In case of alarm, turn on lights and open shutters

Use case

Your customer has an alarm system to secure the home.
The alarm system can be either burglary, fire or both.

The end user wants to enhance the alarm signal in case of an alarm by

switching on lights in the house and garden
opening the shutters.

In case of burglary, this attracts extra attention to the house.
In case of fire, this draws extra attention to possible escape routes.

Most alarm systems have contacts, that can be used to steer an external system, in this case Niko Home Control.
To be able to use this contact, the alarm installer will need to set it up properly and provide you the information on the contact.

For this example the alarm system uses 1 contact for both burglary and fire.

Starting point

The alarm system is installed and configured.
There is a contact in the alarm system that will close on ‘alarm’.
This contact is potential-free, or you have made it potential-free.
This contact is connected to the Niko Home Control installation via a digital potential-free sensor module.

Procedure

Creating the controls and devices

Create a ‘Connection to external system’ (SENS1)
This Connection to external system (SENS1) represents the ‘alarm’ contact of the alarm system connected to an input of the Digital potential-free sensor module.

Alt text — Create a ‘Connection to external system’ (SENS1)

Creating the action(s) and routine(s)

Create the routine Warning mode (ROUT1)
Configure the following behaviour:

A - Select controls that initiate the warning mode = Connection to external system (SENS1)
B - Select lights that switch on when the warning mode is started = Select here the lights you want to switch on
C - Select lights that blink when the warning mode is started = Select here the lights you want to start blinking (check in advance if local regulation allows blinking lights visible from outside)
D - Select other devices that are part of the warning mode = Select the shutters you want opened here. Set Motor movement to Open.

For the duration of the warning mode, set the desired time during which the warning mode should remain active once started.

After this set Duration, the warning mode routine will automatically become inactive, until it is triggered again.
When the warning mode routine becomes inactive, all the lights used in this routine return to their previous state.

Creating the conditions

Would the customer like to receive a notification in the Niko app when the warning mode routine is triggered? Then you can create this via a condition.

Create a condition (COND1):
IF ROUT1= Warning mode active
THEN Notification (type: Push) = Fill out the text you want to appear in the notification in the text box.
For example: Warning routine has been triggered !
ELSE leave this part empty

Examples

Click here to download the programming example.
(FPE_033_221_01.nhc2 file).