’t limited to just the door sensors – I can do this with the motion sensor too, allowing me to have lights come on at night just by walking into the room.
The other piece of the puzzle, and the part I’ve not played with to set up yet, is to set up the home control server to see those X10 commands and then translate those into the lights actually being turned on. The trick is that I don’t want them to ALWAYS turn on, but rather only when the lighting outside would dictate they should (say, at night). The good news is that Indigo is well suited for that kind of customization and can easily handle that.
So, I’ve just found a way to fully integrate my alarm system into my home automation system to provide me with the ability to have a REAL smart home.
This system is like a christmas present every day 
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an update on this for those who are interested:
I’ve had some issues with getting my home automation server to send the correct command when a door opens/closes. I’m sure I can do it, I just need to play around with it to get it to work right. I’ve not had time to do this, but will work on it, and update you all on it, when time permits.
john | Jun 24, 2008 | Reply