Integrating GuardLine with Samsung SmartThings for a smart Driveway alarm

Components:

Samsung SmartThings 2nd Gen Hub £100

GuardLine GL2000 £100

Small amount of bell wire £1

Fibaro 1st Generation Door Sensor FGK-10* £32

Why did I do this?

To detect motion on the front of my property, i’ve depended upon the Motion Alerts from a combination my Ring video doorbell (Gen 1) and my Xiaomi Yi 1080p Outdoor cameras.

Motion detection from a camera is not good enough for my situation.  I was getting too many motion alerts which were squirrels, bushes moving in the wind and other things I don’t want.  

How does it work?

The main contenders for Passive Infrared (PIR) detection for my driveway were the Dakota Alert 2500 and the GuardLine GL2000. I went for the Guardline based on the reviews, and the fact I could buy it from my favourite retailer with next day delivery in the UK (Amazon).

The Guardline was installed in 5 minutes, it’s a really impressive piece of kit and is simple to plug and play.  The range between the motion sensor (outdoor) and the base station/alarm (indoor) is 500ft. 

I wanted the driveway alerts in my SmartThings, so I bought the Fibaro 1st Generation Door Sensor due to it’s “Dry contact” (AKA Zero Potential or Zero Voltage) connections. This means I can make the GuardLine output a signal to my Samsung SmartThings hub via Zwave. Making a non-smart device "smart", without any soldering.

 

I connected the “NC” (Normally Closed) of the Guardline to the “In” on the Fibaro, and the “Com” from the Guardline to the “GND” of the Fibaro.

The Fibaro Door Sensor is natively supported in Smartthings, so when it is paired with Smartthings (by pressing the tamper button 3 times) it should appear as a Z wave Door Sensor.

I then logged into the Smartthings API and changed the type of device from “Z Wave Door/Window Sensor” to “Z Wave Motion Sensor”, and that was it! I have a smart driveway alarm for which I can set automations for less than £140 which should give far more accuracy to driveway motion alerts than my Ring or my Yi cameras.

Downsides of the particular GuardLine product:

1. Should I add more motion sensors to the Guardline, my SmartThings will only receive one generic alert of motion, it won't differentiate between the specific parts of the property for which motion was detected.  I believe the Dakota Alert can do this but i'm not 100% certain.  
2. Fibaro have discontinued the Gen 1 Door Sensor with dry contacts, so it wasn't easy to source it.  I hear there are other door sensors with Dry Contacts but didn't try any.

I DID try the Fibaro Universal Binary Sensor, but after multiple attempts I could not get input into it from the GuardLine's outputs.