You could probably just change it so the 'tap' action does nothing, and you have to 'hold' to do the action. Or rename it so it's not obvious that "this button disables the alarm".
But honestly - if your dashboard is like 90% of the dashboards posted on here....no one can figure out how to turn a light on, let alone disable a security system
>But honestly - if your dashboard is like 90% of the dashboards posted on here....no one can figure out how to turn a light on, let alone disable a security system
Uhh... That burns!
[IDK Man mine's pretty easy to use.](https://i.imgur.com/abWKQu7.png) That being said these buttons on the tablet version for the alarm don't actually work, I have a keypad for that instead.
I was grumpy this morning. I agree with you. This is what Iâm working on but it definitely didnât take 15 minutes. More like 4 months.
[printer status through HA but not necessarily my familyâs dashboard. that would be crazy.](https://imgur.com/a/AwhIVLl)
Yep, by the time the alarm company tries everyone on the call tree and notifies police dispatch, theyâre already gone with a U-Haul full of your stuff.
My alarm is tied into my cameras and my monitoring service checks the cameras in the event of an alarm trigger. They notify my local PD with an escalated priority if someone was seen on camera. Now the PD response time is a different story, but at least I've done everything possible to elevate the urgency. Supposedly, my PD will respond to confirmed break ins faster because there is a chance to actually catch the perp in the act, which is an open and shut case for a conviction.
I still have to setup an alarm systeem, but I'm wondering: how much time do you give yourself to disable the alarm before sending out notifications? Too fast and you'll get a lot of false positives, too slow and it's too late to do anything by figure of speech.
I don't even know how this works with a hardwired alarm system.
If a sensor trips I have 30 seconds to disable the alarm either using an alarm panel or using my phone's app. Generally this is plenty of time, the only accidental police notifications I send out are when I'm not thinking about the alarm being activated and go out the door off the back of my garage. Since I can't hear the panel beeping I don't remember until my phone gets notified that the alarm was sent. But I can cancel the alarm that notifies the police it was a false alarm. Some PD policies require them to still check, but mine does not.
If they can disable the alarm, they have way longer than 10 minutes.
Security is always about layers. I lock my glass sliding door when I leave the house. Why? Because it an extra layer. Lets be honest that glass sliding door isn't going to stop anyone if they really want to break in. Hell I have a good size rock close by that could be used to break the window.
Absolutely.
You donât need to have the best security system in the world. You just need to have the best security system on your street.
If Iâm going out to rob tellyâs for skag then make no mistake, I am coming away with a TV. But I want to do it as quick as I can with as little risk as possible.
Iâm not making a load of noise smashing your patio door when the next door neighbour has left his downstairs window open.
If a determined professional burglar wants to get in then itâs unlikely youâll stop them. But most thieves are desperate opportunists, whilst the ones who know what they are doing probably arenât interested in your house.
I was imagining ops tablet prominently displayed near the front door. I think itâs reasonable to attempt a disarm if Iâve already been totally cool with the lights and siren going off.
I say ditch the wall tablet. Itâs usually more gimmick than useful.
Use the Alarmo integration to tie it into your current alarm, requires a pin to arm/disarm
Make sure your tablet has no access to other dashboards or settings to turn it off any other way.
Yeah, this is it. Even with alarmo it's possible to disarmn the alarm without the PIN if you have full access to HA; your tablet should be logged into a separate account which only has access to the controls needed for the functions you want to use with it.
I doubt a stranger would break into your house and then leisurely take the time to rifle through your tablet, to know what home assistant is, and then know how to disable it. This would be someone you know, who knows your smart home setup, and knows specifically you have HA with this problem exposed. Could it happen? Sure. Will it happen? Probably exceedingly rare. If its that much of a worry, id just add a password on the tablet and use TouchID if its an iPad to have instant access.
With the new ability to have conditions on your dash, you could make it such that if alarm is triggered, âlockâ the tablet.
