Hi Paul, no worries. Life is pretty busy the last several weeks here too. Ill need the models of the cameras. Maybe a picture if you cant find it. Door sensors are increadibly cheap so if we cant get the vivant ones working there are probibly some you could swap out. Before you kill your service get the installer code from o e of the techs, its your equipment and if they give it to you then theres alot more we can do. For instance everything will remain paired to the panel and we may be able to tie into one of the alarm out circuits to openhab which would have a rule like send you a notification. The motion sensors may be proprietary which means it would be better to tie into the panel if possible.
I am in this same boat. Bought a house in Dec with the lastest Vivnit System installed and verified that the software is version 3.6 which from what I have read can not be hacked into. I did call Vivnit but they would not tell me who the tech was that installed the unit and not give me the installer code unless I reactivated the system @ like $45 a month and I was like no way. So basically I have a worthless system installed. It appears that if I purchase a 2GIG system that all of the sensors have the same dimensions so I would just need to swap them all out. I wasn’t able to get into the Vivnit panel so I have no idea what all devices are in my house. I have seen the door sensors, what appears to be a glass break sensor, and 2 motion detectors. Does Vivnit install windows sensors too because I have not seen any of those? Any help or advice would be great.
Hi Cole, sorry for the long pause. I took a closer look at my Vivant left overs and Im more convinced that I would keep only the parts that your able to find online references to, as in several seem to be fairly proprietary and until someone posts a detailed (somewhat easy) guide on that stuff, its probably going to be way easier to spend a little money on the various smart home stuff that’s already got support. That said the doorbell camera is totally useable and I would be happy to post more detail on taking it over. It does require some basic computer network knowledge, and I may be able to simplify the instructions.
Ill take a look at the smart thermostat this week as well as the smoke detector and the door keypad. Most people get those items in the basic install package, so Ill post my findings here. Take a look at the glass break detector if its accessible and send me pictures. If its the same as mine Ill look into that too. Thanks for being patient.
My glassbreak sensor is Honeywell so its a go for takeover and the front door lock looks like a 50/50 chance.
The motion sensor and all the window and door sensors had a vivant lables on the inside so I’m going to say probibly not, good thing they are cheap parts.
Hi @Luke_Bair ,
Were you able to replicate the same doorbell capability from the Vivint app to Openhab? eg: live stream of the camera, doorbell notifications to your phone through cloud service, doorbell sound to be played through speakers, an easy way to access the recordings from your network share in HABPanel
If so, would you be able to share the steps and your config files on how you did that?
thanks!
Rich
Well the ability is there, through the “Customized script” option inside the camera:
Here is an example of the syntax see page 37-39:
http://download.vivotek.com/downloadfile/downloads/usersmanuals/ip21x2manual_en.pdf
That said I just use it for recording video\audio. It does have a two way audio if you pull up the web interface inside internet explorer and there is an app (android\apple) that probably works with it though I haven’t tried the app.
https://www.vivotek.com/iviewer/#views:view=jplist-grid-view
I use it with blueiris (a nice inexpensive dvr that is compatable with almost all cameras) which I launch via shortcut inside openhab, but there is a nice writeup on full integration here:
The camera also has the ability to save recorded video\pictures to a network share or ftp server, so you can set it up without any additional software. There is quite alot of cool motion detection/event capability baked right into the camera.
I have a feeling to get the doorbell button working your going to need to get your hands dirty with the custom script using the examples in the manual and the variables listed under “System” => “Parameters” Here is a screenshot of the area you’d be interested in.
I have a large glass window on my front door so there was little motivation to get that part working.
The first steps are to pair the doorbell to your wifi… here is a good how to to get into the doorbell if your comfortable with how WPS works:
Let me know if you have any other questions, or get stuck. Most of it is self explanatory once you get into the web interface of the camera. If you decide to get adventurous and play with the scripts post how far you get so others can maybe add to it. I havent gone that far but hopefully the links here helps get you to the right place.
@Luke_Bair many thanks for your contributions
To confirm, in order to take over the doorbell I simply need to use WDS to pair it with my router - then I can log in with root/adcvideo by hitting the DHCP IP address that’s given to it. Is the admin gui served on port 80 or a different port? From the screenshot it looks like 80, just want to confirm (I don’t have network access yet at my home)
Which other sensors have you been able to take over? I saw you mentioning the glassbreak sensor and the front door lock, were you able to take these over?
I’m pretty new to smart home tech but I’m no stranger to linux, scripting or networking… so I figure it should be pretty easy for me to get well adjusted here. But for the sake of covering all my bases - anything that is critical to know for this type of hacking? I keep hearing about a SDR is that needed for the doorbell at all or only for the other sensors?
Thanks and sorry for the noobie questions 
Yes, that is correct. Default port 80 is working on mine. I bought a zwave stick and played with paring various devices with mixed success. I am very new at this as well and I’ve got a busy home life, so I only really got the things working that I really need. Openhab can see the front door lock but I haven’t assigned it any rules or tried to do much with it. These days Im leaning towards maybe getting a smart hub that is Openhab compatible instead.
I have some indoor PING cameras from Vivint that I would like to reuse. I have the following questions:
- Is anyone got it working with the Openhab hub?
- Where do I found the menu for the indoor PING camera?
