Wanted: OpenAlarm?

[Anonymous]

Ray,

I have been toying with the idea of building my own alarm system however I am wondering if you are already doing this. If you are I will eagerly await your product offering.

Having my own system with its own built in escalation matrix, that way I don’t have to pay for extremely expensive monitoring.

Also, it seems that you are working on the OpenThermostat idea here:
https://opensprinkler.com/forums/topic/wanted-openthermostat/

You could integrate the two in an area that I would love which would shut off the AC/heat if someone opens a door our window and leaves it that way for x-period of time. Having young kids, this is a tremendous frustration for me.

[Ray]

Interesting. I just talked to a customer the other day about a light-sensing alarm. The idea is to trigger the alarm (which also sends a push notification) if the ambient illumination goes above a certain level during a specified period of time (say, during night). This is actually quite easy to do. So what you want is similar, but you want the gadget to sense the door / window opening and trigger an alarm (or even a action such as turning off AC / heat) when it happens. Right? What’s the technique to sense the door / window opening? I’ve seen home security systems using a magnet plus a reed switch (or hall effect sensor) to do so. Wondering if you prefer a different way.

[Anonymous]

I would say a host of physical contacts offering no/nc options as well as the potential for RF connected sensors as well.

I figure since you are already working on a thermostat idea the two could be paired together so there is a little more intelligence for the HVAC system.
Having little kids it is rather annoying to run the AC/heat and discover someone left their window open all day long, this is only going to be more of a problem as they get older.

Maybe an overall schema where all of your platforms can communicate together, OpenHome, OpenHouse, or something similar?

[ab]

Hi Ray,

I much agree with this and have been looking for something like this. Door/Window Sensors integrated with ESP8266 and Blynk app, just like Opengarage. Any progress with this as yet? What i need is just the ready-made Arduino box and the sensors and blynk would then be easy to integrate.
Id love to buy these from you.

[Ray]

We’ve been working on a ESP8266-based motion sensor using PIR sensor, with a motor port to control a servo — the idea is that this can sense a person standing in front of the door and that in turn triggers the motion of a physical bell. It can also send notifications remotely, or you can remotely trigger the bell to ring. It’s along the lines of OpenAlarm, but perhaps the sensors you have in mind are different.

Speaking of door/window sensors — Jeff Lawrence’s improved OpenGarage firmware:
https://github.com/lawrence-jeff/OpenGarage-Firmware
supports connecting a simple switch sensor to OpenGarage (instead of using the built-in ultrasonic distance sensor). That may immediately address the need of a door/window sensor. We are in the process of merging his changes to the master branch.

[Author]

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