I have purchased a new home which has alarm.com security sensors cameras, and a Qolsys IQ Panel 4 control panel. I am curious if anyone has any experience with an integration path to eisy. For example, anyway to get motion sensor triggering out of alarm.com and into eisy? I have seen some tidbits that indicate that Home Assistant may be able to receive events, but I have never used Home Assistant, so that would be a big learning curve, and require HA hardware best I can tell.

In general, the alarm.com system is intentionally all closed. No APIs for use with anything else. Another example, the security cameras are disabled from supporting onvif....I have to pay a monthly fee even for self monitoring.

As someone who has installed Elk systems in all my previous homes, I am frustrated with the closed system aspect of alarm.com. The alarm.com mobile app is decent, but I have no integration with eisy. I am thinking through if I am frustrated enough to replace hardware and put in an Elk system. Putting in an Elk system is not a small expense or a small amount of work either. So I'm interested in feedback from anyone else that has gone down this road.

I don't know about alarm.com but the best I could do with ADT because it has a panel is to connect an input to my EZIO from the ADT siren circuit.

I can't see individual sensors because it is proprietary, but when eisy gets the signal from the EZIO then the eisy programs kick in, look out.

I, too, have alarm.com. My method to update my ISY with information is to use Tasker to capture applicable notifications to set flags on the ISY, which then handles the logic. An issue I have with alarm.com is that, after dark, the cameras think rain, snow, fog, and cobwebs are people, vehicles, or animals. Given the clip limit before additional charges, this is unacceptable. With Tasker, I created a solution to turn the cameras off, since there is no access to the pause feature. I would prefer not to have the Tasker layer, but I appreciate what it offers in such situations. Let me know if you want details.

2 hours ago, GlowingHair said:

I, too, have alarm.com. My method to update my ISY with information is to use Tasker to capture applicable notifications to set flags on the ISY, which then handles the logic. An issue I have with alarm.com is that, after dark, the cameras think rain, snow, fog, and cobwebs are people, vehicles, or animals. Given the clip limit before additional charges, this is unacceptable. With Tasker, I created a solution to turn the cameras off, since there is no access to the pause feature. I would prefer not to have the Tasker layer, but I appreciate what it offers in such situations. Let me know if you want details.

So you are using the tasker mobile app? And updating variables via UD Mobile?

@wmcneil Exactly. It gets the job done for what I want.

17 hours ago, GlowingHair said:

@wmcneil Exactly. It gets the job done for what I want.

I have not used tasker. Could you provide more details on how to, say, have a alarm.com motion sensor being triggered be passed by tasker from the alarm.com app to the UD mobile app? thanks in advance!

@wmcneil

A beloved forum member created a great how-to on Tasker: http://wiki.universal-devices.com/index.php?title=ISY-99i_Series_INSTEON:Networking:Tasker. Once that was working, I set up profiles for the various activities. For example, I use "Side Door Open" plus whether it is raining or the AC has kicked on to remind me to close the door. (Precipitation and HVAC status are determined outside the ISY, then update the ISY.)

I used the previous ISY-SetVarState task to set the ISY flag.

After that, I set up the triggering event, a notification on my phone from the Brinks app (Brinks is my provider, but it’s managed on alarm.com). The title field is taken directly and exactly from the notification. If there is a timestamp, or variable text, an asterisk (*) acts as a wildcard. For example, I use 9* and Delivered, * as Title and Text, respectively, for USPS’ Informed Delivery of packages since specific information is included in each notification.

From there, all logic, including resetting the flag, is handled by ISY programs. I don’t use UD mobile, as I’m still on ISY994, so you will have to take it from here.

 

I don’t know how technical you are, but there is an API for alarm.com, so a simple Python script might get you what you want. I didn’t look into it too deeply because it doesn’t expose camera functions, which is what I want most, so I took the path of least resistance.