It's time for another update on the production process for Konnected's 2nd generation hardware. First some good news, then some bad news, and then more good news!
6-Zone Alarm Panel v2 Boards Are In!
We received our shipment of the new 2nd generation Konnected Alarm Panel (WiFi) boards and they look and work great. We're starting to ship pre-orders this week! We've got all-new packaging which looks great, and the build quality is top-notch on this new product.
The new Konnected Alarm Panel and Add-on Panel are improvements on our original 6 Zone WiFi based alarm panel that we launched in 2017 on Kickstarter. Each module still supports 6 zones plus a siren/strobe (Alarm board) or buzzer/trigger output (Add-on board) and connects to SmartThings, Home Assistant, Hubitat and OpenHAB. The biggest improvements are the build quality, circuit protection, built-in lightning protection and form factor. This first production batch was assembled in the USA by our manufacturing partner, Macrofab.
Additional Delays on the Alarm Panel Pro
Sadly, we're still having RF emissions issues with the Alarm Panel Pro that's causing more engineering delays.
We recently took the latest hardware revision of the Alarm Panel Pro to NTS lab in Orlando to do some RF emissions testing. The RF emissions were improved from our previous revision in December, but unfortunately not enough at one specific frequency.
Konnected Alarm Panel Pro inside the anechoic chamber at NTS.
We're again implementing some engineering changes to minimize and shield the unwanted radio noise, so that we can deliver a fully compliant device. This has been a frustrating series of delays for everyone, and unfortunately we're looking at another couple months at least before a mass produced version can start shipping.
I know this additional delay is disappointing. We should have another update in a couple weeks with some progress.
Konnected Cloud Integration
Konnected Cloud is a new cloud service built by Konnected that makes it super simple and fast to integrate with cloud-based smart home platforms. Currently, we're rolling out a new cloud-based SmartThings integration that works seamlessly with the SmartThings app without needing a SmartThings hub. It's been running successfully in a limited beta for a few weeks, and we'll soon be rolling this out to more users.
Major Update to our Home Assistant Integration
The next release of Home Assistant, version 0.106 will include a huge upgrade to the Konnected integration! Updates include a new config-flow based installation process and automatic discovery on the network -- you no longer need to edit configuration.yaml to set up Konnected! It's also updated to be completely async, and also to support the upcoming Alarm Panel Pro
Current Home Assistant users won't have to do anything to upgrade, your current configuration.yaml will be automatically imported to start a config flow.
Home Assistant 0.106 is available in beta now.