- How to put it on my local wifi network instead going through the vivint panel?
hey would love help on taking over my vivint equipment would you mind. i have a door bell, window sensors, camera and door sensors. Is it possible to take over?
Just to chime in that I have a 2GIG system, which I understand uses the same wireless door sensors and have been successfully using HoneywellSecurityMQTT (here) with a USB RTL-SDR radio just fine for a while to get open/closed status coupled with the MQTT binding. I found it best works on a powered USB hub because the USB radio dongle uses a lot of juice and gets quite warm but it works great plus it’s passive so my alarm system also still works as it should
I do have a doorbell ring from Vivint and I could get the ring/chime working even with no service.
What I did is to change a script that is in the camera (telnet connection) to trigger a secondary script on my OpenHab server, as I have it connected to a speaker I can hear it from anywhere in my house.
Of course I had to do some “tricks” on Linux in order to have it working but it is possible.
would you be able to share a guide and script on how you managed to do that in your setup?
Hi Richard, I will try my best as I have no documentation on all the steps:
Overall what I did was:
1 - Connect the doorbell to my Wifi Network
2 - Activate Web Interface
3 - Setup Camera (password, FTP, events, etc.)
4 - Activate Telnet
5 - Mount the file to a read-only location
6 - Add a SSH command line to trigger a sound on my server
1 - To connect the camera to my network I tried two things
a. Activate WPS on my Linux Server (that was a pain in the …). With WPS I could connect any WPS device to my network
b. I am pretty sure this is the one that really worked. I Pressed and hold the ring button for about 10 seconds then the camera reset and activate a WiFi network (Something like Vivint + Mac address) I then connected and browse for http://192.168.(0/1).1 and did setup it to my WiFi network.
2 - To activate Web Interface
An important command/URL to know is this: http://camera_ip:port/cgi-bin/admin/getparam.cgi it will list all parameters to you. Based on this I found this parameter network_http_webaccess and changed it to 1.
To set a parameter use this URL http://ip_camera:port/cgi-bin/admin/setparam.cgi?network_http_webaccess=1 – Do not use quotes to set a parameter
3 - To setup the camera just play around, there is no easy way to explain but once you are on the web interface you can figure this out.
4 - To activate telnet
This is the command/URL I use to activate telnet (SSH is not an option)
http://ip_camera:port/cgi-bin/admin/mod_inetd.cgi?telnet=on’
Don’t try the other parameter URL, it will not work. Once it is completed just telnet ip_camera use same credentials you have setup on your camera.
5 to mount the file system (it was needed in order to allow me to change the play_sound file as the partition is read-only)
mount --bind /mnt/flash/play_sound /usr/bin/play_sound
6
Then edit the play_sound file from your new location (/mnt/flash/play_sound). As there is no way to save credentials on the cameras for the ssh connection (next step), I downloaded PUTTY for Linux using wget to use sshpass so the command line I addes is
sshpass -p ‘password’ ssh user@ip_server/host "aplay /path/bell.wav"
Keep in mind you need to run this mount every time your doorbell ring is turned off, one option is to add this to the fstab file to mount automatically during the boot.
One other thing to keep in mind is, if you are using Linux (Ubuntu for instance) to play the bell.wav file you need to ensure the user that is playing is the same one that is logged in on your computer and that the audio device is working for that user.
I am pretty sure this is what I did to have it working.
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I did the same thing, but I “override” nice. “play_sound” invokes “nice”. My version of “nice” is stored on a read-write portion of the doorbell.
How did you manage to keep the changes ? As I mentioned I had to mount/bind the file to another location where I could “override” but when my doorbell reboot (i.e. power outage) I then need to mount/bind again. I was thinking of a script scheduled on my OH Server to check and mount/bind if needed.
Also Did you manager to redirect the chime to a different device ? In my case I am using a tabled for HabPanel and I would like the chime to “play” on this device instead of on OH Server. just didn’t find a solution for a non-jailbreak device.
I found that play_sound invokes “nice” without a path.
play_sound with e.g. doorbell.wav is invoked by chronos.
I copied the chronos config file (/etc/init.d/chronos) here: “/mnt/flash2/unifs/usr/bin”.
And I put my “nice” in the same location.
I modified the path in the chronos config file to include “/mnt/flash2/unifs/usr/bin” as its first entry.
I linked the modified chronos file from here “/etc/rcS.d” (S09chronos).
Now, when chronos invokes play_sound, play_sound invokes my “nice” (even after reboot AFAIK).
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Thank you.
This is way better than what I was doing (trying to mount) and works better and faster also.
I am newbie to scripting so my nice uses ‘touch’ to create a persistent indicator (in order to distinguish between nice invoked prior to playing “bell.wav” and nice invoked for other reasons). Are your scripting skills superior to mine and do you care to share your “nice”?
My next project is to use RTL-SDR and listen to the various sensors in my house. My first attempt to use HoneywellSecurityMQTT gave strange results as multiple doors were identified by the same identifier. I think HoneywellSecurityMQTT isn’t decoding my sensors’ output correctly.
Not at all, I am not good with scripts in Linux.
I using this RLT-SDT from Amazon. it works for what I need.
I am using mosquitto and this was a challenge to me in the beginning as all the documents I found did not work, but I figure this out last week using different pieces from different instructions.
I am using RTL_433 and mosquitto to get details from my devices, even though not all devices are showing on my list yet.
But I have it working showing up in HabPanel.