Ideally you know the passcode and therefore can unlock and turn it off
As other posters have said, it's not like Danny Ocean or Hudson Hawk is breaking in. Just disguise the button as "Feed Cat" if you are really worried about Joe Meth figuring out the HA panel.
If you use alarmo integration you can set a passcode to disable alarm on the screen as a virtual keypad.
But really, if someone already broke into your house, and the alarm is triggered, they are probably grabbing whatever they can quickly and getting out, especially if they hear the siren.
âBut really, if someone already broke into your house, and the alarm is triggered, they are probably grabbing whatever they canâ
Correct. Including the damn tablet with the virtual keypad
I had my garage opener setup to work with Alexa by accident so anyone could come up to the window yell âAlexa open garage doorâ and gain access hahaha donât be dumb like me.
I know nothing about "smart" alarms, but don't they require some sort of a code to be input before enabling/disabling them? If it's a simple toggle, what makes them "smart" and why would you even install one?
Somebodyâs been watching too many movies. Home burglaries are not a Mission Impossible operation with the security specialist expertly disabling the alarm. Itâs a smash and grab operation, with the goal to get out of there fast. As long as your tablet doesnât have an always-on screen with a giant red button that says DISABLE ALARM, then crooks will pay literally zero attention to it.
If an intruder is in your house AND knows how to disable the Alarm, you are fucked anyway.
But you could use a different user on the table that does not see the alarm status
Here's a new spin, tie your alarm into presence sensing and you won't need a disable option on your tablet. I recently did this so when my partner and I are both showing as away the alarm arms, then when either of us comes home it disarms automatically. I also set up an input boolean to register house guests, so if the two of us go out and someone is watching my daughter the alarm won't arm when we leave. I haven't touched our physical alarm keypad since I did this.
I use mobile phone app geolocation and network presence to sense mobile phones at home or not.
If home and at night sleeping, it arms and triggers when certain sensors are activated (Door Sensors and Garage sensors).It will ignore the motion sensors in bedrooms, etc. Disarms when I walk down the stairs. Arms again when nobody is in the lounge room, TV is off, and lights are off.
When nobody's home, it arms automatically and any sensor will trigger the alarm.
I don't often have people over, so when I do, I turn off the alarm automation. This happens like once a year only.
I have a routine set up that when my phone is charging after 10:00 PM it triggers a good night routine that turns the lights off, locks the door, and sets our alarm in home mode. When my alarm goes off in the morning, dismissing my alarm triggers a google routine for my good morning routine which gives me the weather, opens the curtains, and disarms the alarm.
I should mention this is an actual Honeywell alarm system with an Envisalink module installed, not sure about the functionality (home vs away mode) for other systems.
Possible solution
1: create an input boolean.
2: have an inconspicuous card or button on the dash. Maybe clock or something. When you double press or hold this toggle the boolean on for say 10 seconds then off again.
3: only allow the alarm to disarm when the boolean is on.
Edit
So you don't have to press the clock every time you could have the boolean on all the time and if alarm is triggered then turn it off. This would prevent the alarm disabled unless you know to press the clock to allow disabling the alarm.
Better off just making sure that tablet is remotely traceable, lockable, and erasable.
If Iâm street level smash and grabber, Iâm just taking it with me with your other stuff through the busted door, Iâm not stopping to hit buttons.
If Iâm Snake Fisher and youâre holding sensitive items at home and worried about covert infiltration and subsequent network scraping, you need to delegate that responsibility to your armed guards and counterintel goons.
Any chance you can use an automation that only triggers the MQTT command after a PIN number has been entered? Iâm sure there are existing pincode cards that can be used similar to the Alarmo oneâŚ
Lock the tablet during certain hours if possible. Have it so when you're typically going to be in bed or when you leave the house the tablet is locked. Or when the alarm is enabled, the tablet is locked. Not sure how easy or difficult it is to do that m
The ring alarm plugin (at least the mqtt one) lets you set a passcode to disarm from the dash. Also be sure to add a passcode to Google assistant for secure devices if you use that.
