Home alarm system on Leopard?

[gregoryx]

As I mentioned in a previous post, the SECU16I that I've been using to provide motion and contact closure inputs to HomeSeer has been extremely reliable and fast.

This has caused me to wonder if I shouldn't try to implement the Leopard and adjunct SECU16Is as the home alarm system I've been dragging my feet on implementing.

Oh, sure, I've heard the arguements "I'd rather have a dedicated system..." but this is a firm-ware based product that seems pretty consistent as long as it has power to it - which I can pretty easily assure with appropriate DC batteries.

Does anyone have any feedback on making this implementation? Have you tried it? Have you considered it? Have you (or have seen any) code to do it?

Final question, on a different - but somewhat related - issue: is there a way to ensure that an appropriate piece of code is loaded in a Leopard/Ocelot even if power is lost then restored? Obviously, this could become important in the above case.

Thanks, all.
-Gregory

[jsteed]

The ocelot has an onboard battery, after a power outage it should reload and start running. I assume the leopard works the same. For a time I thought mine wasn't holding the program but I wasn't giving it enough time to start before starting a program download.

There is also a parameter that you can set that determines which variables are reset on a power up and which will maintain their state from before the outage.

[gregoryx]

Excellent idea, Jim. It hadn't occurred to me that I can have HS check the variable on the Leopard - if it's not loaded, at least I know that it won't be doing what I expected it to. If I could only load the Cmax code from HS, in that case...

[lskok]

I'm setting up my Ocelot to handle some of my security features. I just moved in to my new home that I had built several months ago. Unfortunaly, I did not do to much research into home automation and security, so I now find myself wanting to replace my alarm system and upgrade my structured wiring.

I haven't decided yet whether I want to replace my current DSC alarm with a Caddx 8E or wait for the OmniPro II. My current DSC alarm that my builder installed is only a 6-zone system. My house is 4600 sq ft so I think this was not the right system for this home. I am thankfull that they did go ahead and wire each sensor back to the pannel so at least I have the flexibility to split the zones up to as many as I want.

I just got a SECU16I and I have removed the alarm sensor inputs from the DSC and ran them into the SECU16I. I would like to be able to split the zones to at least 20, but 16 is much better than the 6 and the most important part is that I can monitor the zones with the Ocelot and Homeseer. I am going to take 6 relay outputs on the SECU16 that I have and connected them to the 6 zone inputs on the DSC alarm. I will have a CMAX program update the relay outputs based on zone activivy which will be mapped back to the original 6 zone locations.

This is just a temporary solution while I get things sorted out, but I have learned quite a bit so far in this endevor. It has been a real challenge to get Homeseer and the Ocelot to report the same on/off status and there seems to be some minor differences between the SECU16 and SECU16I in ON/OFF reporting when changing the lower and upper thresholds on the modules.