Envisalink bat_trouble flip flops between true and false

Configuration
1

I have an envisalink card with a honeywell panel and I created the following binary sensor:

  • platform: template
    sensors:
    alarm_battery_trouble:
    friendly_name: “Alarm Battery Trouble”
    device_class: power
    value_template: “{{ is_state_attr(‘sensor.alarm_keypad’, ‘bat_trouble’, true) }}”

Whenever the system has battery trouble (low battery or whatever) the sensor flip flips between true / false every 2 or 3 seconds. When I use the state tool I also see the bat_trouble attribute flip flopping back and forth between true and false. The physical keypad itself just says LO BATTERY and so does the Envisalink itself.

2

I have seen a similar thing when I have more than three windows or doors open at the same time - the indication for open/close for each item does the same thing every few seconds.
Once I close everything except 3 windows/doors it reliably indicates the true status - tried to find out what causes it but could not and gave up.
I think the Envisalink card polls the status of the zones and gets in trouble when they are too many.

Maybe your issue is based on the same root cause.

3

Oh sh*t, I had not noticed that before. I don’t really have automations based on the sensors coming from Envisalink cause they don’t work when the system is armed anyways. So that had never occured to me, but I think you’re right that those issues might be related.

4

I use the state of alarm_control_panel.home_alarm for some of my automations - I found it very reliable.