Thinking about adding an M1G to my HS Home

[frobnitz]

Hi. I need to upgrade my alarm system to get a lower insurance rate, and am contemplating either an M1G system or a DSC Caddx.

The M1G is very nice capability wise, but I am not sure about how many of it's features can be exposed through HS. For example, if the M1G is equipped with a X10 or Zwave interface, can these be used by the HS system as control interfaces.

I have both of these in my HS system, but I'd like to run HS in a Windows 7 virtual machine in ESXi, and it would be great to not have to support RS232 and other physical interfaces in the HS system, and just connect these all to the M1G and talk to it via ethernet.

My other question is whether or not I could read the individual state of M1G sensors from HS. That is, if I have GE wireless sensors on my garage doors, can I read the state of each of them from HS, get triggers on transition, etc.. so HS can then command them to close via some Z-wave switches. I could do all this in the M1G I suppose, but I'd prefer all the non-alarm automation logic to still be done in HS.

Does this plugin support these types of uses?

Thanks!

Frob

[BillBurn]

I upgraded my old alarm system (DSC) to Elk M1G and use it in conjunction with HS.

I use the UltraM1G plug-in in HS. It is pretty powerful and exposes all the zones in the M1G to Homeseer allowing you to do any kind of automation using the current status or change in status of those zones.

You can automate events based on M1 alarm triggers/status', zone status, output status, task triggers, event triggers, custom code, thermostat set points, counter values, system trouble, etc. so there is a pretty wide range of triggers you can get from the M1G in HS.

As to your second question, yes you can read the state of M1G sensors from within HS (using the plug-in). For example, I have a HS event that is triggered if the door to my garage (which is an alarm sensor) is violated within a certain time window on weekday mornings. If a violation occurs, HS kicks off an event that fires two Z-Wave modules (a light and a relay switch attached to the garage door).

I should point out though, that those Z-Wave modules are directly connected to HS. I don't know if I could control them if they were attached the M1G as opposed to HS. I see in my plug-in that I can trigger actions in the M1G such as Arming, output actions, task activations, email triggers, spoken words, etc. so it looks like you could do what you want to do, in terms of keeping most of the actual connections in ELK and just using HS for the logic.

Personally, one of the reasons I got the M1G was because I wanted to make all the alarm sensors part of my HS setup and I also wanted the flexibility of choosing which platform I integrated each sensor into. I don't do any automation logic on the M1, I keep all that on HS.

[Krumpy]

I did the same about 7 years ago. Due to a few reliability issues with HS, I started putting in the core base security logic into the Elk. Works great. Certainly more reliable than a Windows machine.

[Mark S.]

So are X10 and Z-wave devices on the M1G readable and controllable from HS? In other words, are there HS devices for each M1G X10 device?

[frobnitz]

I did the same about 7 years ago. Due to a few reliability issues with HS, I started putting in the core base security logic into the Elk. Works great. Certainly more reliable than a Windows machine.

Windows can be rteliable or unreliable. A lot depend on how it's configured and used. Running them in VM's is pretty reliable for me, so that each VM does only one thing and is segmented off from other functions running in other VM"s. When you dedicate a windows instance to HS and nothing else, I find it to work pretty solidly.

And it's a lot easier to confgure things in HS than in the ELK itself, and you have access to all the plugins. For me I don't know how you'd run mcssprinklers or Blstat in elk and have the same ease of use and web interfaces.

[sdanks]

I used to run 2 wires to each door so I could have Homeseer monitoring and Alarm monitoring. I now just talk to the M1 and ask it what the status is, of the door or zone. Also, I have an M1-EZ8 which is the cheaper version of the M1 without the audio etc. I used AT&T voices on my homeseer to make announcements. The voices were free when I bought "Text Aloud". I think I spent $50 and got the male and female voices. So I use the alarm panel as the interface since it is lightning protected etc, and long wire runs dont bother it. Also, I had to buy an interface to make it talk to Homeseer. I dont know if that is included in the M1 Gold or not. But there was a big price difference. I am just expanding by buying the expansion boards for the M1 and that made it cheaper along the way for me. Just a thought.

Also, if you havent looked at the M1, there is a big learning curve if you dont know anything about alarm systems. There are zones that have end of line resistors and about 32 types of zone definitions. I put mine on the kitchen table and wired it up to make sure I knew it was going to work and programmed the keypad. It took me about 2 hours. But it is well worth it. After all that is what this hobby is all about. Have fun.

[Ultrajones]

So are X10 and Z-wave devices on the M1G readable and controllable from HS? In other words, are there HS devices for each M1G X10 device?

If they are lighting devices and the Elk M1 can control them, then the UltraM1G HSPI will also be able to control them. I use HomeSeer to control all my Insteon devices that are connected to my Elk M1.

Regards,
Ultrajones

[Mark S.]

Thanks, Ultra. Are there regular HS devices for each, or do you control them via script?

[Ultrajones]

Yes, they are regular devices that can be controlled via HomeSeer or scripting.