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My latest HA gadget arrived and I immediately discarded the installation manuals and dived in!  I replaced the front door handleset and deadbolt with a new one made by Morning Industry, Inc.  The new handleset is nifty in that one can not only lock and unlock the deadbolt the usual way – by key from the outside or knob from the inside, but also by a built in keypad and also wirelessly from included keyfob.  The install was like any other handleset.  Once installed, programming the codes for the keypad was easy.  I also purchased an Insteon 2458A1 controller which allows wireless control of the lock via my home automation system.  The handleset by itself works great and is “wife approved”, but the addition of the Insteon controller increases it’s awesomeness tenfold.  I can now have the door automatically unlock in the event of fire, lock/unlock as the security system is armed or unarmed, etc.  Since I can control and status my system from my iPhone I could even lock/unlock it remotely.

Inside View of new Handleset - Lower Right is Insteon Controller

Outside View

I am finally done with re-wiring and tidying up all the wiring for my home automation system.  Over many years as I expanded or added a new gadget to the system I would often run the cabling in some sort of expedient fashion which lead to quite a spaghetti mess of wires.  So last weekend I yanked all the wires from my Elk M1 alarm/home control panel and re-wired everything the right way.  Some cabling was thrown about the house and I had to remove it and and make a more permanent run – often through the attic.  I moved the panel and installed a riser (schedule 40) from the panel that stubs into the attic to accommodate the wire runs.  Not only is the attic warm this time of year, but I then had to figure the connections of each wire as they hooked into the panel and test everything to make sure it all worked.

Some photos after I was done.  If you think there are a lot of wires showing now, you should have seen it before…

Elk M1 Panel

Elk M1 Panel

Garage Motion Detector and Strobe Light

Wireless Receiver