DSC Alarm Plugin (Locked)

Travis,

Does this plugin work with the TL-150?

Thanks,
Chris

Hi Travis,

Many thanks for sharing this plugin. I installed my DSC 1832 today, and have your plugin up and running. I am occasionally receiving a checksum error in the Indigo log (see below). My zones appear to update status properly, and I can arm/disarm, although I did not test tripping a zone yet. Any ideas what might be causing this?

Thanks,
Rob

Code: Select all

Oct 29, 2011 9:30:45 PM
  DSC Alarm Error                 Checksum did not match on a received packet.

I'm having trouble getting the DSC plugin to initialize. I have Indigo 5.0.0. b9 and DSC 0.9.3. I've copied the plugin to the disabled directory, restarted the server, and enabled the plugin. I didn't get the config screen. I've stopped and restarted both Indigo client and server without much luck.

Most of the time I can't get to the config panel of the plugin, on one or two tries I did get to the config panel, however when saving the values I got an error in the verification step. It seems to be a problem with the plugin communicating with the server based on what I see in the log.

On first startup of the sever, a portion of the log looks like:

Indigo Cocoa client connected
Plugin "DSC Alarm" connected
Plugin "DSC Alarm 0.9.3" started
WebServer client connected
WebServer started on port 8176 -- digest authentication enabled
Error (client) getXmlFromPlugin() caught exception: ServerCommunicationError -- timeout waiting for plugin response
WebServer client connected
WebServer started on port 8176 -- digest authentication enabled


If I then do a reload of the DSC plugin I see:

2011-11-13 3:51:47 PM
Reloading plugin "DSC Alarm 0.9.3"
Stopping plugin "DSC Alarm 0.9.3" (pid 3334)

2011-11-13 3:52:02 PM
Error process (pid 3334) failed to quit after polite request -- forcing it to quit now
Starting plugin "DSC Alarm 0.9.3"
Plugin "DSC Alarm" disconnected
Plugin "DSC Alarm" connected
Plugin "DSC Alarm 0.9.3" started
Error (client) getXmlFromPlugin() caught exception: ServerCommunicationError -- timeout waiting for plugin response

I also notice that the plugin seems to be in a loop using 100% of one of my CPU's, based on this snip from grep:
USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TT STAT STARTED TIME COMMAND
mike 3356 103.5 0.1 760824 15380 ?? R 3:52pm 2:55.51 /Library/Application Support/Perceptive Automation/Indigo 5/IndigoPluginHost.app/Contents/MacOS/IndigoPluginHost -p1176 -fDSC Alarm.indigoPlugin

Any suggestions on how to fix this?

Did anyone ever confirm that the TL-150 will/will not work with this plugin? Thanks...

Travis never responded and I've been unable to get the TL-150 to work.

Travis never responded and I've been unable to get the TL-150 to work.

It definitely won't work, since the plug-in is a serial plug-in and TL-150 is a network module it will not work. You need to get the T-100 in order to get full functionality of the plug.

The T-100 was designed by DSC for home automation. This plug-in takes full advantage of that and you get total control of your alarm system. I have been running this plug-in since it came out, 24-7 and it works great.

Travis never responded and I've been unable to get the TL-150 to work.

Strange, I wasn't being emailed letting me know there were posts in this thread.

peppop is correct, this plugin only works with the serial DSC modules. The TL-150 is a completely different animal that only provides a subset of the information and control that the serial IT-100 does.

The plugin has started showing a few errors in the log on the first run, but once the plugin is configured in its settings page those go away. This started happened after one of the beta updates. I'll get to that soon, but the plugin definitely still works fine. Just like peppop, I've been using it on the latest beta for a while now with no probs.

UPDATE: Looks like Eyez-On will be updating the the EnvisaLink 2DS to support the TL-150's protocol over IP. When that's out we should be able to add support for it.

@mrcandy

What is the verification error when you try to save the config settings? If the settings can't save then the plugin definitely won't work.

The config screen used to always pop up when the plugin was first started, but that seemed to change after one of the betas. Now it seems you have to open it yourself.

Are you selecting a valid serial port? If you are, turn on Debug and PM me the relevant log lines.

Travis

FYI....I received this from tech support at Eyez-on this morning.

Hi,
Yes the Envisalink 2DS will support an IP version of the PC5401 protocol. The PC5401 was manufactured by the same company that makes Envisalink modules so I think its pretty much 100% guaranteed that it will be compatible.

That being said, someone with the Indigo project will have to modify the DSC plugin to receive this information over a TCP connection as opposed to a serial connection. This isn't a large undertaking but we won't have the engineering bandwidth to do this although we will give all our support to the project.

You can let the Indigo forum that a beta version of the should be out within a month.

Thanks for your feedback,

Michael

[jay (support)]

That might be an easy fix - we added a new Serial Port field type that will allow the user to select either a physical serial port or specify a serial-over-ip URL. It doesn't require a lot of code change to use it either.

@travisc - how about it?

