How to make my Kwikset Smartlock detect if a door is open?

Open Security Topics and Discussions
1

I’ve been using Vivint, and for the most part, it’s been fine—until recently. Last Wednesday, a rug got caught under my backdoor, leaving it open. I’ve got a custom rule set so when I press the Kwikset button at the front door, it arms the house, and I’m supposed to get a notification if any door stays open for more than 10 minutes.

My partner and I armed the house and left for work. When we came back 8 hours later, the backdoor had been open all day, and my cats were outside (thankfully they didn’t run off!). I never got the notification about the door being open.

Vivint told me that the Kwikset Smartlock bypasses all the security checks, so it doesn’t notify me if a door is open when I arm the system. I want a system that at least tells me a door is open when the house is armed, or maybe have the keypad blink red if a door is open.

They gave me two months free of their protection plan and replaced the lock, but this still doesn’t fix the issue. Is there any open-source system like Home Assistant or ZoneMinder that can integrate with Vivint and let me set up custom rules for what I want? I’d love for the keypad to blink red if a door is open or at least get a notification.

2

Home Assistant could easily handle that. You can set up automations like ‘if this happens, check that, and if the state is X, do this.’ Super basic stuff. The tricky part would be getting the Kwikset integration to make the keypad blink red, which may or may not be possible.

However, you could do something like ‘if the front door locks, wait 10 seconds, then check if the alarm is armed, and if it’s not, blink an outside light twice.’

3

Trying to mix different products can get tricky. Vivint isn’t the best system for this kind of flexibility. It’s similar to Ring or SimpliSafe, and a lot of police agencies won’t even respond to them anymore.

4

When I leave my house, I just press one button to arm the alarm. If a door is open, it won’t arm at all. I also use the Schlage Encode Plus to lock my doors, and it’ll auto-lock after 5 minutes if I forget to press the button. Minimal automation, but it works for me.