Alarm system and home computer.

sfay93 · 07-17-2004, 05:45 AM

I have been looking for quite awhile now and can't find what I am looking for. I have an Ademco Vista-10SE alarm system in my house. I don't want to pay ADT to monitor it so I am trying to figure out how I can hook it into my computer and have it send me a page on my cell phone instead of calling their central office. Anybody have any ideas or suggestions on how I could do it?

sfay93 · 07-17-2004, 04:20 PM

Nobody has seen anything like this?

Gutter · 07-17-2004, 06:38 PM

I know nothing about home alarm systems, but the unit calls ADT in the event of an alarm and sends some sort of data to their office, right? If so, there's probably an RJ-45 jack in the unit somewhere that you can connect to a telephone card (not a modem) and then write some software that answers when the unit calls. From there you can easily have it page you when the alarm sounds.

I know of no off-the-shelf type device, if that was what you were looking for.

judoGTI · 07-17-2004, 10:49 PM

I am really interested in this too. I know there is a modem in the box, because it will kill any landline phone call you are on and call ADT incase of a break in. But I'd rather just be able to monitor things myself. I have been lookin (on the information superhighway that is) and found nothing yet.

Lets keep this thread going for information sake!!

Curiosity · 07-18-2004, 02:16 AM

There's something called a phone line emulator, or something close to that and it may be expesive. You connect 2 modems to it, or 2 phones, etc. and one can call the other, but I would think it's easier than that to hook 2 modems together.

sfay93 · 07-18-2004, 02:49 AM

I know about the phone jack. Had to play with this thing for quite awhile last night actually. The woman who sold me the house gave me the code but I couldn't find it anywhere. So I did alot of searching and found the installation manual and how to reset my master code. Thankfully, the stupid installer left the installer code as the default so I was able to do it. I know where to program in what numbers it calls and what format the data is sent in from here: http://www.avss.net/PDF%20Files/Adem...ck%20Guide.pdf I was hoping someone had written a piece of software that would take the codes it sends and allow me to convert them to something more understandable and text message my cell with it. The codes are that can be sent to a pager are 3 part. 1st 4 numbers are subscriber #, next 3 are the event code and the last 3 are the zone or user code. I thought I had found something awhile back that did this but I can't find it again. Thanks for the help.

Curiosity · 07-18-2004, 03:00 AM

Oh, I was on the wrong track. I was thinking of sending a signal to the computer which would then send an email (SMS) to your cell phone. That's sort of what I do but without a full alarm system. Anyway, it looks to me like you can only send DTMF tones as if you dialed a number, then pressed 4 buttons, then 3, then 3 more. Beyond that, I don't know.

sfay93 · 07-18-2004, 03:14 AM

You were on the right track. I want to hook that phone jack to the modem on my computer to recieve the call and then send an email to my cell. Somebody has to have this piece out there somewhere.

sfay93 · 07-18-2004, 04:34 AM

Okay, so i found this http://www.compuquestinc.com/spmsgl.html It will send the messages to my phone based on different data sources like an excel spreadsheet it can read from, a text file, or even realtime values from a DDE connection from another application. Now I need the other application to either recieve the data from the alarm and give me a file or create that DDE connection. Geting so close I can taste it. This is gonna be awesome.

Curiosity · 07-18-2004, 05:20 AM

Maybe you should skip the modem thing. Here's a different idea. If it still dials without being connected to the phone line, you could connect it to a DTMF decoder that has a PC intereface, if that even exists. Or even simpler, it looks like there's an alarm output on the connection block. Connect that to a relay then to a wireless PC RF remote (so it simulates a button press), then some software like Girder gets the signal and sends an SMS.