DSC Alarm integration

Hello all i have a
EnvisaLink EVL-4EZR
with a
DCS PC1832
connected to my
Home Assistant 2020.12.2

It seems be working great…

My only question is

How do i get my phone to alert me and or other family members with an alarm or a ring when my Alarm system gets trigger and the siren starts to make noise in the house?

Thanks in Advance

Hi @Cinntax
Any chance zone bypassing can be implemented?

Hi @autumnwalker,
There is no particular reason why we must send the 010 command- I believe someone asked for it a while back, but I can’t remember who it was.

I can push out a new version of the envisalink library that removes the 010 command from startup (and perhaps exposes it as a separate method). I will need assistance testing, as I no longer am using my envisalink due to how I’ve setup my security system at my new house.

I took a quick look at the API from envisalink- it looks like zone bypass functionality is not exposed to us, so unfortunately this will not be possible.

Hi Dan,

Thank you for answering. If you don’t mind, can we dig a bit deeper in to this?

Its possible to bypass a zone by sending *1<zone_nr># as a raw command.
I then see, a list can be dumped to response code 616 by using *1#.

Now, out of interest sake, I found another python app for envisalink which have even more definitions than what I think is your code.

Your code: https://github.com/Cinntax/pyenvisalink/blob/e45f545bdfe5839999503dc2a6db860ac3f74876/pyenvisalink/dsc_envisalinkdefs.py
Another envisalink app code: https://github.com/juggie/AlarmServer/blob/b31b463b0c511f95ffc61d0c9ea53eaa09fb33c2/core/envisalinkdefs.py

From this commit you can see it added: https://github.com/juggie/AlarmServer/commit/667c7a2a53bc1778f815e55acde65852a53df85b

I suspect it will take a bit more work to add zone bypassing, but I am sure it is possible with some manual work. States will need to be updated by issuing *1# and reading the list from the 616 response.
In addition to this, the zone bypass can be reset each time the alarm is disarmed, as they require a re-issue of the bypass command each time before arming.

In addition to this, would be nice if the zone attributes can be added to the zone sensors and this bypass becoming one of the attributes we can, if not a separate switch for each zone.

Let me know if you think this is worth while or not.

2 Likes

Thanks! Happy to help you test removal of 010. Just need your direction.

@Cinntax im eagerly waiting for the fix where HassOS sets the Envisalink time to UTC as well… much like @autumnwalker I was totally caught off guard with this.

any chance you could provide an update please? This is a pretty annoying bug and would love to see this fixed. let us know if @autumnwalkerand I can help test.

@Cinntax
If i may ask what do you recommend for a security system since you switched to another product?
I am impressed by EnvisaLink but not using https just feels weird for a security system
Are you using Konnected by any chance?

DHCP discovery was added a while a back. Any chance that there could be a config flow to automatically discover envisalink and also configure it (instead of through yaml)?

Just to add to this, if there will ever be any new features that would require a YAML config addition, it won’t be approved. The integration will require a config flow update to add that feature.

Hi @Cytomax55 - i’m currently using a Honeywell Lyric control panel (https://www.security.honeywellhome.com/product-repository/lcp500-l). It has homekit built into it so that’s how it integrates into Home-assistant.

I will get to the timezone issue here within the next few days (i know it’s been forever for such a small thing).

Given my situation- I wanted to see who else might be interested in carrying the torch on this integration. I haven’t been giving this the priority it deserves. I do still have my envisalink device laying around- and if someone is up for working on this integration more, I’d be happy to ship the device to them, and I’ll cover the cost within reason :slight_smile: . If anyone is up for that let me know privately and we can discuss!

I’d be willing to take a stab at it, but I must confess that my python skills are rudimentary at best. I’m also a newbie with most of this kind of stuff (by which I meant git, version control in general, and contributing to community projects), my background is C/C++ (mostly as a hobby) and Powershell. I wouldn’t call myself anything more than an intermediate coder either. I do have a DSC 1832, EnvisaLink 4 and Home Assistant though, and I’d love to be able to get some more functionality out of it.

1 Like

I’ve noticed today that it can sometimes take over a minute for the Alpha field to update from “Not Ready” to “Ready” in Home Assistant, even though it happens more or less instantly on the alarm’s physical keypad. Is this a limitation of Envisalink or Home Assistant?

Edit: I’ve since discovered that my issues stemmed from my hardware setup – I was running Home Assistant in a Hyper-V VM on a Windows 2019 Server with NIC teaming in Switch Independent mode. As soon as I got rid of the NIC team, the connectivity problems went away.

It has to be wired sensors only

Do you have experience installing it?

@GaryOkie do you have experience with this product, DSC and Home Assistant?

Hi Kitus,

Are you referring to “this product” as the Konnected Alarm Panel? If so, no.

I have experience with an old DSC panel interfaced to HASS via EVL4. I also have experience with an old NetworX/NX584 panel and HASS.

Both security systems are wired and both working great with HASS. However, I am looking into updating my config using the custom ALARMO integration. It enables you to manage and integrate not just the DSC security sensors but ANY sensor in HASS - all from a web interface.

I dont know who @ufodone on github is, but it looks like thanks to him, we now have zone bypass switches in Home Assistant as of 2022.2 !

Many thanks!

Source: https://github.com/home-assistant/core/pull/63200

Since 2022.03 it’s now possible to trigger on keyfob pgm keypress (code 660)