AndyHat Posted January 24 Posted January 24 I'm building a barndominium on acreage in a rural area and left my ISY stuff (mostly Insteon, some Z-wave) with the home I sold, so I’ll be starting over with eisy (which I don’t have yet). My experience and ability with ISY was pretty basic over two years ago (yes, it's taking a long time to build this place!) and I have no experience with eisy. I’m just starting to try to figure out the home automation possibilities – first for security-related devices. There’s very good internet (StarLink) and wireless and extensive CAT6A cabling. My electrician has provided for one hardwired smoke/CO detector in a pretty inaccessible place in the open living/ kitchen area on a very high wall (see red arrow in attached photo). Unless I'm missing something, it looks like there are no options for hardwired detectors that can be integrated with eisy out of the box. Does anyone have any experience with or know anything about whether the Ecolink Z-Wave Plus FireFighter (https://help.zwaveproducts.com/zwaveproducts/manuals/ecolink-z-wave-plus-firefighter-ff-zwave5-eco-manual.html) would work with a First Alert hardwired detector for integration with eisy for purposes of providing alerts/alarms? Would appreciate any ideas on this!
apostolakisl Posted January 24 Posted January 24 For smoke detectors you would want a proper security panel to manage them and then link that panel to Eisy. Your local code may affect your options. If you are out in the country, you may not have to worry about local codes which may not exist. Anyway, some code requires a 120vac smoke system and others will allow low voltage setups. When I built my house I was allowed to use low voltage smokes that are all tied into my Elk panel which then links to ISY via a node server. There are two wire and four wire smokes. I like the four wire setup where power and signal are separate. DSC would be a more cost effective way to do that if you don't care for all the Elk bells and whistles. I haven't ever hooked smokes to a DSC system but I'm sure they have provisions for it. If I were doing it again, I don't know that I would bother with Elk since all that stuff is managed so well from ISY. If you are stuck with 120vac smokes, there may be a dry contact that you could tap into and then hook that to an IO link to bring the status of the smokes into Eisy. I have an all electric house and didn't bother with any CO detectors.
Goose66 Posted January 24 Posted January 24 So what's the use case? Are you looking for robust monitoring of the smoke/CO detector status or just a way for your eISY to respond with additional functionality on an alarm, e.g., lights, door locks, HVAC shutdown, etc.? If the former, then yes, I would recommend a home security system with additional, actively-monitored smokes. If your security system can interface with the eISY (e.g., Elk or DSC/Honeywell with EnvisaLink), then you can get the additional functionality as well. If you are just looking for the additional functionality, then the second question is where is the other end of the three-wire circuit to your hardwired smoke/CO detector and do you have access to it? If yes, then you could get something like this: https://www.amazon.com/First-Alert-RM4-Smart-Relay/dp/B0039PF21U that will let you use a dry contact sensor to interface alarm status into eISY.
AndyHat Posted January 25 Author Posted January 25 Thank you both for your responses. My preference would be a proper robust security system that could interface with eISY; however, in this remote location, my options so far are: "you don't need a big ol' security system" (neighbors) and "we can install the security system that we want you to have and we don't know what Elk, eISY or PoE cameras are, so you don't need them" (installers). I have the Leviton Load Center with smart breakers (haven't looked in to if or how those would integrate with eISY) and another adjacent panel to handle all the CAT6A cabling and future compatible devices, but in the short term I would just like cameras and smoke/CO detectors that I could integrate and/or monitor with eISY. I'm going to have to start out very small (smoke detectors, cameras) and work my way up once I get moved in and have the eISY to play around with and the time to do it. I was not aware of that First Alert Smart Relay. I'll look in to that. Thanks!
apostolakisl Posted January 25 Posted January 25 The time to have done this was while under construction. Running wires after the walls are up is a whole lot more work. You can go with an all wireless system at this point, certainly a pretty basic DIY job, but then you will have to maintain all the batteries. You can still run wires, but it often requires some cleverness, special tools, and a certain level of skill.
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