My alarm system uses zwave for the sensor communications. Is it possible to have openhab be some kind of passive listener in the alarms zwave communication so that I can incorporate those sensors into my automation?
Can you have your alarm system send notifications to openHAB? I believe there can technically be a secondary Z-Wave controller but I I am unsure of the details & restrictions.
@Chris is our primary Z-Wave expert here.
If this is a closed system, then the answer is no, you can’t just listen in to the data. Data is almost certainly encrypted and secured - it is a security system after all
If you can join the network securely, then it might be possible - unless it’s a new system using the latest ZWave security protocols which use device specific keys.
It’s Ring. I’m not sure if it’s closed. I know you can add third party zwave devices.
It is a security system so all data would be encrypted by default.
Encryption is an optional part of the Z-Wave standard. The system can support encryption and third party devices too.
That’s unfortunate. Since I’m a zwave newb, are there any issues if I were to put a zwave dongle on my OH instance and attaching some motion sensors to it given the fact that I have a somewhat large (40 device/sensors) zwave alarm system?
I believe that would be a second Z-Wave mesh network I am unsure whether the networks would interfere with each other.
I would agree that it would be a second network from what I’ve read. My fear is that I’ll disrupt my alarm system by rolling a second zwave network.
Although I seem to remember somebody here with 2 small networks, again, @chris would be the best one to answer.
It should not really matter. ISM systems are, as part of their certification, meant to keep the amount of transmissions to a minimum to allow interoperability with other systems. If one ZWave network used all the capacity of a channel, then it would mean only 1 system in a neighbourhood, which clearly is not acceptable!
Also, at the end of the day, if you add devices to a network, or a second network, the transmissions will still be broadly the same even though they are on a different network (this isn’t 100% correct, but as a first approximation is true).