txNgineer

I would like to suggest that when you are designing, configuring, and setting up your system that you give some thought to the general security principles of protection. This will help you focus where you spend your time, money, and resources. Sadly a lot of the mass market security companies sell products instead of security. The overall objective should be to get the unauthorized people or activity to go away before you have to deal with it. The five "D"s is a very good model. You can google it for much more detail, but in a nutshell: Deter - this makes the "bad guy" think about going somewhere else. It usually contains signs, fences, thorny hedges, lighting, etc. Detect - this is to let the system, and you/others, know about a problem. It usually contains movement triggered video, alarm switches, driveway detectors, etc. Remember that detection serves no purpose if it does not trigger some form of action. For example, seeing that someone is in your driveway when you are at work an hour away is not very useful. It is only useful if it triggers some action that would have an effect on the activity. I have seen lots of people at work getting an alarm on their phone and then helplessly worrying about it until someone could act on it and find out it was a false alarm. Deny - this is to hopefully prevent the action from occurring. It usually contains locks, deadbolts, automatic doors, biometric or coded (manual or fob) entry, fences Delay - this is to slow the bad actor down until help arrives. It usually contains, locks, deadbolts, loud sirens, flashing lights, etc. In a residential setting I generally think of Deny and Delay together, with the exception of a safe-room (which is primarily for Delay). Defend - this is the area of last resort. It is a very personal issue and needs to consider availability of professional help (Police, Fire, EMT, etc.) as well as your environment. However, having said all of that, don't overlook the actual risk of things happening. MANY people protect against the wrong risks. For example, compare your local crime statistics to the likelihood of fire, lightning damage, flood, hurricane, or other natural disaster. This means that here in the Texas Gulf Coast I have put much more effort into having my ELK and ISY monitor weather issues than window breakage. A key focus was to provide remote access to my data and home after we have to "bug out". After hurricane Ike, the first knowledge I had that my home survived was an ssh link to my automation system. I could then check whether the power was back on, the doors and windows intact, the fridge cooling, etc. Hopefully this will help you in your planning and how you set up your system. Good luck and have fun!

Most excellent! I can't wait until next weekend when i can have some time to try it out Thanks

Hi Tracknut, Yes please; if you point me to some PHP examples I can use them to help me understand. I can "speak" lots of programming languages, but I am not a "pretty code" pro. I grew up in the pre-object oriented world and tend to fall back into those habits when doing my personal code projects. But I am a quick study and your PHP would be a big help. Hi Michael, Yes I can do enough HTML to put together some simple GET-POST queries. If I understand from piecing the bits in this thread and the SDK docs this would be a general concept: 1. Using HTML or PHP (or Python bindings to one of them) to build a set of queries that first search for an ISY 2. Then when I get an answer I query the ISY on http:///desc to get the control URL. 3. Then you send a POST to authenticat and a POST to subscribe [???? not sure of this] 4. At that point I use POST commands with the REST data you gave [???? not sure of this] Am I even close on this? Thanks all.

I really appreciate all the help! I fully understand how to set up and use a Weatherunderground station and have been meaning to do that. Knowing I can point Weatherbug to a Weatherunderground station fills the need on that for the data that Wunderground uses. The hardware stuff is very easy for me. I have enough design and building experience that I can get all the data into a machine. It does not matter to me if that machine is a RPi (nice "cool factor"), an Arduino (nicer I/O but limited on interface to web/ISY), or my home server (already up and running). So my problem is not on that end. Where I have issues is that currently none of my various software solutions are as nicely integrated as the ISY is and it is much better use of my time to use the ISY than try to build some custom integration software for my server. Thanks for the tips on pushing variables into the ISY with REST. I have been studying the API documentation and it seems to give me everything I might need -- Except the basic entry points. Maybe I am just thick (or lost in the document), but I am not seeing how to set a variable in the ISY. Is it an Event and is the variable definition a Node? Also, how do I access REST? I guess I am just not clear on what I would call a functional diagram of the system. For example, is a module separately developed and integrated into the ISY firmware? Sorry to be such a noob. Thanks

The guide is a most excellent reference! It clears up a lot. Using the Raspberry Pi would let me easily get all the following into a single value form and then feed that to the ISY variable. To answer your question, what I have would be at least the following: Water pressure -- analog (4-20ma which I can make 0-5v very easy) Water pressure low alarm -- NO contact Water pump power -- analog 0-5v Water flow rate -- pulses/sec which I convert to analog 0-5v Main gate open -- NC contact Main gate locked -- NO contact Main gate - lock -- relay output Main gate - operate -- relay output UPS on/off signal -- NO contact Main A/C power use -- analog 0-5v Office A/C power use -- analog 0-5v Irrigation -- bypass -- relay output (note this is possible with Weather module I think) Doorbells 1, 2, & 3 -- ring -- NO contact Barn door open -- NC contact Pool Pump on/off -- relay output Pool Pump hi/lo -- relay output Pool temperature -- digital (onewire) Lots of other temperature items -- digital (onewire) etc., I will add more stuff as I have time. As you can see, it is a serious kludge to take each one of those and put it into a $80 each Insteon module (plus I cannot afford that). The other thing I want to be able to do is feed the weather and soil data into the ISY like in the Weather module but to use my actual data rather than the data from a "nearby" location. Here in the Texas gulf coast we have large variability across just a few miles due to the microclimate effects of the Gulf. My current weather data is being stored on my server and includes: Temperature Relative humidity Dewpoint Soil temperature at 6 inches Soil moisture at 0.5, 1, and 3 ft. Measured evapotranspiration Rainfall (captured every 6 min) Solar intensity Solar heat gain So I guess my second question is how can I push my weather data into the ISY? Do I also need the Weatherbug module? Thanks for your help!

Hi, please forgive the newbie question and route me elsewhere if appropriate. I have a number of sensors around our little ranch that I would like to incorporate into the ISY-994-iZ system. My question is where to start in designing a proper interface. I can condition the sensor data into any format (analog, RS-485, TCP/IP) but I don't know where to begin on getting that data into a protocol and form that the ISY can read and use. I have downloaded the SDK information and am studying it but I am not sure that is the simplest/best approach) Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

I don't know if it will help, but typically ADT is a reseller of either GE Simon or Honeywell systems. The one I saw was a GE Simon 4. You might be able to get more specific info from googling that rather than ADT Pulse. Hope this helps.