Hi,
We have a Bosh easy series alarm installed at home. The control panel looks as follows:
(description of the panel: here )
Based on alarm status transitions I would like to change the status of other devices at home. In order to find out the alarm status I was planning to monitor the color of one or more areas on the screen of the alarm control panel. Different status I am interest in are:
- green --> alarm is off
- red with a person inside the circle --> alarm is armed partially
- red with a persion outside the circle --> alarm is fully armed.
My first attempt was with an arduino and following color sensor: TCS230 TCS3200. I ran a series of successful tests by putting green and red papers in front of the color sensors. The Red and Green values changed sufficiently. Once mounted to the alarm control panel, the RGB values didn't noticeably change anymore when I switched on or off the alarm.
After tweaking the code without any luck I decided to try out the TCS34725 sensor since it is supposed to be more precise. Again a positive test with colored papers, but not anymore once attached to the control panel.
On the internet I found examples of people reading colors from screens with these sensors, so probably it has to do with this particular control panel screen, or I am not fully using the capabilities of these sensors.
Anyhow, it is as if there's a gap between the outer plastic shell and the inner screen in the control panel. Perhaps this distance is an issue?
Maybe detecting colors is not possible on all types of screens and I should be using a completely different approach? I was thinking of making a photo with an interval, and processing the image but that should probably be done with a raspberry PI since it's more powerful.
Any other ideas with or without arduino?
In attachment you can find some pictures. One of them is the alarm in unarmed status, another picture is the alarm going to armed status where the circle is getting red.
Any help is much appreciated
