Add an encrypted key fob to your Ring alarm….

Ring claims they dont support a key fob because its “not secure”. A simple panic button on a Keyfob would help, especially if the thing didn’t have labelled “Lock” and “Unlock” buttons…. So I set up this:

Arm and Disarm examples

In order to do this I used the Fibaro Z-Wave Plus key fob:

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This thing has six buttons, which do not have obvious functions, and supports Z-Wave network Security Mode with AES-128 encryption… way better than your usual remotes…. BUT Ring doesn’t support it even though its a perfect match. Pile on here to ask them to do so.

So what I have done is to link the key fob instead to the Fibaro home center lite and used http triggers to then link that to my Ring alarm (and everything else) using HomeBridge. Since the Fibaro system and the Alarm can be hardwired to Ethernet I am happy with the security aspects. Each button can send a “press”, “double press”, “triple press”, “hold” etc so the number of functions you can do is vast

In terms of setup, I have four components:

  • Ring Alarm System
  • HomeBridge on a Raspberry Pi
  • Fibaro Home Center Lite
  • Fibaro keyfobs

Hey is a synopsis of how to do the integration:

  • Install Homebridge
  • Install Ring plugin for homebridge
  • Install Http Webhooks for home bridge (With SSL for extra security if you like)
  • Create a “Sensor” entry for each of the buttons on the key fob in homebridge. These will be the trigger called from the Fibaro system using http
  • Install your Fibaro Home Center lite
  • Pair your Fibaro KeyFob to Home Center Lite
  • Create a “Virtual Device” in Home Center Lite and add virtual buttons for each key fob button.
  • Configure those buttons to http ‘get’ the URLs set up in http webhooks
  • Create a scene using graphic blocks to link the button of the fob to the virtual device “get” of the webhook:

Homebridge Config Snippet from http webhooks config:

{
            "platform": "HttpWebHooks",
            "webhook_port": "10810",
            "webhook_listen_host": "::",
            "sensors": [
                {
                    "id": "j:fob:square",
                    "name": "J Fob Square",
                    "type": "contact",
                    "autoRelease": true,
                    "autoReleaseTime": 3000
                }

Fibaro Home Center Virtual Device HTTP request:

GET /?accessoryId=j:fob:square&state=false HTTP/1.10x0D0x0A0x0D0x0A
Host: 10.0.1.40
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