Electronics engineer Steve Rodgers has designed a drop-in substitute for outdated Honeywell or DSC alarm panel boards, constructed round an Espressif ESP32 and utilizing ESPHome so as to add present alarm methods to House Assistant setups — no cloud service required.
“I had a Honeywell alarm panel and an EyezOn EnvisaLink to interface with HomeAssistant, nevertheless it relied on the cloud, and the Honeywell panel did not transmit info to the EyezOn board when a sensor was restored to the non-faulted state,” Rodgers explains. “[So] I designed this board to utterly substitute a Honeywell Vista 20 alarm panel.”
The eight-zone alarm panel mimics most, however not all, of the options of the unique, barring solely assist for arming and disarming by way of keypad and central station monitoring. In change, it supplies an Espressif ESP32 microcontroller designed to host the ESPHome firmware and combine right into a House Assistant or suitable dwelling automation system.
This drop-in substitute will get Honeywell alarm methods speaking to House Assistant as rapidly as may be. (📷: Steve Rodgers)
The panel features a built-in charger for an authentic lead-acid battery backup, eight supervised zones expandable to 16, a 12V siren output, built-in temperature sensor, full fuse safety, and connectors for zone enlargement and entry to the I2C bus for extra sensors. Wired sensors related to the panel present up in House Assistant as binary sensors, Rodgers explains, prepared for triggering alerts or different automations.
Rodgers is promoting the panel as a mostly-assembled equipment — needing two switches including by the top consumer, as a method of swerving the necessity for FCC certification as an entire machine — by way of his Tindie retailer for $159, although it comes with a warning: “The controller is shipped with out firmware which may connect with your Wi-Fi community,” Rodgers explains. “It’s going to require some firmware programming and electrical information to efficiently implement.”
House Assistant YAML configuration recordsdata for the board can be found on GitHub, for each the inventory eight-zone board and an expanded 16-zone model.