There are many security systems in the market, but a DIY system can cut down the cost to about 30€. In this post I will talk about the implementation of my own alarm system that I've uploaded to GitHub.

As for now, my app supports GPIO sensors, MQTT sensors, Hikvision LineCrossing. Multiple notifications can be triggered like activating serine, sending mail, calling through VoIP.

Hardware Requirements

• The most important thing is the brains of the alarm which in my case I am using a Raspberry PI Zero which is more than enough to run the whole system.
• The easiest sensors that can be connected are the Magnetic Sensors which need no power. They are connected to a BCM pin and the other end to an empty Ground in the GPIO pins of Raspberry.
• Active sensors need power that is usually 12V DC. These include the PIR, Glass break, etc... They need a 4 wire cable, one for power+, one for power- and the other two are just like the Magnetic Sensors.
• A relay for the Serine can also be connected with an extra component called Relay which turns on the power for the serine.
• The best way I found to connect wires to Raspberry GPIO is by using Female Dupont Pins which look like this:

This is a diagram of the connections I explained above:

Installation

The installation is a simple process that downloads the required files from the latest commit on GitHub. It can also be used to update to the latest release.
After it is done, you can navigate to the Web Interface to add sensors and change settings accordingly.

bash <(curl -s "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bkbilly/AlarmPI/master/install.sh")

Conclusion

Although the Dupont installation on the wire is a bit intimidating, it can be really easy once you get the hang of it. In case the wiring doesn't exist, I would recommend to call someone else to do this step for you or buy some Zigbee sensors and use the zigbee2mqtt to integrate them through MQTT sensors on AlarmPI.

Check out my GitHub repository here and support my work:

bash <(curl -s "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bkbilly/AlarmPI/master/install.sh")