PIR Arduino Shield

[shrapse]

What are everyone's thoughts on this? Security Sensor Shield for Arduino | Freetronics

Seems to be the goods. Designed by the very clever guy who runs the youtube channel SuperHouseTV.

 

[tangent]

While it may be nice to monitor tamper/short conditions, I think I'd probably go with an optoisolator instead. On real alarm systems 9 times out of 10 an alarm installer just puts the EOLR's in the panel (at least in residential). I think it's a combination of laziness and not really understanding how EOLR's work.

OTOH, If somebody has easy access to your security wiring you've got bigger problems.

Unless I missed something, this shield is using 5v to trigger the alarm sensors and is just passing 12v or what ever is input to power them. It also doesn't really provide any additional input protection. If your cable run is long enough a 5v signal would be more susceptible to interference and voltage drop than 12v but it may not be enough to matter.

So you're clear, EOLR's allow you to detect shorts in your cable and tampering/cut wires on normally open circuits (NC is much more common).

 

[shrapse]

Yeah I agree that the EOL is a bit overkill for your average setup, but looking at the arduino sketch it doesn't need to be used and it's just sending standard highs and lows to the digital input. Also it delivers 12v to the PIR's.

 

[tangent]

It 'delivers' 12v from an external supply through nothing more than a terminal block.

If memory serves, attempts at using an Arduino for IO were using an ethernet shield. Buying a cheap used sealevel device on ebay is a simpler option (make an offer less than the asking price on something)

 

[shrapse]

Yeah could just split the power going to the arduino easily enough. Unfortunately sealink devices don't exist here in Australia and importing one will end up costing an astronomical amount

 

[shrapse]

Well I've managed to get it up and running. First time playing with an arduino or any form of code for that matter. First impressions are good, working as intended. It's very tidy and very cheap.

Not using any of the tamper features, just a standard NC loop.

Here's a video of it in action

 

[JoeShmo]

nice job, shrapse. for all my NC/NO sensors, I went the Pi route w/GPIO. The next thing to tackle is how to trigger cameras in BI. I notice that BI will allow "Global DIO input bits" on a camera for trigger, and in Digital I/O, you can setup "single byte i/o (Arduino)". I bought a UNO r3 board with ATmega328. Brand new to Arduino, but hopefully I can figure out how to feed it's digital I/O pins via the GPIO on the Pi, so that BI sees those bits.
Did you use any guides to tie the Arduino to BI to make it work? or is it as easy as just plugging it in, without even writing a sketch?

 

[gmaster1]

Easiest way to trigger BI, in my opinion, is via HTTP. You can make BI trigger something or vice versa.
I did this as a simple test using BI's Alert features and an ESP201 (8266) chip running WiFi