One PIR connected to two alarm systems

No, I'm not mad. Well, maybe...

Soon i'll be working on my house rebuild and want to install both a proper insurance approved alarm system plus my own custom built solution running my own software on a PC. The PC will be tied into various home automation bits and use various inputs to perform various tasks. It's the second take of a project I did many years ago at another property. Not too shabby but didn't suit the home owners then.

Naturally, the latter is going to be unreliable to begin with and may even turn out to be a disaster so I don't want to put all my eggs into this custom solution. My question is if I wire all the wires of a PIR sensor, contact switch, panic alarm etc to a junction point and then split each individual "signal" wire into two (one for each alarm panel), can I expect any undesired effects? I'm no master of electronics but I understand additional circuitory resistance from my second panel might cause odd behaviour within the first panel.

I guess another way to frame my question is, has anyone ever wired one sensor to two identical off the shelf alarm panels in parallel?

Thanks

A . It will never be insurance approved ...
B . why would you want to wire it to two different panels ?

sparkymarka said:

It will never be insurance approved ...

Click to expand...

That was what I thought. I’ve had a couple of insurance approved systems fitted to businesses that I managed in the past and from what I remember, to be insurance approved you couldn’t own the equipment, it must be installed by a company on a particular approved list (NACOSS? was one I think) and you must have a maintenance agreement. Of course, things may have changed as it was a fair while ago....

sparkymarka said:

A . It will never be insurance approved ...
B . why would you want to wire it to two different panels ?

Click to expand...

OK, I get the fact that I will probably end up negating any insurance approvals of the first system just by bringing a custom solution into the picture. I can live that. But I do want the option to rip the custom solution out and just use the off-the-shelf one. Without having to do any rewiring to the sensors.

As for question B, I think I wrote enough detail above!

Various control panel have ip connectivity with allows you remote control from smart phones via apps, some have smart devices with can control lighting and home automation products.
These are graded products and are approved in certain insurance cases.

Just add a galaxy and you can link any of the sensors to outputs that connect to the second system. I'm also currently working on a product (under the SelfMon brand) for the galaxy that will provide two way mqtt zone status and control. This opens up a whole host of possibilities for home automation and any other software that can do mqtt. I would say that if you're writing your own alarm, mqtt is the way to go.

nadimaj said:

OK, I get the fact that I will probably end up negating any insurance approvals of the first system just by bringing a custom solution into the picture. I can live that. But I do want the option to rip the custom solution out and just use the off-the-shelf one. Without having to do any rewiring to the sensors.

As for question B, I think I wrote enough detail above!

Click to expand...

Not why you wanted it wired to two control panels ?

nadimaj said:

OK, I get the fact that I will probably end up negating any insurance approvals of the first system just by bringing a custom solution into the picture. I can live that. But I do want the option to rip the custom solution out and just use the off-the-shelf one. Without having to do any rewiring to the sensors.

As for question B, I think I wrote enough detail above!

Click to expand...

Wiring to two control panels isn’t the the way to give you what you want , output / relay boards set to zone mimic is what you require

Understood. Thanks for the suggestions. Any examples?

GalaxyGuy,

Interesting stuff. I'll keep an eye on your page.