Purchased home with ELAN system installed. It is not flexible and only deal less can program automations, etc, or course at a price. Love to see an integration to this system.
Hi! I wanted to echo this request and also state I am actively evaluating ways to integrate.
In the system I inherited, I have elan, RTI and lutrin all working together.
My plan is to dump RTI and use existing Lutron and Elan systems as Amps and Lights are fairly timeless.
Also, RTI is a closed system with no API available, so that’s a big fail in my humble opinion.
If I get it Elan working, I’ll follow up here. If someone else has (I see there are serial AT commands documented) and is working on a . More generic component, please chime in!
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+1 from me.
I Have recently purchased an ELAN S86A amplifier and keen to see it work with Home Assistant.
Not sure where to start but thought I might chime in with my interest.
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I agree. I used to be a programmer for a dealer on Elan systems and I would love to see some integration! I have lots of old equipment I would love to reuse.
Progress:
It isn’t a Home Assistant Integration, but I have written a Node-Red flow for the amplifier.
The flow is written for an Elan S86, but I imagine it would work with other Elan Amplifiers.
Hopefully in time we can make some Home Assistant entities with it.
Feel free to give it a spin, if you have any ideas or can help develop it - please let me know.
https://flows.nodered.org/flow/3f98bf288e8ced2e758676610aac8c1e
@The_DuFF were you able to integrate your Node-Red code into Home Assistant? I have an Elan S12 and I would like to control it via HA. I have all of the Elan documentation for the RS-232 serial commands so I’d love to leverage whatever solution you have available.
@doolio i’ve been playing with it on and off, but I’m not much of a programmer so don’t expect too much.
However I have been experimenting using Node-Red as a MQTT gateway for ELAN.
If I can achieve that, it will be very easy to integrate Home Assistant with Elan.
thanks @The_DuFF for taking the time to provide an update. I figured out a solution! I have a Global Cache IP2SL hooked up to my Elan S12 which basically translates between IP and Serial. It turns out I can use the Telnet service in HA to send/receive commands between HA and the IP2SL/Elan. I have it all set up and running perfectly. I even exposed it to Alexa and can now control it with voice commands. It’s amazing what you can do with HA … I never thought I would have both an App and Alexa voice commands for a 15 year old audio system.
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Hi doolio have similar issues I have elan audio matrix and nvr and would like to control from HA. Can I use this approach you have tested as well?
@Olapi101 it’s hard for me to say with the very limited information in your post. The key is having the right codes for the actions that you want to configure. I recommend you get the manuals and see if you can find the codes. Once you have those then it should be straight forward
has anyone made any additional process with this. I’m trying to use this Node-red integration or honestly anything that could help me connect to an Elan system i’m working on. I’m able to connect it to the node red flow but thats all im able to do. idk how to control it or do anything else
Hey @doolio thanks so much for sharing this. I have been working on using a Global Cache IP2SL to serve the same function. However, I’m having some difficulty with this setup. I think I probably have the wrong connections between the two. I
n my case, I have the ELAN model SC1 serial controller and S1616 amplifier. The amplifier is connected to the controller via the “VIA!NET” connection (which is an RJ45, but it says RS232). This was previously connected to an ELAN controller, however I now have it connected to the global cache via this cable.
However, when I do the command prompts through terminal, no luck.
Seems like I might need a “null modem” cable, however I’m not sure how it’s possible to configure this, since the amplifier doesn’t have a RS232/9 pin slot on the back.
Do you mind describing how your setup is connected?
Thanks.
Hey everyone, I’ve spent way too much time looking into this so I hope my findings will help. I plan on continuing my efforts, but if anyone has input or wishes to contribute I’m open to it.
Here’s the repo I’ll be setting things up in:
I have an app in progress but is fairly rough at the moment and is not suited for this issue in particular.
Update: I’ve been able to successfully listen into serial commands sent from my gSC10 and my SC1 (the SC1 converts rs232 to Via!Net to my s1616A)
Here it is in action: Imgur: The magic of the Internet
I added buttons to test sending my own commands and it works! Additionally, the app acts as a passthrough of sorts, it gets the command, logs it, then sends it onto the next device and it does this both ways. Because of this the Nice Viewer app recognises the changes.
If I’m able to that determine the pattern used is common between setups (ie. my zone 1 is referenced like your zone 1 would be) then I should be able to make this fairly plug and play. Otherwise, you’ll need a controller above your SC1 (or just an rs232 line you can interrupt) to determine the sequences for each command. This would involve interacting with the G! Viewer or Nicer Viewer app to cause some form of action to take place, then either have the app parse/map it all out for you, or you’d just have to find the pattern. AI may be able to help you there too.
Will this also work for the Elan EL-IPD-AMP-EXT, the EL-IPD-MTX-8CH, and the EL-IPD-PRE-MSI?
I just had a look - appears like all of those just communicate over the network. Unfortunately the app I’m building out relies on a RS232 serial connection, which none of those have. My initial attempt at controlling mine was over the network but it was a real nightmare. I managed to auth into it myself but the controller just sends a bunch of PNGs and strings. The mobile app/viewer then stretches the pngs to size and puts those strings on the pngs. Then I believe it sends coordinates of the touch interaction back to the controller. Its all in binary so it was hard to parse out. Its either that or sending info about the UI element that was interacted with.
All of this was complete hell, but I’m not opposed to having another look sometime. Right now if I have to sit in front of their decompiled code or WireShark again I might lose it haha.
Otherwise, I’m happy to announce that I have an alpha of the app out! Its no longer at that old repo I linked to and it’s now called AmpBridge.
I’ll be breaking this up into multiple comments since the forum is only allowing 1 link per comment
The README will be updated soon to be more accurate and complete. I also have to iron out the Home Assistant integration but I’ll post a link to that repo here when its out. AmpBridge in its current state supports MQTT though so likely no updates needed there.
Before pulling the trigger please keep in mind that while the app works for me and my equipment (and the app aims to mimic your controller) I can’t provide any guarantees. I do plan on supporting the project and making a good tool for gathering data about your setup for support purposes too. Don’t worry though, I won’t make it send it to me on it’s own - it’d be more of a “copy this and send it to me here” or whatever. Thankfully the cost of the adapters isn’t too bad and an RJ45 crimper is a decent tool for anyone to have 
The products I used:
DB9 to RJ45 adapter (x2)
And because apparently this is the last comment I can put on this thread…
I got 2 of these us serial adapters: www.amazon.ca/dp/B08B6C1XQN?th=1
Unless I get unblocked from continuing to post here, keep an eye on the github repo, I’m not stopping here <3
Awesome to see @CytotoxicDingus developing an interface for the Elan product - Good work.
I’ve decided to go in another direction of recent.
I am no longer using the rs232 port of the host Home assistant to talk to the amplifier, I have interfaced a ESP32 dev board with a RS232 card which utilises a MAX3232 chip.
Using ESPhome make the integration work seamless with Home Assistant - I no-longer use NodeRed.
My ESPhome yaml relies heavily on espcomponents/components/uartex at master · eigger/espcomponents · GitHub which makes handling UART data so much easier.
If anyone is interested, have a look at my yaml at esp-elan/elan-s86a.yaml at 7eee2b5fc536b8ab73af37f69c23d8e20ba42f76 · vk3jme/esp-elan · GitHub
I’m still working on it - but it definately works to provide a nice interface for the Elan s86a amplifier.
Cheers