DSC PC1550 Upgrade Konnected Pro – HASSIO

During my transition from OpenHab2 to HomeAssistant, I found myself looking at my aging DSC PC1550 wired alarm system.

Goal: Replace my functioning, but offline DSC PC1550 alarm. I wanted push notifications via telegram and audible alerting when doors are opened/closed/left open. This needed to fold into my existing smarthome ecosystem (Alexa/HASSIO).

• Issue list (separate posts)
• Compatibility and hardware
• Adding Konnected to HA
• Adding a Digital Alarm Panel to HA
• Setting up alerting/logic chime for HA

COMPATIBILITY & HARDWARE

The property has pre-existing DSC PC1550 wired alarm. I wanted to leverage this with my existing smarthome (Hue, Alexa, HASSIO). Due to the age of the panel an EyezOn unit^[1]https://www.eyezon.com/ was not an option. Konnected seemed like they had a great product, but all their units were wireless. Browsing their new products though, they recently added a new POE/wifi unit, Konnected Pro^[2]https://konnected.io/collections/pre-order-new-v2-products/products/konnected-alarm-panel-pro-12-zone-kit. Though, pricey at the time ($229 USD).

Out of the box, the Konnected unit offers full compatibility with all of my existing zones and integration^[3]https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/konnected/ with HASSIO. From the reading it seemed as easy as update, wire, ??, PROFIT!

The Konnected unit came with some labels. I numbered each one (not necessary), but let me keep track of all my zones. I ended up running around the house opening/closing windows and doors to see which zones trigger.

There are two primary resources I used to setup, the help portal Getting Started^[4]https://help.konnected.io/support/solutions/32000015807 and the HASSIO Konnected integration page^[5]https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/konnected/.

When labeling the wires, I ended up grouping the shared positions. For example, Z1/COM/Z2 on the DSC panel I grouped as #1. This maps directly to the Konnected 1/G/2 positions.

Below you’ll see the Konnected Pro and the mappings highlighted.

Note

Once everything is updated and on the latest version you should be ready to add it to your smart home hub.

ISSUES

Unresponsive after reboot ~5 minutes
While initially setting up the Konnected Pro board^[9]https://konnected.io/collections/pre-order-new-v2-products/products/konnected-alarm-panel-pro-12-zone-kit, I was unable to get a stable connection to my HomeAssistant environment. HomeAssistant sees the device, reports just fine, but the device became unresponsive and stopped reporting to HomeAssistant after a few minutes. In order to pull the below log, I had to debug the device by connecting my laptop via USB and using PuTTy^[10]https://help.konnected.io/support/solutions/articles/32000023786-device-debugging-with-screen.

To resolve the above issue, I stumbled upon this post^[11]https://community.home-assistant.io/t/konnected-alarm-panel-connect-a-wired-alarm-system-to-ha-new-in-0-70/53620/94. The core of the issue is that HomeAssistant was using DNS/hostname while Konnected Pro needs to use an IP address.

http:
base_url: http://homeassistant.local  #hassio hostname
and
konnected:
api_host: http://192.168.0.5 #hassio IP

The api_host could not communicate with homeassistant.local and needed the IP address of the hassio computer. Once I added the api_host and access_token (in the below configurations.yaml) I factory reset the Konnected device. Once it came back online it adopted the settings from HASSIO and has been working since.

Disconnecting after 24-48 hours
While running the Konnected Pro board, I experienced an odd issue where the unit would become unresponsive and go offline after a day or two. After researching I found that the device is going into discovery mode. The solution was to hard-code discovery: false in the configuration.yaml file^[12]https://help.konnected.io/support/solutions/articles/32000023968-disabling-device-discovery (below).

HOMEASSISTANT – ADD KONNECTED PANEL

/config/configuration.yaml

You can add these one of two ways, through the Konnected Integration or manually in the configuration.yaml file. For more information on setting up and configuring your Konnected for first use, please reference the Konnected Integration.^[13]https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/konnected/ 

Note

ADDING VIA INTEGRATIONS:

Navigate to your HASSIO homepage and click on Settings > Devices and Services > Add Integration. Search for the Konnected.io integration and select. You’ll be prompted to enter an IP address and port. You can obtain this information from the Konnected app status page http://X.X.X.X:9123/.

If successful, you will be prompted with all of the zones on the Konnected unit. There are two pages on this configuration and when you hit ‘submit’ it will send the config over to the Konnected board and reboot. If you have an alarm of aux devices connected to your alarm, make sure you set those ALARM1/OUT1/OUT2/ALARM2.

 ADDING VIA CONFIGURATION.YAML

Navigate to your HASSIO homepage and click on File Editor > Folder Icon to browse > configuration.yaml  Below is a configuration used for my first implementation.

Verifying Connectivity

To verify your HASSIO can see your Konnected, navigate over to the Konnected Integration. You should see something that says “6 entities”. Click on those and you should see a status reporting of the sensors as CLOSED or OPEN. Open/close a zone to see if you see the trigger in the logbook.  

Adding an Alarm Panel (Digital)

Now that we have all of the zones added and talking to HASSIO, it’s time to setup our Alarm panel.

Modify your configuration.yaml file and add the Alarm Control Panel^[14]https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/manual/. It took me some time to get this sorted, but it includes everything necessary to arm/disarm your home.

Once you have the above added to your configuration file, save. Make sure there are no syntax errors. Now we can create the Alarm card in the lovelace dashboard.

Create the Alarm Card

Navigate to your dashboard and edit it. When you’re editing your panel card, make sure you define your entity. I had to reboot in order for my entity to show up. If your panel name is like mine “homealarm” your entity should be named “alarm_control_panel.homealarm”. You will see an error message about entity not found if it’s not showing up.

Now that the alarm control card is added to the dashboard, you should be able to try and arm/disarm the panel with your configured code. Give it a try! If it works, we can move on to creating the logic/alerts.

Adding the Logic/Alerting

The first step is getting the doors to ‘chime’ when opened/closed. It was time consuming finding the appropriate audio files for, but I ended up landing on the below audio files for my open/close.

The zones that do not have doors (windows only) I opted out for a text-to-speech solution. This solution requires a premium subscription to NabuCasa. There are workarounds, but for this case we’re using the built-in Service Call functionality.

Navigate to Settings > Automation & Scenes and click on Create Automation.

DOOR OPEN CHIME

Logic:

IF it’s between 8PM-830AM

AND zone 3 is status opened

set volume to 25%. ELSE set volume to 50%

Play 3beep.mp3 on 3 SONOS room speakers (ran in parallel)

0:00
/
0:00
Door Open 3-BEEP

DOOR CLOSE CHIME

Logic:

IF it’s between 8PM-830AM

AND zone 3 is status closed

set volume to 25%. ELSE set volume to 50%

Play FastenSeatbelt.wav on 3 SONOS room speakers (ran in parallel)

0:00
/
0:00


Door Closed Fasten Seatbelt

This is a lovelace dashboard card to show the status of each zone.

Setting Armed/Disarmed alerts and logic

Soon to come! Using Telegram for notifications.

ORIGINAL DSC BOARD & KONNECTED PRO

ORIGINAL DSC SCHEMATICS

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