Cannot get Envisalink integration to arm alarm system

irace · January 6, 2024, 7:19pm

I’m using the envisalink integration and everything is working perfectly in terms of reading the alarm system state and sensor values, but I’m unable to actually modify the alarm state. What’s interesting is my physical keypad does light up when I use HA to modify the state, suggesting that something is happening, but the state does not actually change.

I would love any thoughts on what I might be doing wrong as I’ve tried quite a few things. Changing the alarm system state via the EyezOn app/portal does work as expected.

The screenshot below lists the alarm control panel as being “read-only” which sets off my spider-sense, but I’m not sure how to fix it…

These both look right to me:

My configuration.yaml is here (with most zones removed for brevity):

envisalink:
  host: 192.168.7.90
  panel_type: HONEYWELL
  user_name: !secret envisalink_username
  password: !secret envisalink_password
  code: !secret alarm_code
  port: 4025
  evl_version: 4
  keepalive_interval: 60
  zonedump_interval: 30
  timeout: 10
  panic_type: Police
  zones:
    1:
      name: "Basement Door"
      type: "opening"
  partitions:
    1:
      name: "Home alarm"

This post was the closest I could find to what I’m seeing—I have at times seen these same errors (inlined below), but I’m actually not even seeing those anymore, despite it still not working. It’s basically just a no-op when I try to change the state:

error sending command to envisalink. Response was: Syntax Error. Data appended to the command is incorrect in some fashion
error sending command to envisalink. Response was: Receive State Machine Timeout (command not completed within 3 seconds)

I’ve enabled debug logging but nothing jumped at to me as helpful (if there’s a way to attach the logs here, please let me know, I couldn’t figure it out and inlining them exceeded the post body limit)

Thanks so much in advance! I feel like it really must be something simple/stupid given that everything else is working just fine.

jman223 · January 11, 2024, 1:14am

I just purchased an Envisalink and installed it today. I’m having the exact same issue. Only feedback I get is the following error in the log, “error sending command to envisalink. Response was: Receive State Machine Timeout (command not completed within 3 seconds)”.

Anyone have a suggestion for resolving this issue?

jman223 · January 11, 2024, 2:36am

I’ve read this and this. I have my Envisalink and HA on an isolated vLAN but it hasn’t made any difference. I’ve also noticed that repeatedly arming the system through HA will occasionally work (might take 20 tries), but arming directly from the local Envisalink www interface works every single time.

In my instance at least, this appears to be some issue with the HA integration and not an issue with the Envisalink and the network traffic it sees.

I’ve also tried adjusting the Timeout in the configuration. That doesn’t seem to have any impact on this particular issue.

irace · January 12, 2024, 1:46am

Fully agree: the Envisalink itself seems to be working fine, it just doesn’t work fine through Home Assistant (it reads fine, but doesn’t write fine).

The one reason it doesn’t feel like a timeout/latency thing to me is that my hardware keypad lights up immediately when I send the command from HA. It just doesn’t actually change the arm/disarm status.

jman223 · January 12, 2024, 3:07am

Bryan - I found this issue. According to the information in that thread, this refactored version of the Envisalink Integration seems to address the problem we’re having.

The readme states that this is a work in progress (no recent commits though), so I haven’t installed it. If you try it, please let me know if it works for you.

irace · January 12, 2024, 8:11pm

Great to hear that it’s a known issue to some extent but very frustrating that our choices now seem to be between a more stable version that doesn’t actually work, or a work-in-progress that might solve this particular issue but have other problems of its own. I’ve chimed in on the ticket you linked and also posted a new one on the new repo: Any sense of when `envisalink_new` will be “ready” to replace the existing integration? · Issue #83 · ufodone/envisalink_new · GitHub

irace · February 14, 2024, 6:52pm

@jman223 Have you made any progress here, by chance?

Raven999 · March 6, 2024, 12:22am

@irace @jman223
Hey,

FWIW, I am new to HA but not new to the sensitivity of Envisalink. I ran into this with HomeSeer. I had this same error and now have it working with HomeAssistant. The root cause for me was another integration with HS4 we connected and thus does not allow a connection from HA. What I needed to do was disable the HS4 integration, reboot the Envialnk card and restart HA. Then it works and is not in R/O. Hope this helps

irace · March 8, 2024, 2:47am

Interesting. I’ve only ever connected HA to my Envisalink so it doesn’t exactly sound like the same problem. I could try removing the HA integration, rebooting my Envsalisk, and reconnecting to HA.

@Raven999 Are you using the built-in envisalink module or envisalink_new?

Raven999 · March 8, 2024, 3:01am

I know what you mean, but I am only sharing what I learned the hard way with the Envisalink4 card. I wasted ton of time with connections locked when I was only making one connection to the EVL4 Card.

This is the HS Error I would get and why I had to restart everything
ERROR Receiver::Run() A socket error has occured: Unable to read data from the transport connection: An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host.

When I tried to add this to HA, I had the same issue because it was connected to HS. That meant I could not connect HA to Envisalink until I showdown the HS4 plugin. When I stopped HS, rebooted and started HA, boom HA worked perfectly!

irace · March 8, 2024, 3:55am

Appreciate that.

Given what you’ve seen, what troubleshooting steps would you recommend for someone who only has HA connected (unless you count the EyezOn app as well)?

thunder3596a · March 10, 2024, 10:48pm

I am also running into the same issue. I have the eyezon stuff configured but nothing else has the evl4 integrated with it besides home assistant. Also been banging my head against a wall over this as the eyezon stuff works great (can arm/disarm with no issue). My config is the same as OP’s and my entities for the alarm are also read-only:

Raven999 · March 11, 2024, 4:09pm

Its normally a netorking issue. Since EyezOn card’s API is expecting TCP connections VS REST, I would confirm the ports are open, and nothing is connected to the EyezOn device. I can tell you I had the same issues with HS4 where the EyezOn card was stuck with an old connection and had to reboot it several times to fix it. Also, if your password it too long or complex, it will not work either.

Start with the username/password combo of user/user
Keep EyezOn and HA on the same subet if they are not for testing
Reboot and try to connect.

It could be that your password is too complex or long and causing the TCP connection to fail. I was able to connect mine to HA. My password is not user, but shorter than I would like,

irace · May 9, 2024, 1:29pm

@Raven999 If you have any advice on how to troubleshoot if anything is connected or not, would appreciate it. I tried rebooting without any luck. I tried reaching out to EyezOn support but they basically said “Sorry, we don’t have anything to do with those integrations.” My password is quite short (although it is longer than four characters).

@jman223 Any luck figuring this out, or are you still stuck as well?