Sending keypresses

Travis,

I just upgraded Indigo to 6.0 and found your Plug-In. It is great and replaces many, many lines of Applescript I had running for many years. Thanks for pulling this together for the DSC users in the group!

I have my garage door closer connected to one of the DSC command outputs, and want to activate it from the Indigo GUI. Normally, when I do that from one of the alarm panels, I enter *71 (Command Output). When I try to do that from the Plug-In, it is unsuccessful (issuing a number of error messages). Is there some magic about how to send keypresses to DSC panel from the Plug-In that I am missing?

Thanks!

Hi,

No magic. You should be able to use the Send Keypress option for your keypad device to do that. If that's what's giving you an error, set the log level to intense debug and send me the relevant lines.

Glad you like the plugin. Thanks.

I set up a Keyboard Device and created a schedule called Close Garage Door to perform the action of sending a *71 keypress sequence to the DSC panel. When i did an 'Execute Now', it appears to have failed, and the log generates the following errors. Do i have something configured wrong?

Sep 25, 2013 10:47:15 PM
DSC Alarm Debug validating Action Config called
Schedule Close Garage Door
DSC Alarm Debug Received Send Keypress Action
DSC Alarm Error IT-100/Envisalink Error (027): API Invalid Characters in Command
DSC Alarm Error Received system error after sending command, aborting.
DSC Alarm Error IT-100/Envisalink Error (027): API Invalid Characters in Command
DSC Alarm Error Received system error after sending command, aborting.
DSC Alarm Error IT-100/Envisalink Error (022): API Command Not Supported
DSC Alarm Error Received system error after sending command, aborting.
DSC Alarm Error IT-100/Envisalink Error (027): API Invalid Characters in Command
DSC Alarm Error Received system error after sending command, aborting.
DSC Alarm Error IT-100/Envisalink Error (022): API Command Not Supported
DSC Alarm Error Received system error after sending command, aborting.
DSC Alarm Error IT-100/Envisalink Error (027): API Invalid Characters in Command
DSC Alarm Error Received system error after sending command, aborting.

Any thoughts...?

Not sure. It works fine on my panel. It looks like your panel's firmware doesn't support that command.

What interface are you using? And did you do this successfully before using Applescript?

The panel supports it just fine, because I had some Applescript routines that would close the garage door when the house was unoccupied, or it was raining, etc. These were old routines and running with Indigo 4 over Serial Bridge.

If the Plug-In is working correctly for everyone else, I'm guessing that the problem is with my older hardware. I replaced the actual panel a few years ago, so it is relatively new. The 5401 serial interface, on the other hand, is about 13 years old, so it probably needs upgrading .

I set all this up many years ago, and it ran smoothly without much attention from me until I decided to upgrade my Mac this month. Then all my inactivity caught up with me. Oh, well...it's good to get upgraded to the latest greatest.

Thanks for your support!!

If you PM me the Applescript you used to use I might be able to see what's different. The only thing I can think of is the Virtual Keypad option might have to be enabled at startup for your particular setup.

I tried sending key press commands but cannot get it to work. For instance I programmed "aL", thinking this should mimic a long press of function key 1, which causes a Stay Arm on my keypad. But nothing happens. No log entry either.
What am I doing wrong?

You've probably already sorted this out, but for future users I just checked the Envisalink API, they don't support the long press. Looks like that only works with the old DSC IT-100 interface.

You should be using the dedicated 'Arm Alarm in Stay Mode" keypad device action to arm the alarm. Sending key presses is more used to accomplish things that can't be done via the API directly, like bypass a zone for example.