Hi all,
I have a Visonic powermax and would love a plugin to Home Assistant for it. I moved from Vera over to OpenHAB a few months ago, both of which have integrations to the Powermax (they are both based off this https://www.domoticz.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11134). I would love to move to Home Assistant but unfortunately i am not able to develop this myself anyone else have this alarm, i am able to help test if so.
James
Same goes for me, never used Vera though (but i have a Powermax Pro alarm panel).
I made the same switch from OpenHab (OH) to HomeAssistant (HA) roughly a year ago. A huge improvement and really enjoying HA and its community. For the PowerMax integration I kept an OH instance running and communicated between HA and OH via MQTT. Works but obviously not ideal especially since I am running of a PI3 and OH is a resource hog.
Did anyone ever come up with another solution here? I don’t really use my visonic for security anymore but I do use it with openhab to report on all the windows and doors in the house being open or closed. This is the only thing that is holding my back from 100 home assistant. I don’t know python or I would try to port the openhab plugin for the community. I guess I could learn. Thanks
I am in the same boat @zootv. Considering how popular the plugin is on OH and Vera I was surprised it wasn’t already integrated.
Fingers crossed someone has time soon.
Hi rmeijs,
Could you provide a little guide how to use HA and OH with MQTT?
Thanks
/Claus
I would also love to have my Powermax connected to HA. I have several sensors in that system, and it would be very nice to be able to also use them for automation. It would also be brilliant to see the status of the alarm in HA and to use this for scenes.
Don’t forget to click the vote button at the top, though. I see several answers to this thread but only 3 votes (including mine)… 
Here is a link to the Vera plugin for Visonic alarms: http://code.mios.com/trac/mios_visonic-powermax
And here is a description of the powermax protocol:
https://www.domoticaforum.eu/viewtopic.php?f=68&t=6581
And here is information on connecting a Visonic alarm panel to the Pi directly: https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=25890
It would be nice to have this confirmed though, and to have a more detailed explanation on how to do this in practice. Would rather not risc to fry the boards on any of them… But if it works, this seems like a brilliant solution, together with a HA interface, to hook up a Visonic alarm to a home automation system!
A while back I did some PHP to integrate into my Powermax via IP rather than through the serial port. I’ll have a go at knocking something up. Be warned, it’ll be rough and ready - I’m brand new to Home Assistant. It’ll be a starter for 10 anyway. Also it’ll be for the IP interface only. I don’t fancy hooking up a Pi directly to my alarm.
Here’s my first attempt…
It uses MQTT to interface with HomeAssistant. So first off, set up your MQTT broker (I used mosquitto since I couldn’t get the embedded one to work). Then create your entries in configuration.yaml. Here are mine as an example:
mqtt:
broker: 127.0.0.1
port: 1883
client_id: hass
keepalive: 60
username:
password:
alarm_control_panel:
- platform: mqtt
state_topic: home/alarm
command_topic: home/alarm/set
payload_disarm: Disarm
payload_arm_home: ArmHome
payload_arm_away: ArmAway
name: House Alarm
binary_sensor:
- platform: mqtt
state_topic: "home/alarm/sensor1"
payload_on: Open
payload_off: Ok
device_class: opening
name: Front Door
- platform: mqtt
state_topic: "home/alarm/sensor2"
payload_on: Open
payload_off: Ok
device_class: motion
name: Downstairs
- platform: mqtt
state_topic: "home/alarm/sensor3"
payload_on: Open
payload_off: Ok
device_class: motion
name: Kitchen
- platform: mqtt
state_topic: "home/alarm/sensor4"
payload_on: Open
payload_off: Ok
device_class: opening
name: Patio Doors
- platform: mqtt
state_topic: "home/alarm/sensor5"
payload_on: Open
payload_off: Ok
device_class: motion
name: Upstairs
- platform: mqtt
state_topic: "home/alarm/sensor6"
payload_on: Open
payload_off: Ok
device_class: opening
name: Back Door
Put the files from Git onto the box. Edit the .ini file to match your system. There are a load of defaults in there that you can leave if they work for you. Then launch the script, e.g.
nohup python ha_powerlink.py &
It’s working fairly well for me and I’ve been running it most of today. I’d be interested in whether it works for anyone else. Let me know if you come across any issues or can think of anything I should change.
Great! What version of powerlink did you run this with? 2 or 3? I haven’t got a powerlink module myself, but if this works, I would definitely consider buying one…is this communicating directly with the module or using visonic servers? Had a quick look at your code and as far as I can see you communicate directly with the module right?
I’ve got a Powerlink 2. Not sure whether this will work with 3 - I’ve heard that it doesn’t have a web interface like the 2, which is what this leverages. But not having one, I can’t confirm.
Communication is directly with the module, no Visonic servers involved. I think they got shut down a while back anyway.
Mhh it seems it’s not that easy to get a hold of a pl2 anymore. They are end of sale. As you already stated, the PL3 module does not have a web interface anymore.
too bad…
I have been working on a python module for this, but it’s far from production ready.
you can see some progress on my github: https://github.com/wwolkers/pyvisonic
Hopefully I will have some time soon to continue on this again
Nice to see people are still trying to make this work someday…
@WWolkers: Is this based on IP connectivity trough powerlink or on a serial connection?
Looks like its the Serial (via usb) connection to me. Which is very exciting as that is what i am using.
@WWolkers do you have any usage examples or are you not at that stage yet?
Yes it is based on serial communication. It needs a lot more work, this is just the Python module so far, not even any home-assistant things yet.
It talks to the Visonic already, but not all messages are decoded yet, work in progress.
If anyone wants to help and has python experience feel free to.
Would love to help, its the only thing keeping me from switching to HA. But my python knowledge is not very high. Happy to help test once you get a bit more down the line.