Build Your Own Alarm System with Alarmo and Home Assistant

[@moshguy]

I spent two hours yesterday configuring a rather complex system of sensors. I wish I knew this existed yesterday.

[@mostlychris]

Time to move it all over!

[@nics8040]

@@mostlychris where can you get free siren mp3's?

[@jimbrewer5821]

Chris, Great video. You covered quite a bit of info in just 22.minutes. You really gave a great overview of Alarmo. Thanks!

[@mostlychris]

Thanks! Sometimes I feel I'm too wordy and videos get long.

[@JohnMacGuy]

GREAT Video! Thank you. This was the only place I could find to install the version of the Alarmo card that shows the large badges for state and have the option to bypass open sensors on arming and resizing. One thing I had to do was to use the Yaml code for the new card (per the Alarmo documentation): type: 'custom:alarmo-card' entity: alarm_control_panel.alarmo The one area I got a little confused was the MQTT communication between Alarmo and a KeyPad. I enabled MQTT in Alarmo General. But never understood how to actually send and receive commands/states between the two. I use ZHA and have an Xfinity Zigbee Keypad that I can press the arm type button on top row followed by 4-digit PIN and it will automatically arm/disarm Alarmo (needed so create a service and use zha_event to trigger) ...so It can clearly talk to Alarmo, but can't co other direction (to sync up for instance) or anything else. Do you have a video on this, or a reference to look at? Thanks again

[@demosixt]

Thanks!

[@mostlychris]

Thank you!! You're my first Super Thanks since YT finally enabled it on my channel!!

[@Copia-ib3ms]

Great job Thank you I dont have the list off sensors, how can solve?

[@Eric-qm4vm]

Hi Chris, I love the channel. You are a great teacher. Thanks for the wealth of knowledge. I am a new subscriber today.

[@mluisx]

Is there a way that you can create a tutorial with different types of wall panels (classic keyboards also) for using them with Alarmo?

[@PedrokasPT]

Great Tutorial Chris ! I was really looking for this :-) Thanks a lot and greetings from Portugal !

[@mostlychris]

Hello in Portugal! Thanks for the compliments!

[@berttammer4900]

Hi Chris, again a very clear video this time about about Alarmo. I most certainly will implement it in my setup. Thanks!

[@mostlychris]

Excellent! Thanks for watching!

[@DigitalVideoEdit]

hello thanks and congratulations for the tutorial ..... I have a couple of problems ... in my notifications I find Google say .. I set the group of my 2 speakers but when I launch the test it tells me that I have not loaded the media. .... as if I had not loaded an audio file to play .... second question .... it is possible to integrate NFC tags to turn on and off ..... grazieeeee

[@jasonflt]

Chris can you please do a video on changing the look of Alarmo PLEASE!!. The standard front end sucks for look.

[@felt505]

Been meaning to setup this integration. Thanks for the motivation.

[@mostlychris]

Glad I could help, lol!

[@Tntdruid]

Great video as always. ☕

[@mostlychris]

Thank you!

[@jmr]

Great video. I had wondered why not use the built in panel at first. You certainly answered that!

[@mostlychris]

Thanks!

[@benilev7328]

Great video as always

[@mostlychris]

Thanks!

[@rolandschuepbach6836]

Hi Chris, thanks for all your great videos. Tried to install the Alarmo yesterday. Could download in HASC, but the integration is NOT showing up in HA (despite restarting HA). I did it 3 times. No changes. Do you have any idea what I am missing?

[@mostlychris]

Did you click on the "Add Integration" button on the bottom right of the screen? If so, does it show in that list or just not at all? If it's not there, check your logs to see if anything shows up.

[@demosixt]

Ive been looking for a video that explains how the motion sensors and entities are used. Been granilularly trying to work out the little things for months. Thank You Greatly! I couldnt read the documentation pages cause it wouldnt register. Mother of gawd thanks again

[@mostlychris]

I hope I'm interpreting your comment correctly.. Sounds like you got things working??

[@JoseBerruezo]

Nice tutorial, I would like to know if, for some reason the HA reboots, the alarm will remain armed after the HA reboot.