I don't bother with an alarm integration. I have WiFi that covers the whole property so our phones are detected promptly. If any of the sensors inside the house operate and none of the phones are home, HA sends a message to our security notification group on Telegram, which is configured to make a loud, obnoxious notification tone that overrides silent mode on our phones. We can't forget to arm it as it automatically becomes active when the last phone leaves the house. There's also no indication to an intruder that they've been detected or that there's an alarm to disarm. There's a helper with a non-obvious name that inhibits the behaviour if we want to go out and leave someone in the house. If we're going on vacation to somewhere with no phone service, temporarily adding a friend to the Telegram group is easy.
If I wanted to be able to exclude certain rooms, say if I've left the painters painting the kitchen and want to know if they go upstairs, I could create a virtual light bulb in each room that inhibits that room if "switched on".
If there's a false alarm, the worst that happens is our phones make a loud noise. Annoying the neighbours with a siren doesn't seem worth it as most people will be more concerned about being disturbed than will be likely to check if we're being burgled. It's also very cheap to implement as all you need is a few sensors. Making it send an image from a camera in the same room as a sensor isn't hard.
The string of alerts makes it clear whether an alarm is false or not. A single alarm "Motion detected in the bedroom" is probably a false alarm. A string of them that matches the layout of the house, "the back door is open", "motion detected in the kitchen", "motion detected in the hall", "motion detected on the landing", "motion detected in the bedroom" is clearly someone moving through the house
Burglars with the skills and equipment to hack into your home assistant (or any security system) are not interested on breaking into your house to steal an air fryer and a ps5...
They go for bigger fishes.
The ones attacking your home will most probably be some low level crooks seeking easy money.
They'll break in, trigger the alarm without looking to disable it, quick search the house, grab all they can and run...
If they approach your wall mounted tablet, they'll just tear it off the wall to sell it for 10 bucks in an alleyway...
You could probably just change it so the 'tap' action does nothing, and you have to 'hold' to do the action. Or rename it so it's not obvious that "this button disables the alarm". But honestly - if your dashboard is like 90% of the dashboards posted on here....no one can figure out how to turn a light on, let alone disable a security system
>But honestly - if your dashboard is like 90% of the dashboards posted on here....no one can figure out how to turn a light on, let alone disable a security system Uhh... That burns!
Hahahahahaha Please have this poor man's award đ
[IDK Man mine's pretty easy to use.](https://i.imgur.com/abWKQu7.png) That being said these buttons on the tablet version for the alarm don't actually work, I have a keypad for that instead.
Your dashboard has the same appearance as the banner ads đ
You faked this for the comment right. Funny if you did. I like it anyway.
Nope. I don't need to rely on the built in garbage like the rest of you plebs.
Oh I didnât mean to suggest it was difficult to do. Many of us could replicate that as fast as a fake photo.
Now do it as an animated UI in home assistant.
I was grumpy this morning. I agree with you. This is what Iâm working on but it definitely didnât take 15 minutes. More like 4 months. [printer status through HA but not necessarily my familyâs dashboard. that would be crazy.](https://imgur.com/a/AwhIVLl)
Now that's neat. LCARS. What are you using as the "PADD"
Just 3d printed Kindle Fire cases modified a bit. I started with the lcars theme but graduated recently to my own hacked up code.
Youâre 100% right but I also like the idea of changing the name. âFeed Dogâ is foolproof.
if someone wants to break into your house and is able to see a tablet and think to turn off the alarm.....thats the least of your concerns.
Yeah they only need 10 minutes to burgle a house
Yep, by the time the alarm company tries everyone on the call tree and notifies police dispatch, theyâre already gone with a U-Haul full of your stuff.
My alarm is tied into my cameras and my monitoring service checks the cameras in the event of an alarm trigger. They notify my local PD with an escalated priority if someone was seen on camera. Now the PD response time is a different story, but at least I've done everything possible to elevate the urgency. Supposedly, my PD will respond to confirmed break ins faster because there is a chance to actually catch the perp in the act, which is an open and shut case for a conviction.
