I used to have this running in my old house on a Synology NAS and docker. We moved about 18 months ago and haven’t got around to reinstalling the system (Premiere Elite and SmartCom with lots of their wireless sensors). Gradually getting HA built up again. Before I go down the route of installing the Texecom system which will take a fair bit of effort, if you were doing this again, would you still go for a Texecom installation? I know there are various limitations and I never really liked their keypads!
Wondering if there’s something better that works really well with HA and looks the business.
Speaking personally, I’d install another Texecom system tomorrow, but I wouldn’t bother with wireless - wired is a bit more effort, but in the long-term will be far less hassle. It’s also stable and extremely reliable, which is important to me for a security system. I’m also happy for separation between security and HA - fine for it to monitor and control it, but I also want my security to, as far as possible, working independently of HA. It would be nice if they’d fix the checksum issue, or this add-on could be updated to ignore it to prevent crashes though…
If you want something that is pure HA controlled, what about https://konnected.io/ instead?
I do agree with your comments about having something separated for a security system. Unfortunately, this is a solidly built new house (unusual yes!) and fully decorated so I’m not wanting to run alarm cables - although I would really like Cat6, more than the piddling amount the developer put in! Three houses ago and about 15 years ago, I retro fitted Cat5e - 8.5km of it! Not so much need for it these days but still some. Anyway, still stuck with the wireless sensors - they weren’t that reliable though and some just refused to trigger at all. Maybe my programming, maybe not.
I will have a look at the product you mentioned. Not aware of that. Thanks.
I am new to HA and have a Texecom Elite 64 alarm which I have managed to configure using the excellent texecom2mqtt add-on. FYI It was a steep learning curve getting the YML config file working!
However the add-on is liable to stop in certain situations. It will usually be OK as soon as I start the add-on again.
My question is how can I do this automatically. i.e. Monitor if the add-on has stopped, wait xx seconds and then restart Add-On.
If anyone has any answer to this I beg of you to keep it simple for a person who had never touched HA 3 days ago and I am not a programmer!
I found that the WatchDog had a habit of continuously retrying and often not succeeding - I assume there is some form of TCP/session timeout that needs to happen, before it will connect?
Personally, I had more success with an automation that allowed for a timeout:
- id: 'House Alarm - Changed to Unavailable - Restart Texecom2MQTT'
alias: House Alarm - Changed to Unavailable - Restart Texecom2MQTT
trigger:
- platform: state
entity_id: alarm_control_panel.area_a
to: "unavailable"
for:
minutes: 5
action:
- service: hassio.addon_stop
data:
addon: c15a2434_texecom2mqtt
- delay: "00:02:00"
- service: hassio.addon_start
data:
addon: c15a2434_texecom2mqtt
After 5 minutes unavailable, it stops the addon, waits 2 minutes for a timeout, then starts it again.
I found the watchdog setting did not work and also came to the conclusion that it was only happy to restart after a pause. So my fix was very similar to yours.
I created au automation that waits for ‘unavailable’ to appear (on keypad), send a pushover notification to me, pause for 3 minutes and then start Texecom2MQTT add-on.
Nevertheless I am considering changing over to a Ring alarm system for the following reasons:
Texecom in unnecessarily complex for my requirements. I don’t use it enough to be be confident with its many many features. It is definitely not user friendly compared with Ring, Simplisafe etc.
TexecomtMQTT appears to be unmaintained now (last release was Jan 2022) and reliability with HA is not great (essential for an alarm system)
tsightler’s RingMQTT integration add-on on Github seems to be well supported and reliable from what I can see
I’m not completely anti Ring - unlike some - I’m happy with it as a doorbell, but it has gone ‘down’ a number of times over the last 4-5 years that I’ve had one, twice whilst I was on holiday, too many that I’d want to use it as an alarm system.
That and the scale of Amazons price increases 2 years in a row, I think, personally, are unjustifiable.
Quick question - what’s the easiest way to detect (in HA) that the Texecom Alarm system has actually alarmed. For obvious reasons I don’t want to keep messing about setting of the house alarm to test it in HA.
For obvious reasons I don’t want to keep messing about setting of the house alarm to test it in HA.
But ultimately the alarm panel is in charge, HA just interacts with it - setting, reading its state etc. So you kinda have to ‘mess about’ setting the alarm to test? I think?
Yes I was interested in the ‘triggered’ for automation and that looks hopeful. Thanks. However before I test:
In Wintex to disable the Bell do I just temporarily remove the Sounder from the in Areas being tested (A and B in mine) or ??
OK - so removing the sounder from Areas A and B did stop sounder bell when alarm gets triggered so testing now…
Now I notice that the Texecom HA add-on fails when the Texecom Alarm is triggered so all become “Unavailable” until Add-On restarts.
I wonder whether this has anything to do with the SmartCom sending an email notification when an alarm is triggered.
From Log:
2024-03-19 15:39:06 - INFO: All Except PIRs status changed to Armed
2024-03-19 15:39:41 - INFO: Zone MC Back Door in alarm
2024-03-19 15:39:41 - INFO: All Except PIRs status changed to In Alarm (last active zone: MC Back Door)
2024-03-19 15:39:41 - INFO: MC Back Door status changed to Active
2024-03-19 15:39:45 - INFO: MC Back Door status changed to Secure
2024-03-19 15:39:55 - INFO: Remotely resetting All Except PIRs
2024-03-19 15:39:57 - INFO: Panel disconnected, exiting now
It does. Literally 50% of the messages on this thread cover this issue!
You cannot run two services on a single ComIP or SmartCom interface on texecom alarms. This includes Texecom Cloud, Wintex and HA. If you try, you’ll certainly get issues relating to checksums due to the overlapping data going out on the serial port that sits behind the IP interface, especially for events that are triggered (e.g. alarm sounding).
The only sure-fire solution is to have a dedicated ComIP interface dedicated to HA. It’s relatively cheap and easy to do and resolves 99% of all issues. You can also disable other services on an existing interface, but this might not suit if you want to maintain these in parallel with HA.
Thanks for the explanation. I have reduced other uses of SmartCom to minimum (but need some still) and will just accept it sometimes will get “upset”.
The automation that does an addon restart appears to work pretty well now sinces adding a pause of 3 minuted before attempting the restart.
The downside is that it’ll be the critical messages that you’ll miss - e.g. when the alarm is sounded. I think I picked up a ComIP on eBay for £20 and it took about 10 mins to fit, so it’s really worth considering if you’ve got a spare, unused serial port.
In the add-on configuration I have mapped the areas as below:
id: home
full_arm: armed_away
part_arm_1: armed_night
part_arm_2: armed_custom_bypass
The buttons I have in the HA alarm panel on the dashboard are (i) ARM AWAY (ii) ARM NIGHT and (iii) CUSTOM BYPASS
Is there a way to customise the button labels in the HA alarm panel on the dashboard? In particular I want to change CUSTOM BYPASS to read something more helpful like ARM EXC OUTHOUSE.
I asked the same question a few hundred posts back and never did find a way to do this. If you do find a way, I’m interested…! The last time I checked it was all hard-coded, however…
