This project is a DIY touchscreen panel to arm/disarm Home Assistant’s alarm system. It’s powered by a Raspberry Pi, 3.5″ touchscreen display, a custom Python-based application, and MQTT.
This guide walks you through the creation of the project and provides everything you need to create your own!
Home Assistant
Home Assistant is an amazing open-source home automation platform. Among its many features is the ability to implement your own home security alarm system. You can then use various sensors to determine if/when to trigger an alarm.
In my case, I have several Z-Wave door sensors on all of my exterior doors. If any door opens while the alarm is active, I receive instant push notifications on my phone and computers. Eventually I’ll be expanding this to include motion sensors and a siren.
While this works fine, the only way to arm/disarm the device is through the web interface. The manual alarm unfortunately doesn’t have a single API interface we can use to send arm/disarm commands while also receiving instant state changes from HA.
I therefore created the new Manual MQTT Alarm component which functions identically to the manual alarm, but also allows two-way communication over MQTT! With this component we can easily build our own remote keypad using any web-connected platform we can imagine. In my case, I chose to build a solution using a Raspberry Pi with a touchscreen.
PiTFT Plus 480×320 3.5″ TFT+Touchscreen for Raspberry Pi: Is this not the cutest, little display for the Raspberry Pi? It features a 3.5″ display with 480×320 16-bit color pixels and a resistive touch overlay just like our popular original, but this one is engineered specifically to work with the newer “2×20 connector” Raspberry Pi’s. The plate uses the high speed SPI interface on the Pi and can use the mini display as a console, X window port, displaying images or video etc. Best of all it plugs right in on top! Read more.
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Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
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Python for Microcontrollers – Adafruit Daily — Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: Open Hardware is In, New CircuitPython and Pi 5 16GB, and much more! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi
EYE on NPI – Adafruit Daily — EYE on NPI Maxim’s Himalaya uSLIC Step-Down Power Module #EyeOnNPI @maximintegrated @digikey
Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!