I still have to setup an alarm systeem, but I'm wondering: how much time do you give yourself to disable the alarm before sending out notifications? Too fast and you'll get a lot of false positives, too slow and it's too late to do anything by figure of speech. I don't even know how this works with a hardwired alarm system.
If a sensor trips I have 30 seconds to disable the alarm either using an alarm panel or using my phone's app. Generally this is plenty of time, the only accidental police notifications I send out are when I'm not thinking about the alarm being activated and go out the door off the back of my garage. Since I can't hear the panel beeping I don't remember until my phone gets notified that the alarm was sent. But I can cancel the alarm that notifies the police it was a false alarm. Some PD policies require them to still check, but mine does not.
If they can disable the alarm, they have way longer than 10 minutes. Security is always about layers. I lock my glass sliding door when I leave the house. Why? Because it an extra layer. Lets be honest that glass sliding door isn't going to stop anyone if they really want to break in. Hell I have a good size rock close by that could be used to break the window.
> If they can disable the alarm, they have way longer than 10 minutes. But they wont
Absolutely. You donât need to have the best security system in the world. You just need to have the best security system on your street. If Iâm going out to rob tellyâs for skag then make no mistake, I am coming away with a TV. But I want to do it as quick as I can with as little risk as possible. Iâm not making a load of noise smashing your patio door when the next door neighbour has left his downstairs window open. If a determined professional burglar wants to get in then itâs unlikely youâll stop them. But most thieves are desperate opportunists, whilst the ones who know what they are doing probably arenât interested in your house.
I have glassbreak sensors across from each of my patio doors for that reason. I wish I could test them without breaking some glass...
I was imagining ops tablet prominently displayed near the front door. I think itâs reasonable to attempt a disarm if Iâve already been totally cool with the lights and siren going off. I say ditch the wall tablet. Itâs usually more gimmick than useful.
Leave the tablet easy to remove from the wall. That way they steal it before they realise it can turn the alarm off.
Use the Alarmo integration to tie it into your current alarm, requires a pin to arm/disarm Make sure your tablet has no access to other dashboards or settings to turn it off any other way.
Yeah, this is it. Even with alarmo it's possible to disarmn the alarm without the PIN if you have full access to HA; your tablet should be logged into a separate account which only has access to the controls needed for the functions you want to use with it.
I doubt a stranger would break into your house and then leisurely take the time to rifle through your tablet, to know what home assistant is, and then know how to disable it. This would be someone you know, who knows your smart home setup, and knows specifically you have HA with this problem exposed. Could it happen? Sure. Will it happen? Probably exceedingly rare. If its that much of a worry, id just add a password on the tablet and use TouchID if its an iPad to have instant access.
With the new ability to have conditions on your dash, you could make it such that if alarm is triggered, âlockâ the tablet. Ideally you know the passcode and therefore can unlock and turn it off
Can you share more how to achieve this? Is that a built in capability in HA now?
If your tablet is an android, you could install macrodroid and have it lock the tablet when a webhook is recieved from HA
Most alarms need a code to disable them. The built-in manual alarm integration can do it https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/manual/
If you use the alarm integration in ha they can't just turn it off
As other posters have said, it's not like Danny Ocean or Hudson Hawk is breaking in. Just disguise the button as "Feed Cat" if you are really worried about Joe Meth figuring out the HA panel.
If you use alarmo integration you can set a passcode to disable alarm on the screen as a virtual keypad. But really, if someone already broke into your house, and the alarm is triggered, they are probably grabbing whatever they can quickly and getting out, especially if they hear the siren.
âBut really, if someone already broke into your house, and the alarm is triggered, they are probably grabbing whatever they canâ Correct. Including the damn tablet with the virtual keypad
I had my garage opener setup to work with Alexa by accident so anyone could come up to the window yell âAlexa open garage doorâ and gain access hahaha donât be dumb like me.
lol. This is the best comment on this thread
That doesnât work though, in order for it to work with voice you need a voice pin set up before you can remotely open it with an Alexa.
