This topic has popped up many times over the last couple years but there appears to be no reliable way of connecting a Texecom alarm panel to Home Assistant.
I’ve checked out all the commmuity posts but they all reach a dead end or don’t work. I understand Texecom have an API available for professional installers, not that I understand what I’d do with the Texecom API. Is there any one out there who has managed to do this without additional hardware?
As I’m thinking about it; I’d think the following features would be needed:
The alarm to report it’s status (e.g. Armed, Part Armed, Disarmed, Alarm Triggered) .
Why: So the alarm being set / unset is the primary trigger for ‘arriving home’ / leaving home’ actions. If the alarm is triggered then perform other actions such as turning on lights, etc.
The PIR and contact sensors to be created as binary sensor entities (on / off)
Why: reduce duplication of zwave sensors and, for example, create conditions if a sensor is triggered during the day or night, (e.g. garage door is left open then raise an alert). Also as most rooms have a PIR use them to help understand occupancy and PIRs also read temperature which could be useful.
I am not fussed about arming the alarm via HA - in fact i prefer the idea of the panel remaining ‘read only’
If anyone would like to help I have a Premier Elite 48 with a SmartCom and COMIP module and HA on a Pi.
Well I had an old Vera Z-wave controller lying around and I remember there being a Texecom plug-in for that system and there is a Vera integration for Home Assistant so I thought i’d have a play.
From there, I used the Home Assistant Vera integration which (with a slight tweak to stated HA instructions) maps in the Vera sensors to Home Assistant (input.booleans)
NB. recommend setting a static IP for your Vera as HA relies on this to communicate.
The update time between the Vera and HA is near instantaneous and max 2 seconds.
I have the following now mapped automatically from the Vera plug in.
For each PIR a movement detect: Yes / No (slightly laggy as Texecom PIRs powersave when alarm is disarmed)
For each contract an open trigger: Yes/No (no lag)
I found that it wasn’t passing anything across from the main Texecom plug in device so I using the Rigney’s virtual sensors plug in* i created a binary sensors for;
Full arm: on /off
Part arm: on/off
Alarm triggered: on/off
To do this i created a 3 virtual “Door/Security” binary sensors from Texecom control panel device in Vera - The ‘Texecom partition’. To create a binary sensors for arm I monitored the DetailedArmMode field (0 is off, 1 is Part Arm, 2 is Full Arm) using the ‘Starts with’ filter. For the Alarm trigger i monitor the field Alarm. The sensors get mapped across into HA by the Vera integration.
Also, if you delete and re-add the intergration it will immediate update with new sensors.
This has been a game changer for me as it’s brought HA to life - so many automations can now be driven off the alarm status and door sensors. I’ve been having a lot of fun. I now use the alarm state to determine occupancy (when house is full alarmed I know no-one is in) so turn off the lights, set heating away, turn off TVs, pause Sonos, etc.
Here’s a few of my new automations;
When alarm is changed from arm to disarm and it’s night then turn on welcome lighting scene (and vary that depending which door they enter from).
When patio doors are left open and motion is detected in the family room turn the garden feature lights are on.
When windows are open for 5 minutes and the heating is on turn the heating off and play an audible alert.
When garage door is open for more than 5 minutes play an audible alert in the house and make the side lamp flash purple.
When the alarm is set for night mode start the bedtime routine script (turn off devices, downstairs lights, turn on bedroom lights, crank the heating down)
When movement detected in various rooms and the alarm is in night mode then turn the low level lights on to aid movement. (most PIRs are not armed at night)
When alarm sounds turn all lights on, turn TVs on, set HDMI to CCTV feed
Anyway, if anyone reads this and has a Vera then happy to help.
I’d like to give this a go - but fail at the first hurdle which is finding Alan Carter’s Vera Plug-in! The instructions look easy enough for me to follow but I cannot see a link to the files required: am I blind?
Hello, I had a Vera3 from Vesternet - I think they sell newer Vera’s that use the same UI (Ui7) so they may work with RACarters plugin.
The VERA plugin occupies a COMIP and therefore blocks other services such as Wintex.
The SmartCom occupies both COM1 and COM2 (Com1 as SmartCom and Com2 as a COMIP) - you cannot use the COM2 for Vera as this will interfere with the SmartCom. However, if you have a spare COMIP lying around (which you will have if you had a COMIP and upgraded to SmartCom) then the SmartCom comes with a COM Expander that plugs onto the main board and offers you a third COM port (COM3).
I have a SmartCom and Vera working side-by-side quite happily. The alarm system acquires 2 IP addresses, one for SmartCom and one for COM3 COMIP. Wintex connects via SmartCom and the Vera connects to Com3.
Ok perfect, thanks. Looks like I could use my ComWifi on the Com3 expander to give me the additional way in. I’m hoping someone better than me comes up with a more direct integration to avoid needing a vera!
I’m using https://github.com/davidMbrooke/texecom-connect, which runs in a separate docker container and communicates via mqtt. Currently it’s read-only, but but extending it to allow writing data would be possible.
I only have a smartcom, using this I can still set/unset the alarm via the texecom app, but no longer receive texecom notifications (although they have been replicated in HA)
I was replying to the post above mine @ManicGTI where it is apparent that he wants to avoid having to buy a Vera. MQTT is a far tidier solution and using the current protocol.
Thank you Kevin, I had seen your response (and similar in a previous thread on the topic).
Ultimately the reason i’m interested in the vera solution is down to my inexperiance with HA/Python, i’m new to both and would need hand holding through it. I’m happy to learn but it tricky knowing where to start as lot of guidance has fair amount of assumed knowledge.
Just typing this response has made me want to have a go at it though, read only is fine…am I barking in the wrong direction with:
I am pretty useless on these python things too but as I run HA on a NUC the python script runs easily there. I can’t get it to startup on reboot though just yet. It’s a totally separate process to HA for me.
If you do want to go the Vera route and can’t source a unit in the UK I have a brand new unopened Vera3 we could talk around… I still do use Vera elsewhere. Vesternet used to carry the line…
I’m running HassOS directly on a RaPi4 at the moment. Could a simple(ish)/cheap solution be to get another Pi to run Docker on, purely for this? It would still be cheaper than other options as far as I could tell?
Either that or get some better hardware to run both on? I’m not really willing to throw money at it though, just treating it as a bit of fun.
Hi. Thanks for the share. Have been looking for a solution to integrate Texecom elite168 with com-IP for long.
I am currently running HassOS on raspberrypi and have installed docker on my windows 10 system. I have already installed the container for texecom2mqtt but have no idea how to setup the config.yml file in Docker. It would be really helpful if you could point me in the right direction.