I Made My Old Security System 100x Better!

I took the old alarm system that came with my new house and massively upgraded it, making it much easier to use and way more reliable. But even if your house doesn't have an old security system, this video will still have tons of really good tips for you. Like one of the things I added was this wall-mounted tablet. I found a super easy and fast way to mount this. Plus it turns on for motion even if the camera on the tablet can't see me while it's pitch black in the room. So you gotta hang around for that. I also set up our indoor cameras to have an auto-privacy mode. That way the cameras are never on when our family is in the house. I don't need flat cameras watching me in my house. I'm kidding, these are completely local and private. So the opposite of flat cameras. Then of course, everything runs seamlessly in the background because it's completely automated. On top of that, I'm using Alarmo, which is free and open source to run my alarm system. And you gotta check it out. So before I get into my hardwire system, let me show you how easy it is to set up a security system with Alarmo. Because all you need is a few sensors that you might already have around your house. I'll be honest, it does take a few extra steps compared to something like a ring alarm system, but I think it's 100% worth it for no monthly fees and it's not that difficult. Let me show you. If you're using Home Assistant, just install Alarmo using hacks. Then once it's installed, I can choose what sensors to use for the alarm. Maybe you already have some wireless contact sensors on your doors. Just add them to Alarmo and just make sure the device type is door. Now you can add motion sensors, but I don't recommend that because of false alerts. Like my alarm accidentally went off because of the robot vacuum triggered the motion sensor. Yeah, bad mistake. Instead, if your camera has person detection, you can select that entity sensor. That's much more accurate. Change it to a motion device type. And what's cool is Alarmo will use the motion sensors only for away mode by default and door sensors for both home and away. Easy. To arm and disarm your alarm, you have a few options. One, you can use a virtual keypad on a dashboard. Just add the default security card in Home Assistant or install the Alarmo card from hacks. I like the Alarmo card better because I can set the keypad to always be displayed and it has a few extra features. I don't know about you, but I think it looks pretty sweet to have a virtual keypad. I'm always displaying the Alarmo card on the dashboard in our bedroom because it's more security focused. On our kitchen dashboard, it only shows up when the alarm is armed and we would need to type in the code. This is easy to do on the visibility tab in Home Assistant. The other option is to get a physical keypad and connect it. I have this Ring Gen 2 keypad that is not connected to Ring, but only to Home Assistant using Z-Wave. Then there's a blueprint that can sync up this keypad with Alarmo. And I like this because if my dashboard ever freezes up and the alarm is going off, I know this keypad will still work to disarm my alarm 100% of the time. Disarmed. With Alarmo, you can also set entry and exit delays and codes to disarm. So everything works just like a normal alarm. And using it with the Ring keypad, it feels very similar to the Ring alarm if you're used to that. Alarmo also has the option to send notifications and run actions. And this is where you would do things like turn on the siren if the alarm is triggered. But I prefer to set up my own automations, that way I can fine tune them exactly how I want them. What can I say? I'm a micromanager when it comes to automations. And if you don't have a siren, you can get a really good, inexpensive Z-Wave siren like this, has a backup battery built in, and it's pretty loud. Alarmo's amazing, right? Just add some sensors, a siren, then you're up and running in no time. Now that Alarmo's set up, I want to show you how easy it is to bring my old hardwire security system into Home Assistant. I could try and use some of the Honeywell and ADT equipment into my smart home, but I'm mainly interested in the wired sensors. So this company called Connected makes this conversion kit. It allows me to plug all the sensors in my house into this device. And I can use those sensors in Home Assistant for the alarm and automations. To be honest, I was a little intimidated by all the wires. It felt like I was going to be dismantling a bomb, but it wasn't that bad. Once I disconnected all the extra wires from the ADT system that I wasn't going to use, it was pretty manageable. Connected made a long and helpful video that walks you through the entire process. It was great. I'll link it down in the description. Now I needed to see which wire goes to what sensor. So I use one of these tone generators or some call it a wire tracer. It was only $20 and it works surprisingly well. I just clamp the connectors to the wires of the sensor and use the other end to see if it makes noise near the sensor. If it does, then I know those wires go to that sensor. Pretty cool. There were a lot of comments on a video I did a couple months ago about using one of these to figure out what ethernet cable was which. You guys are right. I should have bought it sooner. This device is awesome for 20 bucks. Okay, so the connected conversion kit comes with a lot of little extras, but it did not come with magnets to attach to the metal box. So I bought those two and I think it's worth it though. It makes the installation really simple. Oh, and I was curious what the setup process was gonna be like with Connected. Would I need to download their app or flash firmware? No and no. It comes with ESP home firmware already installed. So once it's plugged in for power and ethernet, it automatically shows up