Just in case anyone is wondering, the Visonic Go app can only be used with PowerMaster panels (firmware 19.4 minimum I think) and you must be connected to a powermanage server, you have to sign up with a provider and this incurs a monthly fee. You also need to buy and install the Visonic PowerLink3 hardware. I guess it comes down to personal choice, especially with the monthly fee. My Home Assistant integration uses a simple hardware device (and not the Powerlink3) and does not need a monthly fee. It simply integrates in to Home Assistant.
But like I said, thanks for the info, much appreciated.
Thanks very much for the time & effort you have put into the Visonic Component Dave!
I have had a real quick skim through this thread, your Github and Wiki and there is a wealth of information there most of which is going over my head at this moment in time!
Can I just ask what I think is a simple question while hoping it is a simple answer?
I have a self-fitted PowerMaster 30 panel fitted with PowerLink module, a bunch of NEXT PG2’s, Siren, Keypad, a couple of keyfobs and use a company to monitor it.
I do have Installer access to my panel via both directly from the panel and also the Tyco Alarm Install app which I have to pre-approve in the Visonic Go app to allow me to log on.
I also have an unused USB programming dongle kicking around somewhere.
Reading your Wiki it states you don’t need to buy a PowerLink but how does your Component work if there is already one fitted as in my case?
Am I able to connect using the existing ethernet connection that goes into my switch or is the panel data locked up in some proprietary format that only the monitoring company can understand?
Or do I need another way to make an ethernet connection to my panel?
As far as I know, you cannot have PowerLink AND Home Assistant.
Since you need to plug an rs-232 to Ethernet/wifi/usb adapter in the same port as the PowerLink both cannot coexist.
This component cannot communicate with your panel through the PowerLink module, so you must choose, own monitoring with HA or monitoring company with PowerLink and the monthly fee.
Thanks for taking the time to reply rodak although of course its not what I wanted to hear.
Seems a little odd to me in this day & age that I cannot tap into the Visonic traffic from the switch it is connected to and read/write data from there unless it is proprietry like the Nest traffic.
If I had to choose I would prefer to continue with my alarm being monitored than have it appear in HA although of course I would rather have both!
To be honest I’m looking at the pages & pages of instructions needed to work through just to have my Nest devices appear in HASS and wondering whether HASS is indeed worth the hassle?
Similar situation with my LightwaveRF gear which basically got me into Home Automation all those years ago.
Ah well I’ll plough on regardless and see what transpires as I’m new to HASS and learning as I go…
I’m just catching up with this a little. @rodak is correct in his reply, though I do have 2 further comments:
Some panels have 2 RS232 interfaces, I believe that some users have got it to work in combination with the Powerlink Hardware module
You might want to look at this, it uses a completely different way of communicating with the alarm panel
And also my reply
But it’s not something that I’ve looked at in any way so please don’t ask in this thread for help. Either create a new forum thread for it or join an existing one if it exists (I haven’t looked).
Best of luck
I’m not sure what you mean but let me explain how I use my Fobs.
Please remember that for the following description, I have a PowerMax panel.
If you use the MCT-234 then you can remotely arm/disarm your panel and the state is shown in Home Assistant. We use MCT-237 fobs and each has its own ID as defined by the panel e.g. “Fob 01”, “Fob 02” etc so I decode this in HA to show this in the frontend, for example I have “Fob 01”:
Look at the alarm attribute Panel Last Event
The MCT-237 remotes also have “A” and “B” buttons that can be user defined in the panel settings. I have each button turn on (for a few seconds) and then off, a non-existant X-10 device. Both these X-10 devices appear in Home Assistant as switches so I can use them to trigger scenes in my Home Assistant.
Does this help?
That is correct, you won’t. They are not sensors and not switches. I cannot get their state or control them in any way from this integration. There are only 2 ways to interact with them, by using the:
Arm/disarm buttons that alters the alarm panel state
Programmable buttons on the remote as I do to trigger non-existant X-10 devices.
Please arm or disarm your panel using the MCT-237 (or MCT-234) and look at the alarm_control_panel.visonic_alarm Entity in developer tools, find the attribute Panel Last Event. It will say something like “Disarm / Fob 01”. There is also a standard Home Assistant attribute that I set called changed_by and this will be set to something like “Fob 01”.
Now change the state with a different fob and it will say “Fob 02” (if you arm you need to wait until the panel changes state and actually arms the panel).
ERROR Connection Lost : disconnected because the Ethernet/USB connection was externally terminated.
This means that the connection between the HA device and the device in your alarm panel has been interrupted i.e. the TCP connection has been broken. Assuming this is Ethernet (and not USB) then your home router is either re-booting itself or it is re-assigning IP addresses i.e. probably renewing the DHCP lease for the devices
Is this a possibility?
If the connection between HA and panel is lost, this will make my integration attempt to reconnect to the panel, it looks like it eventually succeeds but without a log file it’s difficult for me to tell.
Hope this helps
Yes, TCP… I use an ESP NodeMCU, it has a DHCP reservation and as my DHCP lease duration is currently one hour (for other reasons) I have eliminated this hypothesis that occurs every 24 hours…
I also don’t have any backups or other maintenance that could cause temporal unavailability at that time. I haven’t found anything in the logs that could correspond. I’m looking for…
This very short unavailability is not visible in disarmed mode, but it generates an alarm and therefore a notification if armed. I can compensate in an automation but isn’t there in the integration a way to set the duration of the time out?
It’s not a timeout, it’s a disconnection and then a reconnection so I have no control over the time period. If you have a PC set a constant “ping” to another device acrossyour network and log it overnight, this will let you know if other devices have similar problems. Does anything show in your router logs? Does it happen at the exact same time every morning?
Have you tried a static DHCP mapping, which doesn’t expire? It’s also known as DHCP reservation. You’ll likely need to consult your router documentation, and ensure it’s outside of the range of dynamic IP assignments.
What could be the mistake?
At times, the connection is lost.
Sometimes an integration restart is required.
I use esp-01 (esp8266) with esp link.
Panel, visonic powermaster 30 g2
The only way I can help is if you set home assistant logging to debug and upload a home assistant log file to pastebin/dropbox with the part of the log file covering the time of the disconnection. This is all described on the wiki.
If your home assistant log file includes this line
ERROR Connection Lost : disconnected because the Ethernet/USB connection was externally terminated.
Then there is nothing I can do. Something in your local network is disconnecting the connection between the device you run home assistant and your esp-01 (esp8266).
That is, it turns out that something is blocking the 23rd port?
In general, it would be nice to change it to esp.
Added lines to the config, but does not hang yet, we will wait ))
