There is room in the conduit, and pulling two is just as easy as pulling one. So it just makes sense to pull two I think — for future-proofing.

Ah, ok, it is just an over-provision "just in case", I thought there was some peculiar intended setup that required two cables.

Yes :) They could be bonded for redundancy or increased bandwidth, or used for different VLANs.

Thank you, glad you found it useful :)

Author here. No advantage on 1 Gbit, I replaced the cable for two reasons:

- The CAT 5e was too short, ending in the junction box in the entryway. I needed it to continue down to the basement.

- Even though the switch is only 1 Gbit now, it can be upgraded in the future. 2.5 or even 10 Gbit on those short distances.

Thank you :)

We use the Armed home option at night, we do remember to turn if off, because the digital calendar and lights in the kitchen won't turn on when it's activated.

Kids are always a good excuse to create silly and fun projects :D

Thanks :)

There has been some reports here in Norway of alarm station employees sharing photos of nude people — caught on their own motion sensor cameras triggering the alarm…

Thank you :)

I think for people willing to put in the time — things have certainly become much easier. I started with AVR microcontrollers about 20 years ago, and couldn't even dream of accomplishing things I am easily able to to today. Raspberry Pi, Arduino; have changed the scene for sure.

But at the same time; maybe there is less inventive for someone to really dig into something, as you say: with soldering iron in hand. As so much is available as a product or service already.

My first "serious" soldering was a few PCB kits :)

Thank you kind sir, that is great feedback. Very motivating :)

I think we all have it in us to write good texts, but it takes some motivation, dedication, and practice :)

Thank you :)

There is no protection against voltage spikes on the inputs, there is just the pull-up resistor on the Raspberry Pi input. So this is a weak point. I did consider both EOL resistors and optoisolators when I first got started. But decided against it.

There are dedicated tamper inputs, which runs through the tamper switches in multiple devices before returning to the control cabinet. But EOL resistors would be a better and more secure option. I have thought about using something like an AVR microcontroller to read the voltage level and convert to something the Raspberry Pi could use. Maybe in the future.

I can always make changes in the future — thanks for your input :)

Another weak point I've thought of, which probably applies to many alarm panels with zero knowledge of the correct pin, is what safeguards are there preventing someone from doing replay attacks on the pin entry? I would think a hardlined panel would be more secure.

I agree. The ZigBee protocol is encrypted, but a replay attack is probably still possible. Another advantage of a hard wired panel is that it's not dependent on the Zigbee network being operational, and could be operated on the backup battery for days.

I think many systems fall through if the threat model includes someone watching you and doing a replay attack. But I'd still prefer a hardwired panel TBD. It's just not very easy to retrofit, with hidden cables.

Good advice, this is what I do. I expose a few services on HTTPS, behind a reverse proxy. Everything else is WireGuard.

Maybe, but now I have one :) It has uses outside the security aspect as well; water alarm, door open notifications, home automations, it's fun and a great learning experience.

Seeing how many people have expensive monitored alarm systems here; I'm pretty happy with my educational and cheap setup :)

Absolutely, great work