Best way to monitor my home fire system?

I have just set up a 9200UDLS to be an always on system (videos will be out in a couple weeks on my channel), and since I am away at school, I am interested in setting up a system to “monitor” the panel. By that, I mean that I want to be able to basically get alerts when there is some kind of condition whether it be Alarm, Trouble, or Supervisory.

I can think of two possible ways of doing this:

  1. I can use a Raspberry Pi I already own, and hook up to the alarm, trouble, and supervisory relays to act as buttons. When a button is pressed, the Pi sends me an email.

  2. Use the onboard DACT to somehow call me. I see this being an issue, however, because I think the panel sends data similar to a fax machine. Meaning my phone wouldn’t ring for that. If I remember correctly, there is an older NewAgeServerAlarm video where Andrew discusses a system that calls him. I think he said the DACT itself wasn’t enough, and he had to make the auto call go through another machine. I don’t remember which video it was though, and I also have not seen him too active lately to ask. I think it’d be a cool system to set up, but I’m okay with the Pi too!

Thoughts?

Your phone would ring. All calls start that way. However, the DACT is looking for a DACR to answer. Then they handshake with the proper tones and the data is sent. Since you can’t reproduce that tone sequence, the DACT would time out and place the call again until the call repeat limit is reached. That puts the panel in communication failure trouble.

Got it, so that is not a good route to go. Probably better to hook up the Pi then?

I’m working on linking my Silent Knight 5808 with my Arduino UNO microcontroller and I am planning on using the Alarm, Trouble, and Supervisory relays to act as inputs to the Arduino. I have an Ethernet shield that I can mount on top of my Arduino that allows me to send e-mails and text messages over the internet. I even have an LCD for the Arduino so I am considering building a complete communicator of my own to mount next to the panel.
What I’d love to do is get my hands on an oscilloscope and figure out how the SLC protocol and/or the SBUS protocol works so that I could actually setup the Arduino to be able to input commands to the panel, but that’s a whole other topic.

I actually have this same question…but can any of you email me with the info on how to actually do this with a Raspberry PI? Thanks

Creating a post about it right now, I’ll be posting my code later this week! Keep an eye on Fire Alarm General Discussion and I’m posting my first successes with my program!

Awesome thanks!!!

First bit can be found here: https://forums.thefirepanel.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=8634

Correction: here is where you can find all info, including source code, for the project! <URL url="Download PireMonitor: A Raspberry Pi Program to monitor your Fire Alarm System]Download PireMonitor: A Raspberry Pi Program to monitor your Fire Alarm System]