HomeKit Automation possible

[Mbsbms]

I’m a newbie to the forum but have used HomeKit with a variety of products in my home. I have yet to fully integrate a few items including my alarm system and Ring doorbell.
My question is: if I install Homebridge on a Raspberry Pi and connect my Envisalink to it, can I disarm my DSC panel with my geolocation like my August door lock unlocks as I arrive home? Or do I need to enter the alarm panel code?

Thank you!

[STCummings]

I have no answers yet, but I am interested in the same question that you have. I have an ADT system with an Envisalink 4 operating in parallel. I would like to add the Envisalink 4 into my Apple Home, but I haven't figured out how to do that as yet. Homebridge seems the likely solution, but I don't know that it will work the way I want it to work. That is, to be able to arm/disarm, to see the status of individual sensors, and to control devices such as locks. By the way, I rather disappointingly learned that Envisalink 4 apparently does nothing for Z-wave locks as I can neither see status nor control same with Envisalink 4 interface.

[mikemm43]

One setup that is possible:
- EnvisaLink
- Raspberry π
- Smartthings hub

You can install the following:
- Smartthings bridge for EnvisaLink <-> Smartthings ---- https://community.smartthings.com/t/dsc ... artthings/
- HomeBridge plugin for Smartthings <-> HomeKit ----- https://community.smartthings.com/t/rel ... hings-v2-0
- Webcore for Smartthings (allow for user friendly scripting automations, more in-depth automation than the default functionality)


If you have extra devices (Zwave, Zigbee, ... ex: August / Ring), you can also add them through the Smartthings hub, the HomeBridge plugin will take care of porting them over to HomeKit.

This can allow you to do automation logic on either Smartthings or Homekit.
I like Homekit a lot, but find it easier to do automations on Smartthings, especially through Webcore. While Homekit is very user friendly, its automations are limited. I find webcore to be great for all my complex needs.

This is my current setup.

Another option I heard is great is HomeAssistant. I don't have any direct experience with it however.

[DonInLA]

FYI: I just installed the EVL4 on my DSC 5020 panel, set up my account and activated the device. This was super easy - didn't have to do any panel programming, it just worked. Then I installed the envisalink iOS app, which worked fine.

I already have homebridge running on a Raspberry Pi Zero so just installed the homebridge-envisalink plugin. The install process using the homebridge UI allowed me to specify the IP address of the device, the password, name all my zones, and set the type of each (door/window/smoke/motion/etc).

It works like a charm. I can arm/disarm the panel in stay or away mode from my iPhone (though my panel just has Stay and Away and the HomeKit accessory has Home/Away/Night/Off - I need to find out what the difference is between Night and Home for my panel) and see the status of all the zones on my iPhone (or any device with the Home app). I haven't yet set up any HomeKit automations but I expect that this will work as designed. Response times seem to be very quick (less than a second). I will be able to use Siri to arm/disarm the panel.

My only concern about all this is that the Envisalink APIs use HTTP Basic Auth, which is fundamentally insecure - the password is exposed in plain text on the network. However I'm not sure what the odds are of a thief breaking into my wireless network, monitoring the traffic, capturing the password, and using it to call an API to disable my alarm system...

The obvious caveat to all this is that you require some technical abilities to install and set up Homebridge. You can of course also run it on a PC or Mac as long as it remains awake all the time, if you don't want to mess with Raspberry Pi's.

Nice-to-have would be the ability to do zone bypass, I think I saw an existing request for this on the GitHub repo for the envisalink homebridge plugin.

[DoinitSideways]

It works like a charm. I can arm/disarm the panel in stay or away mode from my iPhone (though my panel just has Stay and Away and the HomeKit accessory has Home/Away/Night/Off - I need to find out what the difference is between Night and Home for my panel) and see the status of all the zones on my iPhone (or any device with the Home app). I haven't yet set up any HomeKit automations but I expect that this will work as designed. Response times seem to be very quick (less than a second). I will be able to use Siri to arm/disarm the panel.

Hi Don,
Ive basically the same setup except im currently runing homebeidge on my windows 11 pc. Ive noted the status updates can be slow at times. WHat firmware version is your EVL4 on?

[jmjlai]

It works like a charm. I can arm/disarm the panel in stay or away mode from my iPhone (though my panel just has Stay and Away and the HomeKit accessory has Home/Away/Night/Off - I need to find out what the difference is between Night and Home for my panel) and see the status of all the zones on my iPhone (or any device with the Home app). I haven't yet set up any HomeKit automations but I expect that this will work as designed. Response times seem to be very quick (less than a second). I will be able to use Siri to arm/disarm the panel.

Hi Don,
Ive basically the same setup except im currently runing homebeidge on my windows 11 pc. Ive noted the status updates can be slow at times. WHat firmware version is your EVL4 on?

I'm running homebridge in a docker container on my NAS, which runs linux. response times are usually less than 1 second. I have heard that some homebridge plugins don't work the best on Windows or MAC hosts.

[DoinitSideways]

I’m going to migrate HB to a Pi4 shortly…

But even the native EyezON app is slow to update status… I was just curious what EVL4 firmware you are using as it seems to have slowed since I changed to the latest firmware.