AICO HomeLINK integration for Home Assistant

The homelink platform allows you to view the status of your AICO alarm system. Note that you need an AICO HomeLINK dashboard account with Landlord access to be able to create the credentials needed to use this integration.

This table provides a list of AICO 1000 and 3000 series devices and their support status. It is possible that other RadioLINK devices will also work, but these have not been tested at all:

Model No Sensor Type Model Type Supported Notes
Ei1000G Gateway GATEWAY True Required
Ei1020 Condensation, Damp, Mould   False It may work, but untested
Ei1025 Condensation, Damp, Mould, Air ENVCO2SENSOR True  
Ei3014 Heat FIREALARM True  
Ei3016 Smoke FIREALARM True  
Ei3018 CO   False It may work, but untested
Ei3024 Heat, Smoke   False It may work, but untested
Ei3028 CO, Heat FIRECOALARM True  
Ei3030 CO, Heat, Smoke FIRECOALARM True  
Ei450 Alarm Controller EIACCESSORY True  

These are the presented as the following entity types within Home Assistant:

  • Binary Sensor
    • Property status
    • Property Fire/Heat/CO Alarm Overall Status
    • Property Environment Overall Status
    • Device status
  • Event
    • Property last MQTT event (with MQTT enabled)
    • Device last MQTT event (with MQTT enabled)
  • Sensor
    • Device last tested date
    • Device replace by date
    • CO2, Humidity, Temperature
    • Insights (with Insights enabled)
    • Electricity/Gas Consumption
    • Electricity/Gas Tariff

Installation

Open your Home Assistant instance and open a repository inside the Home Assistant Community Store.

You can either use HACS or install the component manually:

  • HACS - Home Assistant Community Store (HACS) - search for and install AICO HomelINK

  • Manual - Put the files from /custom_components/homelink/ in your folder <config directory>/custom_components/homelin/

Configuration

Open your Home Assistant instance and start setting up a new integration.

Manual configuration

If the above My button doesn’t work, you can also perform the following steps manually:

  • Browse to your Home Assistant instance.
  • Go to Settings > Devices & Services.
  • In the bottom right corner, select the Add Integration button.
  • From the list, select AICO HomeLINK.
  • Follow the instructions on screen to complete the setup.

Base Integration

The installation dialogue which will request a Client ID and Secret that you must obtain from the HomeLINK Dashboard. You will need to have an admin account on your dashboard to enable access to the integrations dialogue. If you have a standard account you will need to request an admin account from AICO HomeLINK.

You will need to create a set of credentials by going to the Access Keys tab of the integrations dialogue and requesting a Web Api credential with the Standard scope. Make a note of the credentials generated and enter them into the standard Home Assistant integration installation dialogue. If you input incorrect credentials and it fails to authenticate at setup time, then you will likely need to delete the credentials via the Home Assistant Application Credentials and start again.

Note:- Only one instance of the integration can be installed to Home Assistant. However, all properties and devices you have access to will be exposed.

Installation

Name Description
Client ID Obtained from HomeLINK Dashboard
Client Secret Obtained from HomeLINK Dashboard

Options - Base

Name Description
Properties List of properties to create entities for
Insights Enable Insight sensors (if available)
MQTT Enable MQTT
HomeLINK MQTT Use HomeLINK MQTT broker
Webhooks Enable Webhooks

Options - MQTT (HA)

Name Description
Topic The base subscription for your account
Events Enable MQTT event entities

Options - MQTT (HomeLINK)

Name Description
MQTT Client ID MQTT Client ID, obtained from HomeLINK Dashboard
Username Obtained from HomeLINK Dashboard
Password Obtained from HomeLINK Dashboard
Topic The base subscription for your account
Events Enable MQTT event entities

Options - Webhooks

Name Description
URL URL to be used on the HomeLINK Dashboard

Insights

If you have environment devices (Ei1020 and Ei1025) installed, then you may optionally enable Insight sensors. These will display the level of various types of risk as a percentage.

MQTT

If you wish to receive alerts via MQTT (the base integration will update every 30 seconds) to give you quicker notification of alerts and readings, then please follow the instructions here - MQTT Setup.

Webhook

If you wish to receive alerts via Webhook (the base integration will update every 30 seconds) to give you quicker notification of alerts and readings, then please follow the instructions here - Webhook Setup.

Data updates

The AICO HomeLINK integration polls the cloud api every 30 seconds for all date apart from Readings which are polled every 5 minutes.

Examples

Turning on lights

When the fire alarm is triggered, the lights can be turned on within the house. This also supports deaf users.

Notify end of life

The alarms have a limited lifespan, varying up to 10 years. The replacament date sensors can be used to notify via email when a device should be replaced.

Troubleshooting

If you are having issues and want to report a problem, please report an issue here - https://github.com/RogerSelwyn/AICO_HomeLINK/issues.

Troubleshooting Installation

If the integration won’t install with authentication issues, you may have to delete your stored application credential on Home Assistant and then re-create checking carefully that you have copied the correct details from the HomeLINK dashboard, and that you created a ‘Web Api’ credential.

Open your Home Assistant instance and Manage your application credentials.

Troubleshooting MQTT

If you aren’t receiving MQTT messages, bear in mind that in normal operations HomeLINK only sends messages in batches from your alarm system. Check the details carefully in the file you download from the HomeLINK dashboard after you created an ‘MQTT’ credential.

You can test for MQTT messages more quickly by triggering an alarm status on the system, this can be easily done by removing an alarm head, which should trigger a message within a minute.

Troubleshooting Webhooks

If you aren’t receiving Webhooks messages, bear in mind that in normal operations HomeLINK only sends messages in batches from your alarm system. Make sure you have correctly copied the url provided in the Home Assistant configuration dialogue, and then add endpoints as listed here - Webhook Setup

Make sure that your Home Assistant instance is available at the url detailed in the webhook.

You can test for Webook messages more quickly by triggering an alarm status on the system, this can be easily done by removing an alarm head, which should trigger a message within a minute.

Note that currently there are no webhooks for events, these only come via MQTT.

Removing the integration

This integration follows standard integration removal. Remember to remove via HACS as well.

To remove an integration instance from Home Assistant

  1. Go to Settings > Devices & services and select the integration card.
  2. From the list of devices, select the integration instance you want to remove.
  3. Next to the entry, select the three-dot menu. Then, select Delete.

After deleting the integration, go to the app of the manufacturer and remove the Home Assistant integration from there as well.