[@mostlychris]

It is supposed to. That is in the docs and I think I mentioned it. Previous state should be retained.

[@JoseBerruezo]

@@mostlychris Thank you

[@luisma1161]

Great video thanks for posting it

[@edwardlytton1548]

Great video and good Tutorial 👍

[@mostlychris]

Thank you 👍

[@nics8040]

where can you get free siren mp3's?

[@bardockssj4]

Great tutorial but i have a problem, the Actions are not triggered. I am trying to flash the lights.

[@mostlychris]

How are you trying to trigger them?

[@bardockssj4]

@@mostlychris tried by Alarmo-Actions, had grouped all the lights with call service lights turn on repeat until disarm. I finally did it outside from alarmo, by Automation.

[@jamegrabham9992]

Thanks, Chris...Great video...I was looking for something like this...:) Can this alarm system be activated by just leaving the home (presence detection)? Rather than opening HA on the phone or wall screen and pressing "activate"? and deactivate when returning home?

[@mostlychris]

Yes. There is a call service action you can call in automations for alarmo that allows you to specify the mode (away, home, etc), exit delay enable/disable, and force arm. You'll have to create the conditions that would fire the action, such as entity not home.

[@sylvaish]

Thanks Chris I have the Alarmo panel up and working and recently added the Ring integration ... How do I get the panel to display the codes at the bottom so I can disarm with the ring Alarm code ... Currently it just disarms without inputting any code

[@mostlychris]

Not sure if this is related to how Ring works or interprets codes, but in Alarmo under the settings there is a "CODES" tab that allows you to set an arm and/or disarm code. You can set different codes for different users as well.

[@Saun2020]

Hi Chris, Phone notification worked earlier. After update to Home Assistant OS 8.1, doesn't work any more. any idea please

[@mostlychris]

Check to make sure your phone device is still listed correctly (didn't change names, etc). I had to clear the cache and settings on my android app for some custom cards to work and that ended up changing the name of my device and all alerts stopped working. I can't think of a reason why an OS update would break things.

[@Saun2020]

@@mostlychris Thank you so much😀😀

[@TLuyten]

I use alarmo but I'm missing a function in it to disable some sensors when my robot vacuum is going around. This could be done as a condition but is not available in the alarmo integration. The vacuum always triggers my home alarm.

[@mostlychris]

Can you move the sensors to another mode and switch modes to one that doesn't have those sensors enabled while the vacuum is running? That must be a powerful vac. I've got a Neato BotVac and it hasn't ever tripped the sensors.

[@trdsclan9061]

First of all thank you for posting this video! It really helped me a lot in answering some questions. I do have a problem but that is more related to some Aqara door sensors that disconnects in a random way from Home Assistant and I always have to reconnect the sensor manually. Is there something that I may have done wrong or the Aqara door sensors is not fully Zigbee compliant? Can you recommend some stable sensors or its better to integrate a manufacturer alarm system to Home Assistant? And if so which ones will you recommend? Thanks!

[@mostlychris]

Thanks for watching! You've got a number of questions there, lol. I have some Aqara sensors and I haven't had any issues with them. How are you connecting the sensors to HA? I am using Wifi via the Homekit integration (for now) and they've been solid. As far as manufacturer alarms, I wouldn't do anything cloud based if you can help it. I have a DSC alarm panel that I wired in myself. To get connectivity, I talk directly to an Eyezon board via local IP address. I want to move it all over to Konnected though. That one sounds like it would be more suitable for how I like to run things.

[@richardcarter5404]

I just installed this but for some reason I cannot see the custom alarm card, I tried first on my test machine and then on my actual HA machine but the only alarm card available does not show the countdown when arming etc or there are no options for sizing when setting the card up. Any ideas what might be wrong?

[@mostlychris]

I can't remember if I mentioned this in the video but you need to make sure you also install the alarmo card in addition to alarmo itself. Those two things are separate installs via HACS.

[@richardcarter5404]

@@mostlychris I did eventually get the custom alarm card to show. I tried the whole process again the next day and low and behold it worked ! Who knows why, maybe it was me clearing the browser cache a million times lol

[@mostlychris]

@@richardcarter5404 That nasty browser cache!

