Hi all -
I use OpenHAB 2, and have always thought it was unfortunate that I couldn’t integrate the 10+ sensors that came with my house: the security system. Mine is a re-branded Honeywell system, which is pretty common, at least in the USA. There is an Openhab AlarmDecoder binding, but AlarmDecoder costs $100+, and doesn’t work with my model of security panel anyway.
Long story short, I wrote a decoder for Honeywell sensors that bypasses the alarm panel and captures the sensors’ state directly from the wireless transmission. It does require a SDR dongle, but that’s only ~$20, and it works irrespective of what alarm panel you have (or even without an alarm panel).
I wrote it for my own use, but published both source/binaries in the GitHub Project and a Project Writeup in case anyone else would like to use it.
The requirements are:
- SDR dongle (search Amazon for RTL-SDR)
- A computer to run the decoder (I use the same Raspberry Pi 3 that’s running my OpenHAB install). It’s been tested on Ubuntu and Raspbian, but should run on any variant of Linux. It might run in Windows and other OS’s, but it hasn’t been tested.
- gnuradio installed (various tutorials available on the internet, but is pretty straightforward).
- MQTT binding installed in OpenHab
Here’s an example of what it looks like in action, via HabPanel.
More info (including source, binaries, and usage instructions) are in the GitHub Project and if you’re curious on the process of receiving and decoding the signal from the sensors, check out the Project Writeup. (Links in paragraph above, because apparently new users can only post two links).