I have installed an EVL-4 on a Honeywell Vista-20P along with the latest HASSIO. (HASS OS on an RPI, 2021.9.5) I can easily arm and disarm the alarm, but am having issues with the alarm sensors. I see binary sensors for every door and window, and currently I have five windows open. If I look at the logbook, I see those windows shown as randomly opening and closing. Here is an example from logbook:
Note how we see window statuses changing even though nothing is actually changing. The windows are all open and so something strange is going on. I asked the Envisalink folks, and they suggest that it is a HASS issue and that i should ask here.
Did you ever get this resolved? Did you notice if the problem goes away if you have less 4 or fewer zones open? I am trying to get an answer on this same issue.
Yes, I did, and it was a problem with my system. Specifically, the EVL-4 was connected to a wireless router that had an issue resulting in very poor performance. As a result the EVL-4 had very bad network performance which slowed response times and caused the issue. I replaced the router and everything works great now. I can open multiple zones including more than 4 and see no more phantom opens/closes.
Have you resolved this? Contact sensors all eventually update to the correct state, but when opening or closing a window, the state changes to the correct new state, then a few seconds later changes back to the wrong state before changing back to the correct state (eventually, sometimes 5-60 seconds). Shouldn’t be any network issues in my case.
Sorry, I am still having the same issues and also don’t think I have any network issues. I have a very solid network of Unifi equipment and no other network issues. As you will see in the chain of replies there was one user that says he fixed the same issue by changing his wifi router? I asked him if there was anything else and he said he was 100% sure that the network change resolved this issue. Not sure what else to try at this point??? If you find anything please let me know.
Scott
I am the OP and just wanted to clarify my config. I have a Unifi network too and it is very solid. My problem was that I had a router inside the panel that basically converted my WiFi to wired which is where the evl was connected. That small router had a huge latency problem which caused my issues once I fixed that, everything went away and it has been solid ever since.
Hence one source of this problem is instability or latency of the network connection. You guys may not have that issue.
Jay, thanks for clarifying, wish I could find the cause of this issue on my system, I really don’t want to replace all of it with dsc or other.
Scott
I have a Unifi UDMP as well, and my alarm system is DSC. And FWIW, this is a newer problem within the last few months.
While looking around the EVL-4 settings locally (via local IP of the EVL-4), I happened to notice that the reported System Time is around 5-10 seconds behind both my laptop and Home Assistant. Not sure if that’s an artifact of the web interface or if the EVL-4 system time is indeed behind.
FWIW, Mine system has had the phantom opening and closing from when it was first installed. I initially thought it was a defective EVL-4 so I returned it and bought another, but had the exact same problem. I call Envisalink support but they thought it must be an issue with Home Assistant? For the record I have a Honeywell Vista 20p with all wired sensors and 1 Honeywell 6290w touchscreen keypad, Unifi Dream Machine router and an unmanaged switch. BTW my 6290w keypad seems to report opening and closing very quickly and accurately. In the envisalink or home assistant configuration instructions they mention that unlike DSC, Honeywell doesn’t report zone closure so that’s why you need the zone dumps every x number of seconds. Not sure I understand that as my Honeywell keypad shows zone closures pretty much instantly?
Hi OP here, I have some additional thoughts as I am seeing this now too and remember the history a bit better now. The rotating open/close symptoms is driven by the number of sensors tripped (e.g. Windows or Doors open), if that number goes beyond a certain threshhold then this behavior is created. I currently have 6 windows/doors open.
As I recall in the past, this is driven by the fact that the 20P does not signal on sensor close and so Envisalink/HA (not sure which) assumes that if it has not received an open signal for a while then a zone is closed. I think that the problem is that if there are too many sensors open, the panel spends so much time cycling through open devices that Envisalink/HA thinks that a device is closed even when if it is not. This is corrected and the sensor is properly marked as open when the alarm cycles to the “closed” device.
Now the question is how we fix this or if we even can. I am not sure and am going to look at pyenvisalink to see if there is anything in those docs.
Update: After testing just now, it seems that 5 open sensors is the cut off. Below that things are solid and above it, devices gyrate between open and closed.
Totally agree, my 20p is showing the same behavior. With 4 devices open, no problem. As soon as a 5th device opens total haywire. Not sure I agree with the cycling thought though. I’ve tried playing zone dump interval in the config and haven’t noticed any change at all. Also the instant that 5th device changes to open the random open / close starts to happen so doesn’t seem to be the result of cycling through things but not sure.
Interesting to me is that with 5 devices open and home assistant constantly flipping the zones between open and closed, the vista 20p keypad and also the eyezon portal portal.eyezon.com do not show any random opening and closing. This sure makes it seem that there is some issue with the Envisalink integration?
I raised this issue with Envisalink ages ago and they said that it was a known issue. However, they said that it would impact the system with 10+ devices. They blamed HA for any issues below that.
I believe that HA relies on the pyenvisalink Python module and so I am not sure if this issue relates to that or how HA interprets the output. I am thinking that I open a ticket with the relevant GitHub site.
That would be much appreciated if you could help push this along by opening a ticket or doing whatever you think might help. I’m happy to test or provide more details if I’m able.
Thank you
Question @sah - have you played with the Zonedump interval to see if that fixes anything? I have been perusing the logbook and notice that there are exactly 30 seconds between the phantom open and close which aligns with my zonedump interval setting. This makes me wonder if adjusting that could improve the situation.
It is now getting cold and so I do not have many zones open. Can you explore adjusting the setting and see if it helps at all?
As an FYI, I opened a case over at pyenvisalink and am wonder if I should do the same with HA Core.
I have played around with the zonedump interval with no luck. Later today when I get home, I will try changing the interval a few different ways and report back the results.
Finally got a chance to test. Yes, changing the zone dump time does affect the random open and close as it loops (somewhat). When set to 30 seconds some of the devices will cycle at 30 second intervals and some are random. When set to 60 seconds some cycle at 60 second intervals some are random. It does appear though that an actual 5th opening is what immediately makes it go into random mode. I also tried rebooting HA with 5 or 6 things open and it doesn’t seem to go haywire until the next device is open but not sure about that.
The question for me is why the random open and close in HA when the EVL-4 and Honeywell keypad don’t show that behavior? Also, the integration says the Vista 20p doesn’t report zone closure but the keypad shows zones open AND CLOSE immediately? It’s my understanding that the EVL-4 is connected to the keypad bus on the 20p and is basically acting as another keypad and thus I would think be reporting open and close as the Honeywell keypad is?
