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Your raspberry pi note is interesting. My house has an alarm system in place from the previous owner which I've turned off and is not in use. I've been curious to know if there was anyway for me to utilize the fairly complete set of sensors without involving the original alarm company.

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I'm using an AD2USB (http://www.alarmdecoder.com/catalog/product_info.php/product...) to get an old school Ademco Vista 20p hooked up to the pi. Once you do that they have a decent python project (https://github.com/nutechsoftware/alarmdecoder).

Thanks to projects like these, the old, hardwired systems can be connected and be useful for more than they were intended. I don't mind my vista 20p once it is up, but they can be pain to setup the way you want. The good news is, once you do that you likely will never touch it again.

Both GE and Ademco alarms appear to be fairly easy to interface with from a computer, and they have decently vibrant open-source communities. I plan to go that route when we replace the alarm.

(Some communities let your alarm connect directly to the police department without a third party in the way. Making this work without a real off-the-shelf alarm controller is probably an incredible pain.)

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