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I have built a home surveillance and alarm system with raspberry pi's. What I need now is an easy and safe remote control to arm the system and disarm it.

The most workable solution is to have a wireless router in the middle. Before stepping out in the door, take out my phone, connect to my home network and via a custom built web page arm my system. (Web page would run the arming scripts) But for this I need to have a wireless router (currently I have a non wireless Ubiquiti Router Station Pro, no radio card on it) and need to enable wireless on my phone (it is not enable-d, battery reasons) before leave, connect and so on. It is not one click unfortunately...

Other solution is to have just a wireless dongle in the Raspberry PI and do an Ad Hoc WiFi connection with my phone. My phone is Sony Ericson Xperia. Over here my technical knowledge hits the limit. It is possible to broadcast an Ad Hoc network over Raspberry PI I do not know if I can reach it from my Sony Ericson Xperia phone.

Third option is Bluetooth. I know very little about Bluetooth. I do not know how safe it is, and how to program it, to have on and off switch on my phone. However this might be the most promising.

Fourth option is to use the Pi Face. Link one or two switches to some type of receiver device. Have a sender device on my key chain and control it from there. However I do not know from where I can buy such a safe remote control and if it is compatible with Pi Face.

Fifth option. To get home alarm system components and link those with the Pi Face. But I do not know what component might fit.

The best user scenario is the following. User takes out out a device (phone or remote control) and presses arm/disarm. User has appropriate time (30 sec) to get out or shut down. If the remote device had run out from battery still have something to shut it down.

So my question does any body knows a fast, easy, cheap solution how to do this?

Kara
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Laszlo
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  • You always carry your phone in your pocket isn't it? And it already has Bluetooth. Add a Bluetooth dongle to your R-Pi system and connect it to your phone Bluetooth. Program it so that till the time it is connected to your phone, the system remains disarmed, as soon as it disconnects the system gets armed automatically. – Pradeep Kumar Aug 31 '14 at 15:12
  • @PradeepKumar This sounds like something which would waste a lot of battery life... Bluetooth can work fine for arming/disarming though. I think a main concern is bluetooth security which has a notorious record of being bad. – u8sand Aug 31 '14 at 15:14
  • The same can be implemented with RFID, if battery drainage is a big concern. Though you would need to carry the RFID tag with you (maybe in the key ring etc.). Program the system to recognize the RFID. till the time it is in range, the system is disarmed. As soon as it goes out of range the system gets armed. – Pradeep Kumar Aug 31 '14 at 15:20
  • "Buy a large dog and ditch the alarm!" Would not fit in my small apartment, and would starve and dog can be neutralized with gas/pepper spray. :-) – Laszlo Aug 31 '14 at 19:15

3 Answers3

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Though Bluetooth's security is questionable, it seems like the best option for your goal. Next to an adhoc

Bluetooth is not complicated.

On your mobile phone, if you don't want to make your own app you can look for some sort of Bluetooth Terminal or Bluetooth Chat. On your raspberry pi you'll have to setup a bluetooth rfcomm server with bluez.

How to configure Linux to act as a Bluetooth RFCOMM SPP server?
RFCOMM without pairing using PyBluez on Debian?

Modify these servers which do nothing by default, to listen for commends "arm" and "disarm". Make sure the ID of the device is the ID of your phone.

Ad-Hoc is even less complicated (assuming you know how to make a webserver and are going to make it secure enough, and have a dongle which supports adhoc): Here is a post about ad-hoc networking with a raspberry pi.

In terms of distance, you'll have to see the specifications on your dongle(s) but I would say they're relatively the same.. your bluetooth dongle will have a class see Bluetooth Basics: Range. This will require more research but if you have either one of the dongles I would use that method.

I hope this helps, good luck setting up your alarm.

Community
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u8sand
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  • I already have web-page and php and can write the shell scripts. What I need to learn is wireless security. :-) – Laszlo Aug 31 '14 at 19:18
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In the mean time I realized that a fast arming could be done via the Pi Face and pressing a button. Disarming could go by other ways.

However the fastest solution would be a fingerprint button linked safely to Pi Face.

Laszlo
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Updates. Finally went with the Ad-Hoc method: This is the tutorial for it: http://elinux.org/RPI-Wireless-Hotspot

Laszlo
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