in Home Assistant to be added. Nice. After I labeled and attached the wires to the connected alarm panel, I just plugged in the ethernet cable for PoE. I love using power over ethernet for cameras and devices like this since it's one cable for both. Connected can work with Wi-Fi, but I wanted it to be very reliable and the alarm box is metal, so it would probably have a pretty bad signal in there anyways. There was already a cutout in the wall that all the security sensor wires were going through. So I just fished the ethernet cable through that and into my unified network switch that has a PoE plus port. This is nice because it's obviously a super reliable network connection, but it also has enough to power the connected device, including the sensors and the siren, which is pretty dang loud. When I was testing it, my dog Annie went from a deep sleep to running around scared in a split second. Sorry, Annie. And my whole unified network rack is plugged into a UPS. So even during a power outage, the alarm will still work just fine. It's no secret that I'm a big fan of Ubiquiti, which I've been using for my network for the last five or six years. And if you've been wanting to see Ubiquiti products in person before buying them, head down to Micro Center, the sponsor of today's video. If there ever was a theme park for networking nerds like me, I think it would look like Micro Center. They have a section of the store dedicated to Ubiquiti routers, switches, access points, cameras, and more. I had so much fun trying out the tech and dreaming up how to improve my networking. Plus the Micro Center team really knows their stuff. Getting to talk shop with them is half the fun. I'll just like tell you about some of the things I was doing and you could tell me where I went wrong. Next time I have a question, I can come down here and I'm confident they'll be able to help me out. I was also impressed with their home automation and smart home sections. Plus there are tons of other tech accessories that are fun to browse. I felt like a kid in a candy shop. Man, they have like everything here. Right now Micro Center is offering specials on back to school tech, so check them out. And if you happen to be in the Austin, Texas area, don't miss their grand opening where you can score a free 128 gig flash drive. Thanks to Micro Center for supporting the channel. Okay, before I get into the dashboard and all of that, there are a few weird quirks with my hardwire system that I have to share with you. First, the window sensors can be a bit unreliable. They work extremely well for a long time, then all of a sudden they don't. Like when it's 2 a.m. and I'm asleep. Yeah, that was a rough night. The alarm went off because it thought the window was open. It wasn't. I think there was a lightning storm going on at that time, so there might've been some interference. That's why I'm using cameras indoors and outdoors to cover those areas, because the windows are not super reliable. But the door sensors haven't had any issues, so that's good. The other weird thing is the motion sensors. Normally they're super fast and responsive, even more than the battery-powered sensors, which has been great. But every once in a while, like once per day, all the motion sensors will go offline for about a second and then come back on in the on state. So this weird glitch was triggering some of the lights at night, but it's an easy fix. Instead of having the automation trigger go straight to on, make the automation trigger go from off to on when triggering the lights instead of just straight to on. That way if the sensor goes from unavailable to on, it won't do anything. Besides that, I'm loving the hardwired sensors. They're completely hidden, very responsive, and no changing batteries. Maybe moving into a slightly older house wasn't a bad thing after all. Like right when we moved in, I was slightly annoyed with the alarm panel on the wall and how it was barely attached, but it made it super easy to convert it into a smart dashboard. And I'm really excited how it turned out. Let me show you. Connected makes these 12-volt to 5-volt converters so I could use the existing wires for the old alarm panel to power a tablet. Connected also has a tutorial on this, but it's pretty simple. All I had to do was connect the wires in the wall to the wires on the step-down converter. Then I bought a 12-volt power supply and attached that to the other end of the wires across the house. Plug the power supply into the outlet, and I'm done. Now I can use the USB-C cable on the step-down converter to power the tablet. Easy. As for mounting it, I thought about 3D printing a case and mounting that, but I wanted to keep it simple and clean, so I bought these magnetic mounts. The magnet screws into the wall, and I just used the existing screw holes from the alarm panel. Then I attached the included metal plates with 3M adhesive to the back of the tablet, and it sticks to the wall very securely. There's also a little wiggle room to level it after, so if it's not installed perfectly straight, it's not a big deal. If only hanging pictures for my wife around the house was this painless. I hate hanging pictures. The only thing that I might add here is some padding support on the sides, because the tablet can move if I press on the very edge. It doesn't really bother me, though, so I might leave it how it is. For the tablet, I'm just using a Lenovo Tab M9 and a fully kiosked browser app to display my Home Assistant dashboard. Now, what's displayed on the dashboard is always gonna be a work in progress. I don't feel like a dashboard can ever be finished. Like, I've already made changes since I set this one up to make it even better. Since this is more of a security-focused dashboard, I wanted to always display the status of all the exterior doors, windows, and garage doors. It looks cool, and it's