As I said before, here is the second and last part of my post about Home Alarm and OpenHAB, just to monitor input status using remote connection...a thing that actually I'm not able to do...
Here is my checklist:
- take all the alarm inputs to the Raspberry PI3
- build a litte board to interface input signal with the raspberry GPIO and let the voltage be compatible (raspberry GPIO are tolerant to a max of 3.3v)
- plug the input signal of alarm into the input of this board...and output pin of this board to Raspberry GPIO
- install and setup the GPIO Binding in OpenHAB (see https://github.com/openhab/openhab1-addons/wiki/GPIO-Binding)
- finally, add new items in a OpenHAB sitemap
Let's begin
Cables and others...
My raspberry is near the main central unit of the alarm, where we can find 3 of the 11 input signals which we must manage...the other 8 are managed by an expansion board, far from the central unit and connected to it through a serial bus...
Luckily, I found a couple of empty pipes which connect central unit and expansion board...So, it's easy to put a ethernet cable into a pipe and use as connection.
I chose an ethernet cable (thanks to Piero for the suggestion) because it has 8 wires, it's shielded and it's easy to place
So, I placed this cable...and then I linked all its wires to the 8 signals of the expansion board...
This is the junction box where the expansion board is placed (the white box in the bottom) and where all the input signal arrived from the respective sensors / contacts.
The blue one is the ethernet cable...its wires are connected to the black clamps which, in turn, are connected to the expansion board.
Ok, I can close now.
Let's go upstairs, where we can find the junction box for the central unit.
Here is it...you can see the blue ethernet cable
I found also the 3 remaining input signal not managed by the expansion board but directly connected to the central unit...
I took the 8 wires of the ethernet cable plus the other 3 to the new self-built voltage divider board. Here is it: on the righe side we have the inputs, on the left side we have the outputs...in the middel we can find the voltage divider resistors
Last step: connection between outputs and the Raspberry GPIO
We have 12 wires instead of 11 because there is also GND in common between sensors and raspberry.
Ok, all is connected. Raspberry boot up and home alarm is still working...nothing wrong for now.
Just some test: I open and close the windows and see that the voltage drop to 0v and then go back to 3v (3v is the max voltage divider output)
OpenHAB configuration
Now it's time to switch to the software side of the project.
On OpenHAB I installed GPIO Binding, to use the GPIO output with OpenHAB.
Open PAPERUI (the web interface to configure OpenHAB) and follow the path Add-ons -> Bindings
Here you can find the official documentation
Then, I created new items on OpenHAB, for the 11 inputs. So, I created a new file called gpio.items in the folder /etc/openhab2/items and wrote down the 11 items, one for each GPIO.
Here is my file (Visual Studio Code editor with Platformio extension)
As you can see, every row is linked to a pin number, which is the GPIO number of the raspberry; activelow parameter is used to tell to OpenHAB that the contact is OPEN when the voltage is 0 ... in my case its value is "no" because when my contact is OPEN we have positive voltage...
Finally I can add the newly created items to a sitemap...here is the result: (OpenHAB app on mobile)
Now I have to verify that all is working well...🍀🍀🍀
Disclaimer:
I'm not responsible for any damages caused by what is written in this post. Please proceed carefully and by your intentions
