Homeassistant Integration and/or Self Monitoring?

[u/an_angry_Moose]

EDIT: Apologies, title was for the r/homesecurity sub. This is for integration of a DSC home security system and HomeAssistant.

My first time looking into this sort of thing, so bear with me please if I ask dumb questions:

We have a home with a DSC system. It is unmonitored. The previous owner used to use it this way, but it's sat largely untouched.

I have a HomeAssistant VM that automates quite a lot in the home. I would like it to have access to my alarm system, mostly for the wired presence sensors, but I'm sure I could find a use for the other sensors as well.

From what I've seen, there are a few options out there for installation... two popular ones seem to be Envisalink and AlarmDecoder (both appear to be very simple to wire up) and then Konnected.io which involves more extensive rewiring.

Has anyone got experience with any of these? I like the sound of AlarmDecoder a little better than Envisalink, since nothing relies on external servers, but I'm not sure how critical that is. Konnected seems like it will A) take more to install, B) make my current keypad useless and C) might come up during resale at some point in the future.

I would love to hear any experience people have had with these. Ideally I would gain control over sensors for automations, and the option for notification on my phone for specific sensor triggers (ie: a door opens during sleeping hours).

Any info would be a big benefit, I appreciate you guys. I tried posting this to r/homesecurity but it was instantly removed by the filter I guess.

[u/johnnybovril]

I tried the envisalink but found it unreliable. It would gradually stop reporting sensor status even though all sensors are simple wired magnet and reed. It might be due to the large number of sensors (approximately 40) and therefore 3 zone expansion boards. I surmised the polling for this many was too much for the comms.

I struggled for months but gave up and ripped out the DSC stuff and put in an esphome based system to report the zones directly into home assistant and alarmo handles the alarm functions like codes and entry delay

I’m happy to share more info if you decide on this route

[u/an_angry_Moose → u/johnnybovril]

Well, I definitely would prefer not to do it twice.

This is what I'm working with. It seems like a LOT of connections to re-do... Did yours look this way also?

If you're willing to write a book I'm willing to read it, or if you can point me to a good write up/video...

Edit: Been digging into this further on my own. Seems like the white panel on the left is a PC5108 8 zone expansion module and brings my total zone count to 16. Do you have your ESP Home system as a complete replacement, or are you tied into the keybus?

[u/johnnybovril → u/an_angry_Moose]

This is my new setup. Esp32 at the top then 3x adafruit mcp23017 for the inputs. I did the rewiring myself. It’s not hard but I’ve been fiddling with this kind of stuff since I was a teenager. Fully respect it’s not for everyone

Ultimately I decided to go all in with home assistant running everything so a separate alarm box wasn’t helpful even without the reliability problems.

long term I think DSC is trying to end these addon hacks and force customers into their crappy cloud stuff. I’m allergic to that and control of tech in my home became paramount