In this blog I am testing out the Home Assist Green with the Bosch B / G series alarm panel

Home Assistant is a Open Source home automation solution that can work with Z-Wave, Zigbee and ethernet devices. They have over 3100 integration and I am going to focus on their integration with Bosch B3512, B4512,B5512,B6512,B8512G,B9512G series alarm panel.  For more information on Home Assistant,  click this link

For my test I am using a Home Assistant Green and the Z-Wave USB stick.   The z-wave is not necessary for the Bosch integration as this is done over ethernet,  but if I have time I wanted to try and integrate an old Z-Wave lock that has been sitting on my shelf for a while now.    The Home Assistant Green unit came with a startup guide, sticker and a power adaptor.   The power adaptor is 12vdc, 1 amp.  This is a good thing as I can use the power from my B520 for power and battery backup.

Powering up the unit.  

When I powered up the unit and navigated to the default webpage,  unfortunately the unit was showing errors and would not properly load.   The good news is Home assistant has a great online help.   I was able to download the latest software and flash the unit.  If you need to do this,  here is the instruction link  The process took about 20 min to update.

Once the unit finished, and rebooted the unit booted as expected.

I went through the account setup process and now I am ready to add the Bosch B/G Series drivers.  But before could do this,  I needed to program my alarm panel via the RPS software and enable mode 2 automation.  Use the RPS software to enable the mode 2 protocol,  you will also need to know the IP address of the Alarm Panel.   As a note, I am running a B8512g with firmware 3.14

Adding the Bosch Integration was an easy process.   It pulled the areas automatically.    If you would like more details about the integration,  you can find out more here.  Here is a image galley of the process of adding the integration.

Now the integration is complete,  its time to look at the dashboard.   This is a basic level of integration,  you can arm , part on arm and disarm the areas.    I don’t see any points, outputs or other resources that you can control.

You can add the areas as part of Automatons, Scenes and Scripts.  This will allow you to create event rules,  for example when the alarm is armed in the away mode, turn off the lights and lower the thermostat temperature.

This post was not meant to be an in depth review of the home assistant features,  If you are looking for that,  here is a good overview.  My goal was to test how easy of the integration is to setup and review the features.   After my testing,  I don’t think this integration is direct replacement for the BSM app,  however its’s a great add on if you are looking for a home gateway with the ability to arm / disarm your alarm and create triggers and rules off those events.