You can have sensors to be inactive of course, and ‘Active immediately’, which means they’ll trigger an alarm as soon as the alarm is set regardless of the countdown timer. When you set up any motion or contact sensor in the Abode app, you can have it so that the sensors don’t trip any alarm until the countdown timer you would have previously set, has expired, which is what is referred to by the option ‘Active after countdown timer’. As you can deduce, Abode doesn’t differentiate between Sleep and Home modes, which sort of makes sense, but if you set the alarm to Home in the Abode app, it’ll always show it as set to Home mode in HomeKit, which avoids any potential confusion. They are Standby (Off in HomeKit), Away (same as HomeKit), and Home (which is the same as Home and Night/Sleep in HomeKit). If you’re not familiar with how the Abode alarm system works, essentially you have three modes, all of which (sort of) correspond with the four modes you find in HomeKit. For either mode, you can have the sensor to be Inactive, Active after countdown timer, or Active immediately. ![]() So, if you either have an Abode system and fancied the idea of a separate alarm panel, or don’t, but are enticed by the idea of one, read on… PACKAGING/CONTENTSĪs the keypad and the built-in motion sensor are essentially security devices, for the motion sensor, you have the option to set it up as a trigger for alarms in both the Home and Away modes. Without one of these, it’s just an expensive paperweight. With me having the Adobe Iota setup already in place, alongside a multitude of Aqara hubs with built-in sirens/speakers, I decided a while ago to take the plunge and buy the Abode Keypad 2 and add it to my Abode system, which I should state, is required for the keypad 2 to be used, whether it’s the Iota Gateway, that includes a camera, or the Smart Gateway, that doesn’t. Of course, automations and/or smart buttons can be used to arm/disarm your alarm setup, but call me old-fashioned, with having a dedicated panel, along with buttons for your code and the different alarm modes, is something that I’ve long wanted – it just feels ‘proper’ when you add something like this, even if it’s something not really necessary. Whilst the Aqara system is probably the cheapest, and most customisable, mostly due to the abundance of choice and cost of its sensors, the one thing it currently lacks is a dedicated alarm keypad. ![]() ![]() When it comes to alarm systems, HomeKit doesn’t fare too great at present, with offerings from the budget-friendly Aqara setups, to more expensive and arguably dedicated ones from the likes of Honeywell, and Abode, the latter of which – the Abode Iota Security Kit – we’ve previously reviewed.
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