alarmstate never goes into armed

hi travis, LONG time user, thanks!

i think the latest round of updates has changed some logic in the plugin as it has worked for over 10 years through thick and thin.

now the system whether armed stay or away (i think) never goes into state armed, only exit delay, even when the keypad clearly shows armed.

is there something i can tweak to get this to work properly again?

i'm on an ancient dsc system (no reason to change) hardwired, using the old rs232 interface, the 100 board i think.. not sure. but as i say, has worked for many many years fine.


any thoughts?


thanks a lot!!

edit: added image. this is several minutes after the dsc itself has gone into official 'armed' mode.

update: tried resaving config as other thread had done to jog plugin to new settings, no joy. still does same thing. even when the debug shows that the plugin knows the partition is in armed the state is still exit delay (although the icon turns red...?)

how can i fix?

thx!!

I think I know what is going on.

Your older system only sends a command that the alarm is armed but not whether it is armedStay or armedAway.
The latest plugin has a slightly different coding here assuming that the panel reports the Stay and Away states.

I assume your alarm panel never communicated Stay or Away status to the DSC plugin in the past. Can you go back to the previous version of the plugin (which should just work fine in your case if you do not want to upgrade) and look under custom states for the first item ArmedState. What does this one say when you arm your alarm for Stay and Away?

yeah. i'm thinking that too. didn't realize so much changed in the plugin.

it seems my board doesn't communicate much, or is not programmed in the plugin interface for my board.

i may reliably use the Armed LED State perhaps tho, without downgrading..? maybe use that for armed state in my logic instead of the actual states from the dsc.. no reason that's any less reliable? i won't be able to differentiate between stay and away this way, but i'm not really using that anyway too much, i use the alarm system messages for that, not the plugin.

any reason not to go the LED route? thanks monster!!


some pix of the plugin state at various stages for ref (armed, stayexitdelay, unarmed):

OK, no need to go to monitoring alarm LED. I think I want to try something first.

You have a very, very old interface module, called PC5401. According to the instructions, descriptive arming (i.e. telling you away or stay status) is disabled be default. See attachment. I want you to try to turn this on. The plugin does not have this command build in and your PC5401 is too old to except custom commands. But if you are a bit familiar with Python we can make a temporary change.
Right-click on DSC plugin and select Show package content. Navigate to plugin.py and open this file. Go to code line 379.
Replace

Code: Select all

      self.txCmdList.append((kCmdNormal, tx))

with

Code: Select all

      self.txCmdList.append((kCmdNormal,'0501'))

Use the select all command to copy the code exactly as shown.

Save the plugin.py file. Reload the plugin. Then Disarm your alarm. Instead of the disarm command the plugin will now send command 0501, which should enable descriptive arming.
Then revert the changes you made to plugin.py to the original code, save, reload plugin.
Then test arming in away mode and stay mode and let me know if the Indigo UI correctly shows these states.
And confirm that disarming works again as intended.

And keep in mind:
Configuration commands for the PC5401 module (e.g. 050) will be cleared if power is lost to the module and will require reloading by the application.

got it, will try tonight, thanks a lot for the help!

i used to use this board with the serial comm that indigo used before the plugin architecture, can't remember the name of it (serial bridge??), but i programmed every command in and out.. until your plugin came along. now i've forgotten all that years ago lol

hi monster, did that. the whole process twice. doesn't seem to have changed any reporting behavior, or at least the plugin has shown no new states.

checking that the handler you wanted this line changed in was the:

Code: Select all

def methodDisarmAlarm(self, action, dev):

one?

assume so but checking.

fairly sure i did it all correctly both times... any other thoughts on it? i am reading the status messages from the board but didn't look at any of them during this, which had i been less tired i would have thought to do when it was a useful thought.

not sure what else to do at this point (besides upgrade whole alarm system), but thanks a lot for the help!

Yes, the disarm action. We are just using this action to temporarily send the 0501 command.

Do you have the debug log for when you executed this command?

Let me checkout the ancient user forum messages for any clues. If nothing helps we can do a workaround. No need for new hardware. But Envisalink 4 would get you a lot more features.

ok yes i understood that.

no, unfortunately i didn't have debug on

ok, thanks. let me know what you glean from other situations, i'll consider the options.


thanks a lot!

re: envisalink4, any reason to think it wouldn't be compatible with my system? should i just install that? i really didn't want my alarm system reachable by cellular which is one of the reasons i never went up in the systems over the years.. but, seems like it's holding me back now.

thoughts appreciated, thanks!

From what I am reading the PC5401 module does not seem to support descriptive arming. Maybe the 0501 command requires a newer firmware or is documented wrong.

Anyway, to restore functionality for your old module please replace this section in the plugin.py file with the code below. Anytime your system is armed it will now say armedAway. Any triggers for armedStay will not work since your system does not communicate the armed state. Otherwise everything should work, including the integration with HomeKit.

The Envisalink-4 is not a cellular device. It is an IP device that potentially exposes your system to the internet if not setup correctly. Whether it will work with your old alarm panel, I do not know.

Code: Select all

      elif cmd == '652':
         if len(dat) == 1:   # sent from older modules like PC5401 that do not seem to support descriptive arming.
            partition = int(dat)
            dev = indigo.devices[self.keypadList[partition]]
            keyp = str(dev.pluginProps['partitionName'])
            self.logger.debug(f"Alarm Panel Armed. (Partition {partition} '{keyp}')")
            self.updateKeypad(partition, 'state', kAlarmStateArmedAway)  # armed state defaults to armedAway
            self.updateKeypad(partition, 'ArmedState', kAlarmArmedStateAway)
            self.updateKeypad(partition, 'ReadyState', kReadyStateFalse)
            self.updateKeypad(partition, 'LEDReady', 'off')
            self.updateKeypad(partition, 'LEDArmed', 'on')     # updates LEDs for partitions 1-8
            self.speak('speakTextArmed')
            self.trippedZoneList = []
            if self.configUseCustomIcons is True:
               dev.updateStateImageOnServer(indigo.kStateImageSel.SensorTripped)  # red circle
               #dev.updateStateImageOnServer(indigo.kStateImageSel.Locked)  # green locked padlock
            else:
               dev.updateStateImageOnServer(indigo.kStateImageSel.SensorOff)


I've had a several Envisalinks....my understanding was that the earlier Envisalink modules emulated the PC5401, while the later ones are described as emulating DSC numeric keypad. Though when you think about it both may actually be using the same underlying interface.

@monster, appreciate the help. that new code snippet is in, rolling forward. thanks a lot.