DSC Alarm integration

Feature Requests
86

Excellent- I’ll push 1.0 then. In terms of the delay- it will likely take a much larger development in hass to really handle it anyway.

1 Like
87

Thanks for everyone’s help! These changes have now been merged into the dev branch of home assistant.

2 Likes
88

Cinntax, thanks so much for your work and the others in this thread for this plugin. Would you mind explaining the best way of installing this into my existing Home Assistant set up now that it’s reached 1.0? Thanks in advance.

1 Like
89

Hi. I too have a DSC alarm system panel with Envisalink. How would I go about setting this up using HA?

90

Here’s an example yaml for it, if you want to pull the dev branch and try it prior to Paulus releasing 0.23-
Once he does his next release, I have documentation available on home-assistant.io, and you’ll just be able to use it on your normal HA instance after you upgrade.

envisalink:
#optional
port: 4025
evl_version: 3
keepalive_interval: 60
zonedump_interval: 30

#required
host:
panel_type: HONEYWELL or DSC
user_name:
password:
code: ‘1234’

zones:
11:
name: ‘Back Door’
type: ‘opening’

21:
  name: 'First Floor Motion'
  type: 'motion'

partitions:
1:
name: ‘Home Alarm’

91

Also a quick note that if you don’t specify any zones, it will still load an alarm_control_panel + sensor entities within HA. Conversely, if you only provide zones, it will only load binary_sensors.

95

So whats the easiest way for me to set this up? Like what instructions would you give me to setup this

96

Are you comfortable working with the dev branch? If not, you can wait till the next release of Home Assistant and all you have to do is provide the details in configuration.yaml

97

I am comfortable working with the dev branch, as long as it isn’t going to cause my alarm system to have any security holes or flaws that allow it to be easily hacked.

98

Just thought I’d mention that Paulus has now released version 0.23 of home assistant- so now this functionality is just an upgrade away!

99

Cinntax. Thanks so much for this functionality I have it working pretty well.

Just two questions:
1.) Is there a limit to the number of sensors?
2.) What are the different sensor definitions? - obviously there’s motion and opening - I tried ‘tamper’ and got a circle icon.
3.) Can the definitions be defined manually?

100

So exciting! I guess this means I no longer have an excuse to put off installing my system!

101

Sure you’re welcome- it was a fun project.
In terms of your questions- the max number of zones depends upon which envisalink device you have. The evl3 has a max of 64 zones, and the evl4 has max of 128. The evl doesn’t tell us which zones you’re actually using, so yeah you do need to specify all your zones in your configuration.yaml.

As for the binary sensor types- I should have documented that better- but ha does have defined types, and I’m using those. Here are the valid types:

SENSOR_CLASSES = [
    None,            # Generic on/off
    'cold',          # On means cold (or too cold)
    'connectivity',  # On means connection present, Off = no connection
    'gas',           # CO, CO2, etc.
    'heat',          # On means hot (or too hot)
    'light',         # Lightness threshold
    'moisture',      # Specifically a wetness sensor
    'motion',        # Motion sensor
    'moving',        # On means moving, Off means stopped
    'opening',       # Door, window, etc.
    'power',         # Power, over-current, etc
    'safety',        # Generic on=unsafe, off=safe
    'smoke',         # Smoke detector
    'sound',         # On means sound detected, Off means no sound
    'vibration',     # On means vibration detected, Off means no vibration
102

I have been wavering between a new Honeywell system and SimpliSafe - SimpliSafe seems to have some unofficial integration, but now this - a difficult choice!

103

Having seen a series of Internet of Things companies pull support for their products lately (and rumors of Nest circling the drain at Google) I’m definitely in favor of hardware I own, control, and configure myself that I can choose to integrate with 3rd party services… or not.

104

I’m beginning to agree - only problem is if I fork out a lot for a new Honeywell Alarm I can;t take it with me when I go …

105

One item of note to those who haven’t bought a panel yet- just a note that, between Honeywell and dsc, in terms of operability with the envisalink devices- dsc does a better job. There is an inherent limitation with the Honeywell boards where they don’t report zone closures immediately like they do for zone openings/trips. For closures, we have to rely on the “last tripped time” to determine if a zone closed or not, and it’s not ideal (enough to keep your house secure at least though). With dsc panels on the other hand, the whole api that the envisalink devices provides is more complete, and has a greater “richness” to the info it exposed. I’m using Honeywell because the house came with it, but dsc is a better choice in panel from what I’ve seen. Not sure if there are other reasons Honeywell may be better than dsc…

2 Likes
106

Thanks - good information :slight_smile:

107

Then I will go with the DSC. Thanks for letting me know!

Plus, when it comes to IoT, my data belongs to me and not in the cloud. And IoT companies never thought about security and privacy when it comes to data breaches.

Even if a Radio Thermostat CT80 is not a learning thermostat, it’s still way better than Nest. Actually, Home Assistant could function as a learning thermostat for controlling CT80. Plus, if the Internet goes down, the CT80 still works with Home Assistant. However, I’m not going to go off-topic here

I think Home Assistant is perfect, but still got ways to go, what with implementing support for Insteon PLM.

108

Quick question guys. I have a DSC PC1832 alarm system setup but yet to buy the envisalink card.

ALL of my sensors are wireless back to the alarm system. Will I still be able to see all the zones etc in HA?