like, yeah, look at all the sensors around my house, but actually having less on the dashboard is so much better. I wanna walk up to my dashboard and know if anything is not the way it should be in a split second. If I have to look at each door and make sure that they're all closed, I'm just adding more work for myself and taking up precious dashboard real estate. So instead, if an exterior door or window is opened, a badge shows up at the top that pushes everything down so I can't miss it. Then there are other dashboard items that can appear in the bottom right, but those are more of things I might wanna control, like lock the door, turn off the den lights, or stop the robot vacuum, and things like that. Of course, there's a big red button for the siren, and I think I made this button a little too scary for my wife and kids. Like if they accidentally press it, the police will be breaking down the door. But don't worry, I made sure it opens up a toggle switch so it doesn't get pressed by accident. The indoor camera button will turn on the cameras and display the live feeds. You know, maybe it's late at night and Allie hears a noise. One of us can press that and quickly see what's going on. Pressing the button also turns off the cameras if they're on. I really like how this mounted dashboard turned out. It was so easy to power and install, and I think it's a major upgrade from the ugly old alarm panel that was here. The only thing is, the dashboard has one major problem. During the day, the camera on the tablet can see someone walking up to it and it turns on the dashboard. And if it doesn't detect motion for 30 seconds, the screen turns off. But if the room is dark, the camera can't see good enough to detect motion. I was like, oh no, that's gonna be so annoying because we're gonna be mainly using that dashboard at night. Then I realized, wait, I'm using Home Assistant. I can do anything. There's a fully kiosk browser integration into Home Assistant because of course there is. So Home Assistant has access to tons of info from the tablet like being able to turn on the screen. Pretty sweet. So I'm using the PIR motion sensor from the security system to turn on the screen with a simple Home Assistant automation. It works even better than I expected because the PIR sensor will pick me up before I walk up to the dashboard. So the screen is already on and loaded so I don't even have to wait. I love it. One really important thing for me was disabling the indoor cameras when my family was home. And it took a few extra steps to do this the right way. Reolink has a privacy mode that disables the camera and this can be toggled on and off in Home Assistant. Unfortunately, this doesn't physically move the camera to point away from people. To do that, all I had to do was create two camera preset points in the Reolink app. The first one is where I want the camera to be pointing when it's on and the other preset has the camera point backwards. That way if someone's visiting, they know for sure the camera is not recording them. Then I created two automations in Home Assistant. One that activates the cameras when we all leave and the other that turns them off when we get home. It's too bad this automation happens when no one's around because it's pretty cool to watch these cameras turn on and off. Now of course I wanna get alerts if there's an intruder so I get critical alerts so I won't miss the notification. You can also automatically turn on the siren if the alarm is triggered but I recommend waiting a few days to make sure that there's no false positives. You know, practice. But we talking about practice, man. What are we talking about? Because I had multiple false alerts going off in the middle of the night when I first set it up but luckily it only notified my phone so make sure you thoroughly test it first. Then I created a few more automations so it arms and disarms itself. I wanna set it and forget it. To arm it in home mode, it's simple. It arms at a certain time each night or earlier whenever I get into bed. There's a pressure sensor under my mattress to know when I'm going to sleep. The alarm also automatically disarms in the morning unless we're on vacation. But how does my smart home know we're on vacation? Because I have read all of your emails and stalk you 24-7. No, it's because the alarm is armed in away mode when we're on vacation and not home mode. So it only disarms in the morning if it's in home mode since it knows we're not on vacation. As for arming in away mode, obviously we can hit the button on the way out or if we forget, Home Assistant will automatically arm the alarm when our phones disconnect from the UniFi Wi-Fi access points. UniFi has an excellent integration into Home Assistant and it automatically creates sensors for any device connected to Wi-Fi so it's really easy to set up. If our phones disconnect from Wi-Fi, the sensor turns off. Simple. Once our phones reconnect to Wi-Fi, the alarm disarms. This usually happens right when we pull our car into the garage so we don't have to worry about it when we arrive home. Basically foolproof. It's awesome. The only thing this alarm is missing is cellular backup. There are a lot of different solutions out there and I want to try some different options before giving you a recommendation. But overall, my security system is working great. Super easy to use and very reliable. It's awesome we have access to all these inexpensive tools and open source software to make this happen on our own. Hopefully this video was helpful and thanks for watching. Oh, hey, Reed. I really like the smart display in there. Oh, I'm glad you like it. Actually, I was wanting to put up a display in the front room too. Come help me, you're not busy, right? Yeah, another display, I'm not too busy. All right, I'm thinking like, I don't know, here-ish. Wait, where are you going? Come back!