That might be an easy fix - we added a new Serial Port field type that will allow the user to select either a physical serial port or specify a serial-over-ip URL. It doesn't require a lot of code change to use it either.

@travisc - how about it?

If that works that'll be an easy fix indeed! I'll definitely check into it once they release the update. Now that Indigo 5.0 is out I'll give my plugins a once over to adjust for any changes to the API and then post them in the plugins directory.

@mrcandy

What is the verification error when you try to save the config settings? If the settings can't save then the plugin definitely won't work.

The config screen used to always pop up when the plugin was first started, but that seemed to change after one of the betas. Now it seems you have to open it yourself.

Are you selecting a valid serial port? If you are, turn on Debug and PM me the relevant log lines.

Travis

Hi Travis

Thanks for getting back to me. Unfortunately I've only ever managed to get to the config popup twice and didn't get info from the log either time. I don't think I can accurately find those locations in the log now.

When Indigo starts, or I reload the plugin, I never get the popup automatically. I get one of the comm error messages shown in red in my original post in both cases. If I try to use the menu to get the config popup, I get the spinning beachball until another of the comm error messages gets posted. I do have a serial interface connected via a keyspan USB converter, but I am unable to get to the config screen to set it up.

BTW I upgraded indigo to 5.0.0 release (no beta) and it hasn't made a difference. I've tried removing and re-installing both Indigo and the plugin with no change.

Hi Travis

Thanks for getting back to me. Unfortunately I've only ever managed to get to the config popup twice and didn't get info from the log either time. I don't think I can accurately find those locations in the log now.

When Indigo starts, or I reload the plugin, I never get the popup automatically. I get one of the comm error messages shown in red in my original post in both cases. If I try to use the menu to get the config popup, I get the spinning beachball until another of the comm error messages gets posted. I do have a serial interface connected via a keyspan USB converter, but I am unable to get to the config screen to set it up.

BTW I upgraded indigo to 5.0.0 release (no beta) and it hasn't made a difference. I've tried removing and re-installing both Indigo and the plugin with no change.

Jay suggests trying to delete the plugin's preferences...

1. Stop the plugin
2. Go to /Library/Application Support/Perceptive Automation/Indigo 5/Preferences/Plugins/
3. Delete the com.frightideas.indigoplugin.dscAlarm.indiPref file
4. Restart the plugin

Let me know how you make out.

Travis

No change when I delete the prefs file, although note that the prefs file does not seem to get re-created on the next start of the plugin (although I haven't made it to the config screen successfully yet tonight).

I also manually edited the DSC and plugin files to turn on debugging and added a couple of extra debug statements. Here's a copy of what comes out on the log:

Code: Select all

2011-11-18 7:44:13 PM
  Enabling plugin "DSC Alarm 0.9.3"
  Starting plugin "DSC Alarm 0.9.3"
  Plugin "DSC Alarm" connected


Delay in output at this point for the timeout period, then continues...

Code: Select all

  DSC Alarm Debug                 plugin init
  DSC Alarm Debug                 pluginId: com.frightideas.indigoplugin.dscAlarm
  DSC Alarm Debug                 pluginDisplayName: DSC Alarm
  DSC Alarm Debug                 pluginVersion: 0.9.3
  DSC Alarm Debug                 creating DSC object
  DSC Alarm Debug                 DSC init started
  DSC Alarm Debug                 DSC init complete
  DSC Alarm Debug                 DSC create done
  Plugin "DSC Alarm 0.9.3" started
  Error (client)                  getXmlFromPlugin() caught exception: ServerCommunicationError -- timeout waiting for plugin response
  DSC Alarm Debug                 plugin startup called
  DSC Alarm Debug                 DSC startup called


No further output at this point

Travis

No change when I delete the prefs file, although note that the prefs file does not seem to get re-created on the next start of the plugin (although I haven't made it to the config screen successfully yet tonight).

Travis

OK, I got it going. Your comment about the prefs file gave me a hint, but deleting it is actually the opposite of what is required. Once a valid prefs file exists everything works fine, but if you are installing for the first time and don't have one you end up with the server communication error problem.

I inserted a small sleep into the DSC code where it's looking for a prefs file but can't find one. This seemed to allow the plugin to respond back to the server properly and once a prefs file exists this sleep is no longer needed. There may be a more elegant way to achieve this, but it's what worked for me:

Code: Select all

   ########################################
   # Concurrent Thread Start / Stop
   #
   def startComm(self):
      self.plugin.debugLog(u"startComm called")
      oldTime = time.time()

      # While Indigo hasn't told us to shutdown
      while self.shutdown == False:

         # Read indigo pluginPrefs into our own variables
         # Keep trying to read until it works.  On the very first startup of the plugin the
         # pluginPrefs Dict is not valid right away, we must poll till it is.
         if self.configRead == False:
            self.plugin.sleep(1)   
            if self.getConfiguration(self.plugin.pluginPrefs) == True:



The line I added is the second from the bottom, to sleep for one second between attempts to find the prefs file.