If you have ever had a wired security system installed into your home, or bought into a home that had an existing wired system that was never taken out, you might have wondered if you should rip it all out in exchange for a modern wireless alternative. My past home had one of these and I nearly did rip it out before selling, but I am here to tell you “don’t do it!”. You can make use of that old system and adapt it to a modern wireless option that can be completely controlled by you.
This came at a surprise that we had never tried to do anything like that here. With all of the products, questions, and ideas that come our way, we had never attempted to do this–until now. Thanks to the Konnected Alarm panel, you can easily adapt that old alarm panel into a modern self-controlled solution that supports options like SmartThings, where it can be integrated with whatever smart solution you have going on–which means that this an adapter and not a hub in itself (you’ll still need a supported smart home solution running to add this to, which we will cover shortly).
What you need is an older wired system that all runs into a centralized panel. Normally, the panel has some kind of setup that monitors everything that is running to it and then taps into the phone line so that the information can be accessed by whatever company you hired to install it. You can make use of the original panel if it supports the right connection, or you can disconnect all of the devices running to it, and run them directly to a Konnected product instead, allowing Konnected to see everything directly wired condenser microphone.
The latter is what we did, with a Konnected 6-Zone Alarm panel. As it says, It can handle things like motion detectors, door/window sensors, sirens, and more. If 6 zones/items aren’t enough for your setup, they do have larger kits as well. However, for now, we are working with the 6-zone option with just a few devices wired in, including 1x siren, 1x motion detector, and 1x door sensor.
This isn’t for the faint of heart, so if you don’t have any experience with wiring your original panel or at least have somewhat of an idea on how it all works, you will want to phone a friend (or professional). There is a lot of hands-on when it comes to retiring the wires to the Konnected board.