a16 as basis for a security system

[admin]

take a photo how you connect with wires.

[lcrisp]

_Exactly_ the same as the wiring diagram! Rather than stripping away an arbitrary part of the power supply's input leads, I thought it was neater to twist the secondary positive ins with the main dc input and tighten them all into the main positive dc input terminal. The negatives from the sirens and buzzers I did likewise with the main dc negative input. But I can't think of any reason that wouldn't be fine. The circuits wouldn't be triggered until the mosfets change states...

During the day I double checked that nothing's come loose, but it seemed fine. And it seemed to be okay when I checked (numerous times) yesterday.

Oh nooo. I didn't look closely enough at the power supply I purchased! I've been sent the wrong one - it's 12V but only 2A, it should have been 3A! Could it be possible its enough to power the KC868-A16 but not enough to change the state of the mosfets? I'd need 2.5A or over wouldn't I? ?

[admin]

why not take a photo? sometimes we look a photo will easy to help people.

[lcrisp]

I didn't take a photo because it's mounted in a spot that's really difficult to get to....

Oh dear! I spent the morning totally redoing the wiring. Tried activating a buzzer/siren again, but nothing (*again).

Then went to make some mods to the code, tried to save it and noticed it was now offline. It's still connected via USB-C, but the entire connection has disappeared both from Home Assistant and even Proxmox.

And suddenly there's an angry red flashing led near the ethernet jack! Thinking that didn't look at all good, I pulled out the output terminal - and the flashing red stopped immediately.

I'm a bit too tired to be dealing with it today - now worried that I've shorted something. I'm going to have to hit it again after a good night's sleep!

[lcrisp]

Got up after a few hours sleep and went into 'bugfixing' mode. Because the KC868-A16 wasn't connecting via USB-C, I decided to attempt to reflash it with the KCS firmware on another PC.

Some VERY erratic behaviour follows:

This actually seemed to work! (at least the download tool announced "finished") But immediately things appeared to be different. The first time I flashed it and connected ethernet, the little orange led began flickering to show that traffic was transmitting. This time - nothing. I tried connecting to it, and also used the UDP_scanning_tool. Nothing at all, and no flickering. Thinking something may have gone awry with the flash, i decided to try it again. This time the orange and green ethernet lights did start flickering! But I couldn't find it's port or connect to it, as I had previously. So I tried another time. Mid flash I was hopefully watching my local WiFi, and the KC868-A16 suddenly appeared over WiFi. But the instant the flash finished it was gone again. Another check showed the orange ethernet light is now permanently on, but no flickering - and the green one has turned off entirely. Mystified I tried both resetting it and reflashing three more times since, but saw no signs of life whatsoever.

Was about to head to bed when I figured I'd try one more time. (better than lying awake trying to understand what was going on!) OMG this time it's reappeared via WiFi. And I connected to it without issue! And I noticed the ethernet lights were flickering again! Smelling a rat (my entire reason for turning the KC868-A16 into a wired security system is some scary neighbours who've hacked into my WiFi previously, and who I suspect were also behind a break-in - probably to gain access to my router) I reconnected via ethernet and turned off the unit's WiFi. Then I changed the login, set a strong password and powered it off. 

Hopefully with a good night's sleep and a more clearheaded approach tomorrow, things will go more smoothly. I'll start out using the KCS firmware as a reference point, I'll reconnect just one alarm to the unit and see if I can trigger it via the webserver. If that works I'll gradually reconnect the other devices to see if they'll all start working happily together. 

Do I have to use the same power supply for both the unit and the outputs? (I was thinking of keeping them seperate until I've nailed down the issue with activating them via esphome)

[admin]

Do I have to use the same power supply for both the unit and the outputs? (I was thinking of keeping them seperate until I've nailed down the issue with activating them via esphome)

--> if you want use two different power supply. just let two power supply's GROUND connect together.

[lcrisp]

So I managed to get all of the sensors as well as the alarms working as I'd hoped. Can only guess that I'd managed to reverse the polarity of the alarms the first time through... (Note to self, get more sleep in future)

I needed some method of disarming the alarms - and had purchased this 4x4 matrix keypad for that purpose.



I've been staring a bit blankly at this for a week (mainly wondering how I'm going to solder those tiny pins) but I've just realised that it's not going to work... Initially I thought I could use 8 digital inputs to get this working (thinking each button would be a combination of two inputs - which seemed simple enough) The keypad itself seemed to have ten pins - so I was under the impression that it would mean connecting each of the 4 rows and 4 columns to ground, and whenever a row input reads high to then read the corresponding column input to work out which of the 8 buttons had been pressed...

Something like this...



But that's NOT the way these matrix keypads work is it? Each button press would actually signify a combination of one of four outputs in conjunction with one of four inputs right? (I've looked everywhere, but still can't figure out what the two extra NC connections are for!)

I have a feeling that I'm in way over my head here, but is there a way I can connect this keypad to the KC868-A16 using the existing connections, or would it require assigning the rows and columns to individual GPIO's? (Are there even enough to cater for this?)

I'm only using three digital inputs to connect door sensors and a motion detector, along with four 12V outputs (2 buzzers and 2 sirens) so there should theoretically still be plenty of available GPIO's,especially given that the only other connector in use is Ethernet... My soldering ability however is not terribly great, so I was really hoping not to have to tamper with the board too much...

Part of me is thinking it might just be easier to spend the money on a Nextion or I2C touch display, and use that instead for any direct input/output. Either way I'm well outside of my abilities already, so I'm going to have to figure everything out as I go... (I have some old soldering irons, but don't even have a multimeter!) My ability to arm/disarm the alarms via the KC868-A16 is a fairly essential one though, and it absolutely has to be hardwired... *It would be SO much easier just to use the HA app to arm & disarm, but due to security concerns I can't be reliant on anything involving a wireless signal...