[Novalug] Open Source Alarm?

[ethan at 757.org]

> with. Certain things they are not going to monitor (water in basement, power 
> outage...) and thats easy enough to do with home automation, but what about 
> the alarm part?
> Anyone seen anything like this?

When I looked into doing something similiar a while ago (linux based 
access control system), here is what I was thinking:

Gumstick SBC if you want power outage coverage. They aren't cheap.

DSC makes alarm panels that have a RS232 printer option card, that will 
print out logs. So if you simply want to read the data into a PC for 
processing, this might be an option. A 16 zone panel from DSC via ebay 
isn't too expensive (about the cost of a gumstick), and then the printer 
output card I think fetches $30 or so. Then you can run all the normal 
stuff. DSC panel will have battery charger, and all that stuff.

In terms of I/O, you could use serial shift register chips to get 
127 inputs and outputs from a parallel port.

There is a project using ATMEL chips to convert HID card readers to RS232.

Here are my notes for the thing I was thinking up, but never really 
started. I almost took out a lease on a commercial space and was planning 
to do the hacker space + music recording w/ a ticketmaster type system. I 
never did it and am glad to save the money it would have bleed me of.

None the less, here are my ideas and notes:

http://wiki.757.org/doku.php?id=projects:securitysys
http://wiki.757.org/doku.php?id=projects:automation
http://wiki.757.org/doku.php?id=projects:ticketbastard