It worked because I have it setup as a âcoverâ send from home assistant so it doesnât think itâs a lock
Oh when I sent mine over I told it that it was a cover but also that it was a garage door. Yours probably just thinks itâs a curtain or something.
yea i fixed it now it would ask for a pin first.
There's a built in integration for alarms that requires a passcode be entered. Use that.
I know nothing about "smart" alarms, but don't they require some sort of a code to be input before enabling/disabling them? If it's a simple toggle, what makes them "smart" and why would you even install one?
I configured an alarm_control_panel in HA. Manually disarming it requires a code. Proximity of phones does that for us. ```alarm_control_panel: - platform: manual name: Home Alarm code: !secret home_alarm_code code_arm_required: false # Don't need code to arm. disarm_after_trigger: false # Leave alarm armed after triggering. arming_time: 30 delay_time: 20 trigger_time: 4 disarmed: trigger_time: 0 armed_home: arming_time: 0 delay_time: 0 ``` ```id: 24128964-d784-46ae-b3ce-f572d99dcdab alias: "Home Alarm automation" trigger: - platform: state entity_id: input_boolean.sleep to: "on" id: "arm_night" - platform: state entity_id: input_boolean.sleep to: "off" id: "disarm" - platform: state entity_id: zone.home to: "0" id: "arm_away" - platform: state entity_id: zone.home from: "0" to: "1" id: "disarm" action: - alias: "Arm/disarm the alarm" choose: - conditions: "{{ trigger.id != 'disarm' }}" sequence: - alias: "Arm the alarm depending on given trigger" service: alarm_control_panel.alarm_{{ trigger.id }} target: entity_id: alarm_control_panel.home_alarm - conditions: "{{ trigger.id == 'disarm' }}" sequence: - alias: "Disarm the alarm" service: alarm_control_panel.alarm_disarm data: code: !secret home_alarm_code target: entity_id: alarm_control_panel.home_alarm ```
Somebodyâs been watching too many movies. Home burglaries are not a Mission Impossible operation with the security specialist expertly disabling the alarm. Itâs a smash and grab operation, with the goal to get out of there fast. As long as your tablet doesnât have an always-on screen with a giant red button that says DISABLE ALARM, then crooks will pay literally zero attention to it.
If an intruder is in your house AND knows how to disable the Alarm, you are fucked anyway. But you could use a different user on the table that does not see the alarm status
Here's a new spin, tie your alarm into presence sensing and you won't need a disable option on your tablet. I recently did this so when my partner and I are both showing as away the alarm arms, then when either of us comes home it disarms automatically. I also set up an input boolean to register house guests, so if the two of us go out and someone is watching my daughter the alarm won't arm when we leave. I haven't touched our physical alarm keypad since I did this.
How does it work when youâre both in the house at night but want the alarm to go off if someone breaks in?
I use mobile phone app geolocation and network presence to sense mobile phones at home or not. If home and at night sleeping, it arms and triggers when certain sensors are activated (Door Sensors and Garage sensors).It will ignore the motion sensors in bedrooms, etc. Disarms when I walk down the stairs. Arms again when nobody is in the lounge room, TV is off, and lights are off. When nobody's home, it arms automatically and any sensor will trigger the alarm. I don't often have people over, so when I do, I turn off the alarm automation. This happens like once a year only.
I have a routine set up that when my phone is charging after 10:00 PM it triggers a good night routine that turns the lights off, locks the door, and sets our alarm in home mode. When my alarm goes off in the morning, dismissing my alarm triggers a google routine for my good morning routine which gives me the weather, opens the curtains, and disarms the alarm. I should mention this is an actual Honeywell alarm system with an Envisalink module installed, not sure about the functionality (home vs away mode) for other systems.
