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.
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.
It comes with all of the instructions you would need, so as long as you can handle basic wiring directions, you should be able to follow along with how everything connects together (this is where experience helps). First, before anything, you are best to download the app to your phone to have it standing by. Then, install the Konnected board physically within the original panel, where hopefully there is also an outlet. Plug Konnected into the wall (don’t use the old alarm panels power source!) and let it boot up. From here, it gets slightly tricky.
With most smart devices, the app walks you through getting the device onto the network. However, the Konnected app will not see the Konnected module until you manually add it to your network. So when it first boots, the blue light will be blinking to let you know that its own Wi-Fi is broadcasting. Connect to it, and head to your browser on your mobile device and visit 192.168.4.1, which leads to a Wi-Fi discovery page. Find your network and type in your password and connect. Eventually, the blue light on the module will go out, showing that it is no longer broadcasting its own SSID and is now connected to the network of choice. If you have a kit that has multiple modules, you have to do this one by one with all of them. Once the module is on the network, connect your phone/device to your network again, and visit the app. It will search for any available modules on the network and list them.
From the app, you can view various statistics about the module like IP information and you can reset the Wi-Fi settings (make note of that since the factory reset button on the module itself doesn’t seem to do anything–at least it didn’t function for us) if you ever change networks. What’s important is the ability to register the Konnected module(s) to a Konnected Cloud account. This just gets it ready for bringing over to solutions like SmartThings. Remember, Konnected isn’t your hub, it is just an adapter that delivers your wired devices to your wireless hub/solution. You can’t do this yet though since nothing is wired in just yet.
For now, you need to pull the power on the module and start wiring everything to it. The instructions walk you through how to get all of the devices connected, or how to use a ribbon connector if your old panel (that everything is originally plugged into) supports it, allowing you to use that as a hub of sorts (this would make things a lot easier). If not, you will unwire all of your devices from the original panel and wire them into the Konnected module (or modules if you have a large kit).
Once finished, bring power back to the module and head to the app where you will register what devices are on one zone (motion detector, siren, door/window sensors, etc). Once you have added them all, hit register. To test them out, have someone stand at the panel as you open a door or walk in front of a motion sensor. You will see the blue light blink when one of these zones are triggered.
Now, you are ready to integrate the Konnected setup into your smart home solution. Konnected currently supports integration with Samsung SmartThings, Home Assistant, Hubitat, or OpenHab. We tested a few options out like Hubitat since we have one on-site here. It was the trickier one since it doesn’t have an app readily available in its list just yet, so you have to manually add the code for the drivers and apps from the admin screen of Hubitat. It isn’t a difficult process and Konnected’s website walks you through the steps quite simply. From there, you can get Hubitat to recognize the various devices plugged into Konnected. It isn’t 100%, but it seems it is still getting the wrinkles worked on before the app is offered directly within the list of apps inside Hubitat natively (aka, Hubitat is more like a beta thing at the moment).
As long as you followed the instructions properly and everything has been added to your hub just right, you should be able to see the device wired into Konnected, allowing them to interact with your modern devices that are connected to your hub. So if you have an alarm set up on the wireless side of things, these wired devices can not assist the cause. If your purpose of adding the wired system is to make use of its alarm functions (code/alarm interface), then you will need some additional items from Konnected.
They have a number of optional devices you can expand the system with, and allowing you to use your old wired alarm’s keypad is one of them. You can also buy into a backup battery that allows the system to stay powered even in a power outage, or buy into a number of wired devices they have available on their site–in case you want to add more devices for some reason or replace some of the ones you have if they no longer work (ie, siren or strobe light).
It can get a little pricy depending on how large your wired system is, but if all you need is 6 zones and a single Konnected module, then it is only around $99 or so, which isn’t bad for something that is adapting your entire (well, up to 6 zones at least) wired system into your smart home. The price can climb from there though as you build it out for more zones or buy into optional features.
Our Conclusion
It’s a neat solution to breathing life back into your old wired security devices. Having support for SmartThings is huge since it is such a commonly used smart home solution. The desire to support other things like open-source smart home solutions or Hubitat shows they want to be more than common and want to reach the advanced users. It’s not 100% just yet when it comes to Hubitat, but I am sure it will work just fine once they get out all of the wrinkles.
Our Rating | Average Price* $99+ |
*Average price is based on the time this article was published
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