Rogers is pretty smart actually. Their hardware is good, because they didn't do most of it. This proprietary keypad that they overlay onto a DSC panel actually houses a DSC keypad board, and a wireless transceiver as well as the z-wave controller. This means they can use the proper supervised and hyper-reliable DSC wireless devices for the security, as well as the super cheap and reliable wired ones, from the main board in the basement. These are cheaper, and better than Z-wave by a very wide margin. (To the business, not necessarily the end user
) The Z-wave they use solely for thermostats, locks, and floor lamp dimmers. (They won't touch electrical, for good reasons) Also, they use a GSM communicator in this keypad, adding a bit of cost to the monthly service. Their monthly fee is thus abhorrent, but they DO give a full package. In all, it is a very expensive and closed system, but it should be very rock solid. In truth, Honeywell, DSC, Alarm.com, TotalConnect, 2Gig technologies.... there are many players in this "Security + cloud based automation" business. They figured that most security techs like me were too flat footed to get on with learning IP networks, scripting and such. So, they offload that workload to their cloud service, and charge the dealer a hefty monthly fee. This means the dealer must pay for the monitoring center, but ALSO this other data center to boot. This is why those services tend to be exorbitant to the end user after guys like me take their cut. It's also why that approach isn't selling well in these lean times. Rogers is the only game in that niche that seems to be succeeding up here. Their advertising machine, and their massive client base almost assured their success in penetrating this market. Everyone else seems to be facing the cheapening of the telecom industry instead, in that everyone is dropping their expensive land lines in favour of VoIP systems. In an environment where people want to minimize their monthly fees, trying to sell them on bells and whistles is difficult at best. I'd rather give the fine touch of a custom design, and a personalized service that can do the security, but also automation, LAN support, telephony, internet access, etc. Hence my interest in you folks. Anything to set oneself apart, right?
Integrating these alarms should be easy. All the manufacturers have published very easy API documents that detail how they work. Whoever actually goes to the trouble of writing the drivers based on this shouldn't have a hard time at all because half the work is done for them. These alarm systems work exactly as they are supposed to, and their bus communications are simple. The difficulty might be to get the alarm entry delay to cause your nifty touchscreen to react properly. In that situation, one would want it to wake up and present the user with a number pad to put in their alarm code. That in turn gets passed to the alarm, similar to how the actual alarm keypad would disarm the system. Important states that the Almond+ would want to monitor, would be stuff like; Armed, StayArmed, Disarmed, Alarm, Entry Delay, Exit Delay, Zone Open, Zone Closed, Police/Medical/Fire Panic Activation, Relay Output Activation, etc. I've only seen the online press demonstrations of your product in action, so I'd have a hard time guessing how best to fit it into your UI, but it stands to reason it would be a subsection of the security button. Along side the locks and the z-wave/zigbee door sensors, etc. The other annoyance will be that most of these security systems are very old school in their approach. As such most of them use RS232, and must be converted to USB. Yet one more wire to fish up the wall to reach the wall mounted Almond+. The Envisalink is the only IP integration module I know of. Probably because it's aftermarket. When the time comes, and there's opportunity to write these drivers, I'll have a go at it if no one else does. I know many of the alarms, and I've got a few coder friends who might help. It will get done quickly, I'm sure.
If you think this ought to go in a different thread, feel free to move it.