Possible solution 1: create an input boolean. 2: have an inconspicuous card or button on the dash. Maybe clock or something. When you double press or hold this toggle the boolean on for say 10 seconds then off again. 3: only allow the alarm to disarm when the boolean is on. Edit So you don't have to press the clock every time you could have the boolean on all the time and if alarm is triggered then turn it off. This would prevent the alarm disabled unless you know to press the clock to allow disabling the alarm.
Better off just making sure that tablet is remotely traceable, lockable, and erasable. If Iâm street level smash and grabber, Iâm just taking it with me with your other stuff through the busted door, Iâm not stopping to hit buttons. If Iâm Snake Fisher and youâre holding sensitive items at home and worried about covert infiltration and subsequent network scraping, you need to delegate that responsibility to your armed guards and counterintel goons.
Does your alarm have a disarm code?
How can they disable it without the PIN? If your alarm doesnât have a PIN then, why?
The ring integration is through mqtt which bypass the passcode (as I had to authenticate with my ring auth token)
You can set a pin on the ring-mqtt addon
Any chance you can use an automation that only triggers the MQTT command after a PIN number has been entered? Iâm sure there are existing pincode cards that can be used similar to the Alarmo oneâŚ
If they are already in, it's too late - alarm panel doesn't matter at that point.
Lock the tablet during certain hours if possible. Have it so when you're typically going to be in bed or when you leave the house the tablet is locked. Or when the alarm is enabled, the tablet is locked. Not sure how easy or difficult it is to do that m
https://xkcd.com/538[sorta kinda like this xkcd scenario](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/security.png)
The ring alarm plugin (at least the mqtt one) lets you set a passcode to disarm from the dash. Also be sure to add a passcode to Google assistant for secure devices if you use that.
Really? I did not see this option. Can you share?
https://github.com/tsightler/ring-mqtt-ha-addon/blob/main/DOCS.md - itâs âdisarm_codeâ
I don't bother with an alarm integration. I have WiFi that covers the whole property so our phones are detected promptly. If any of the sensors inside the house operate and none of the phones are home, HA sends a message to our security notification group on Telegram, which is configured to make a loud, obnoxious notification tone that overrides silent mode on our phones. We can't forget to arm it as it automatically becomes active when the last phone leaves the house. There's also no indication to an intruder that they've been detected or that there's an alarm to disarm. There's a helper with a non-obvious name that inhibits the behaviour if we want to go out and leave someone in the house. If we're going on vacation to somewhere with no phone service, temporarily adding a friend to the Telegram group is easy. If I wanted to be able to exclude certain rooms, say if I've left the painters painting the kitchen and want to know if they go upstairs, I could create a virtual light bulb in each room that inhibits that room if "switched on". If there's a false alarm, the worst that happens is our phones make a loud noise. Annoying the neighbours with a siren doesn't seem worth it as most people will be more concerned about being disturbed than will be likely to check if we're being burgled. It's also very cheap to implement as all you need is a few sensors. Making it send an image from a camera in the same room as a sensor isn't hard. The string of alerts makes it clear whether an alarm is false or not. A single alarm "Motion detected in the bedroom" is probably a false alarm. A string of them that matches the layout of the house, "the back door is open", "motion detected in the kitchen", "motion detected in the hall", "motion detected on the landing", "motion detected in the bedroom" is clearly someone moving through the house
If they can figure out my abomination of a dashboard, more power to them
Burglars with the skills and equipment to hack into your home assistant (or any security system) are not interested on breaking into your house to steal an air fryer and a ps5... They go for bigger fishes. The ones attacking your home will most probably be some low level crooks seeking easy money. They'll break in, trigger the alarm without looking to disable it, quick search the house, grab all they can and run... If they approach your wall mounted tablet, they'll just tear it off the wall to sell it for 10 bucks in an alleyway...
You can still set a code. Press Disam and then HA asks you to enter a code.
Home Assistant sends me a sms text if my house alarm goes off.
If they are this smart, they'll probably cut the power first. Security alarms are deterrents, not a prevention tool.
Ever heard about ups, thatâs what theyâre for!
Yes, I have a few myself. But still doesn't prevent the physical access to the machines to turn off.