[@christopherscott1652]

When did you complete this? v1.3.0 of the alarmo-card is unavailable via HACS on 4/24. I can only download v1.2.3 which doesn't appear to have the "Arming Options" button.

[@christopherscott1652]

I just figured it out. v1.3.0 was relabeled as "main" in the list of versions.

[@mostlychris]

Whew! I really hate when I make a video and something disappears or changes--looking at you, Nest. Glad you found it!

[@stargazer0953]

There is no field for entity in the Alarmo card. Using the version labeled "main".

[@mostlychris]

Mine shows as alarm_control_panel.alarmo. Do you show an area created in the alarmo configuration panel (should see the alarmo icon in the side bar).

[@stargazer0953]

@@mostlychris All mine originally showed was "type: custom:alarmo-card" and nothing else. I was reading some more information on the card and then added "entity: alarm_control_panel.alarmo" and now everything seems to work correctly. Thank you for your reply.

[@mostlychris]

Glad you got it working and thanks for watching!

[@richardcarter5404]

Great video, I have actually been considering setting up an alarm system within Home Assistant after I watched a few other tutorials but this addon is by far the best. Will definitely be giving this a try. Has anyone got a Zigbee/Z-Wave siren that they use? I was going to play a siren mp3 file on all my smart speakers around the house at full volume

[@mostlychris]

I like the smart speaker option. Only concern on that is if the Internet is down, might not do anything. This might be something you can use. amzn.to/375zTV6

[@StePhanMckillen]

10 out 10 bro

[@mostlychris]

Thanks!!

[@richardsm]

Great video! Been considering getting some more sensors and working on this project.

[@mostlychris]

Thanks. Do it!

[@subthousandoaks]

Ty

[@mostlychris]

Sure thing.

[@lloydrogers8265]

How to make a account

[@mostlychris]

Not sure what you are asking.

[@JamieVids76]

Interesting, now home assistant is solid enough it is my next venture (an alarm) and I'm NOT buying a boundary UK youtubers, I'm really not 😂. I want to repourpose the siren on my house with esphome (as well as some temperature and humidity readings). This looks a good option.

[@mostlychris]

Awesome! Not being UK, I don't know the boundary reference.

[@JamieVids76]

@@mostlychris all of the UK guys have done a video on this alarm, clever marketing from this company. Its a good looking option for an alarm tbh, if it's all you want, police response etc. (for £25 a month) and what appears a solid system, I'm sticking with my reolink cameras and home assistant though.

[@JamieVids76]

@@mostlychris another thing actually, as part of an alarm system, I would like to bluetooth and wifi sniff, if someone is around my house, I would like to be able to prove it, bluetooth sniffing for a mac address would be a good addition. What do you think about this?

[@mostlychris]

You bring up a point--there is no remote monitoring with a system like this. You are reliant on being somewhere with your smart device to get a notification. For those that MUST have remote monitoring (and it's not cheap/overpriced) there are other options. Regarding bluetooth sniffing, that is an interesting concept. I wonder about the viability. Have you seen that in production in any type of setup anywhere?

[@JamieVids76]

@@mostlychris no, just an idea. If you have camera's they (budding thieves) have hoods, so to be able to prove someone has been stealing your stuff a good mac address from their mobile (granted they would have to leave their bluetooth on) would be proof they were there. I got the idea when I enabled bluetooth tracking and a load of unknown phones appeared in my "known devices.yaml". As for remote monitoring, police are sparse around here, and thieves are smash and grab, in and out fast so I don't see the value in it.

[@asdkjh4370]

Hmm maybe some sneek peek to other platforms would be baneficial - HA is getting limited and besides it seems like forum becoming more and more politically inclined., When someone asked HA be apollitical - developers banned him? That is not great athmosphere.

[@mostlychris]

I try to stay away from stuff like that. As mentioned in reply to your other comments on my videos, I haven't seen anything that would cause me to be offended or leave HA at this time.

[@easthulk99]

My house don't have any wing.... only my rc airplane have wings😁😁😁😉

[@mostlychris]

😂Someone caught that!

[@brianh.4185]

C-

[@mostlychris]

D-