My house came with an existing Honeywell / Ademco Vista 20P Alarm system and I’d like to put it to use with my hass setup. After doing some reading it looks like both Envisalink and AlarmDecoder support my board and I was hoping to get some feedback from anyone using these devices on which is better. I’m leaning more towards the Envisalink right now as it seems to not need a pi or additional machine to run it. However I don’t know squat about security systems so its possible the Envisalink is less feature rich or something.
I have DSC so this won’t be for me but if you read the Envisalink docs it says something alarming. I’m not sure exactly what it means but it sounds like the panel doesn’t push alerts to Hass. Hass has to poll it. Anyway, that’s my interpretation.
zonedump_interval (Optional): This is an interval (measured in seconds) where the evl will dump out all zone statuses. This is required for Honeywell systems, which do not properly send zone closure events. DSC boards do not technically need this. Default: 30
I’ve used Envisalink for years. First with Vera, but with Home Assistant since late 2016. It’s been pretty rock-solid. I have automations based on doors opening, the alarm’s motion sensors, and on arm/disarm state. Reaction happens within a second or two (for instance, turning on the light in the garage when I open the door to the garage).
Home Assistant subscribes to updates from the Envisalink and does not depend on polling. Polls happen to reconcile missed info - but I never see this happening.
I have a DSC alarm panel, but that shouldn’t make much difference…
I also have a Vista 20P. I used to have AD2USB but swapped it out for Envisalink about 18 months ago. AD2USB worked well but the free remote access from EyezOn for Envisalink is great. If you want monitoring, EyezOn will do that for about $10/mo. My Envisalink is connected to Home Assistant and I’m using the change of arm state of the alarm to trigger automations.
Same situation here with a pre-installed Vista 20P. @borisf, with the Vista 20P + Envisalink, are you able to get individual sensor status, or just the arm state?
The individual sensors show up as binary_sensors in HA. Example: binary_sensor.family_room_motion and binary_sensor.front_door. I don’t do anything with these myself.
I know I’m dredging up and older post here, but just want to say thanks for this. I’ve been debating what to do with my existing alarm (Vista 15p) and may leverage some of your work to tie the sensors in to HA. I don’t think I’m going to completely remove the alarm as I have some wireless sensors that I don’t think I could tie in to HA, but I may see if I can tie the sensors in some ESP8266s in parallel.
FWIW, I’m just North of the Tampa area and glad to see you survived Irma without damage as well.
