Ness DX8/DX16 Alarm

I’m not certain this is the problem. The error is pretty clear

From the data received Decoding bytes: '8300360S00E9'. It looks like the library is expecting a base16 encoded int here, but received S0 which is not hexidecimal/base16.

What panel version are you running @revilo951? Perhaps there’s a change (or bug) in protocol version on a new/old panel to cause this.

Since it appears I cannot send commands to my board I am thinking of running parallel to it and want to try and power the external siren, strobe and internal siren from an ESP32 as the Konnected system does. Does anyone know what signal needs to be sent to these? It is an oscillating tone but I don’t know if that is done by the siren or the board?

so ive been using this integration for ages with my ness alarm. its been largely bullet proof. that said, ive never attempted to arm or disarm via the app - i have remotes.

anyway, i have the same issue as most of you are having. cant get any commands into the unit. ive tried HA, iComms app and via putty.

ive got a version 8.4 board and a ness ip232 interface and ive double and triple checked all the programming settings on the panel

i cant think all of us have damaged something, maybe there is another setting we need to enable on the panel?

Sorry, I’ve been out of town for a while, only just been able to check this. My board has a V9.0.0 sticker on it.

Yeah the fact that it doesn’t work via iComms is a good indication there’s something going on with the panel. On my panel arming has always worked with iComms and via this Home Assistant integration, but the thing is, we enabled the iComms integration many years before I developed the integration, so I didn’t have precise knowledge of what needed to be changed/enabled on the panel.

Wild thought - perhaps it might be worth contacting Ness support about this, given that it doesn’t work from their app directly?

Sounds like the new boards might be using a newer protocol with some changes in it, so would need to obtain the newest copy of the protocol documentation (which I’m having trouble finding, and sadly the link to the original doc is now broken)

I have just requested the latest protocol manual from Ness, they have been really good with these things in the past so hoping they will assist. But I dont think they made any changes to the serial protocol. Looking at the latest panel manual version 8.0 introduced a bug with the P199E which had been shifted to P198E but this was fixed in v8.4

pre 5.6 didnt allow for commands to be sent to the panel though.

Im with Nick on this, if you have a Ness IP232 interface and its not working with iComms then I would speak to Ness about it.

Matt

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Its almost random which boards work. I have a v7.0 which doesn’t work. V9.0 stated above doesn’t work. Looking back through the thread a V5.7 didn’t work. Nick has a 7.8 board which does work. A 7.4 board was reported as working. A bit ambiguous but someone with a 8.6 I think has it working. V8.7 reported as working. A 5.8 board not working. A version 8.4 not working.

I really need to go back into the cupboard and try swapping wires around again in a methodical way and see if anything different happens…

Ness has responded stating the latest ASCII Protocol is v13 and provided me with a copy.

the guy who wrote the icomms app was really good and tried everything to get the panel working.

looks like its the panel/config as the API also didnt work

ok, i got a reply from NESS support, they gave me an app and i connected to the alarm panel (via serial) and i could arm it!

is it possible there are library updates or something different for some panels?

happy to share the app i was given, it was a google download link.

Yes send away I will give it a go

Could you see what was happening across whatever serial connection you were using?

it shows the commands being sent over serial, maybe something is new or different in some models.

ive asked why it works with this and not with icomms, but yet to get a reply.

if i can get it working with HA, ill just email the icomms guy the same link and let him know

youll need to run it as admin for registry and serial port access

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Can you post what the commands are?

Didn’t work for me using a virtual serial to IP serial port. I will continue to do more testing when I have time. Thanks!

Was wondering if someone knows how to add unique ID to the entities for the Ness Alarm?

so to arm the alarm, it sent:

8300660AxxxxE3E?

which i cant seem to get working using their M1 SDK tool

with a virtual comport app i could arm via the D18/D16 serial interface app above.

is there a lot of communications on your alarms? every 0.5 second theres a message

pretty much although the third last and second last charactor may be different as this is the checksum for the command

Matt