Zwave passive listening?

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 :wink:

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.

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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).

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