Visonic Powermax and Powermaster Component

davesmeghead · October 6, 2019, 9:53am

Can you please elaborate or maybe upload a log file to tell me why you think it isn’t working, that puzzles me.

The Zone Type and Sensor Type are 2 different things and you are mixing them here.

The Zone Type refers to how the panel uses that sensor in the zone, these are the Zone Types (in English, there are Dutch and French versions in the actual code):
“Non-Alarm”, “Emergency”, “Flood”, “Gas”, “Delay 1”, “Delay 2”, “Interior-Follow”, “Perimeter”, “Perimeter-Follow”, “24 Hours Silent”, “24 Hours Audible”, “Fire”, “Interior”, “Home Delay”, “Temperature”, “Outdoor”

The Sensor Type refers to what the actual sensor is, these are the Sensor Types:
“Vibration”, “Shock”, “Motion”, “Magnet”, “Smoke”, “Gas”, “Wired”
A PowerMaster can also have “Temperature” and “Camera”

The Sensor Type is only set from the EPROM i.e. “Standard Plus” and “Powerlink” modes

If you set ForceStandard then you will not get the Sensor Type at all.

davesmeghead · October 6, 2019, 10:02am

And another thing
It is the Sensor Type that I use to set the HA device class. If it is in “Standard” mode then the Sensor Type is not set for each sensor and the device classes are set to the default.
It is the device class in HA that changes what the icon looks like and how it behaves in HA.
If you’re in “Standard” mode or you just need to override the device class then you can do this in your HA customization, for example:

    "binary_sensor.visonic_z07":
      friendly_name: 'Kitchen PIR'
      device_class: motion

So, in your case Z07 is coming out as a Gas sensor type, you can override it like the example above to make it appear in HA as a motion sensor type.
For a list of valid device classes look here

svanstrom · October 7, 2019, 5:16pm

Just wanted to say a big thanks to @davesmeghead for this awesome component! It works flawlessly for me, using a USB-to-TTL-cable for 7€ connected to my Powermaster-10.

I get Powerlink mode quickly and I can finally ditch all my lousy 433Mhz magnetic sensors and use the alarm door sensors instead. Big thumbs up!

unreal · October 9, 2019, 2:58pm

Hi Dave,

“Standard plus” does not work, after half an hour the panel is still in the downlaod mode. For the log file see https://pastebin.com/0B85H34a
Thank you for explaining how I can override a device class.

davesmeghead · October 9, 2019, 8:00pm

I’ve taken a look through and I’m really confused, your log file for this plugin starts at 19:24:27 and by 19:24:53 it says it’s in Standard Plus mode (line 280 in the log file)

[Process Settings] Entering Standard Plus Mode as we got the pin codes from the EPROM"

It’s downloaded the EPROM and confirms Standard Plus. It tries to get to Powerlink and fails.

Also, I notice throughout your log file:

[custom_components.visonic.alarm_control_panel] code format none as powerlink *****************************

This is HA getting the code status, this means that HA thinks it’s in Powerlink (it’s in Standard Plus but that’s another story, I should update the log file entry to “code format none as powerlink or standard plus”)

What makes you think it’s in Download Mode? If it were in Download Mode then the sensors wouldn’t work, do the sensors work in the HA Frontend?

Just to make sure, from the HA Frontend, can you go in to Developer Tools (it looks like a hammer), then select STATES. Find the entity “alarm_control_panel.visonic_alarm” and look at the attributes column (the 3rd column). Find the attribute called “Mode:” and tell me what it is set to.

D

davesmeghead · October 9, 2019, 8:10pm

For everyone, to help a little, this is how I make sensors from the Visonic List of Panel Attributes

- platform: template
  scan_interval: 5
  sensors:
      visonic_exception_count:
        value_template: >-
                    {{ state_attr('alarm_control_panel.visonic_alarm', 'Comm Exception Count') | int }}
        friendly_name: 'Panel Exception Count' 
      visonic_panel_status:
        value_template: >-
                    {{ state_attr('alarm_control_panel.visonic_alarm', 'Panel Status') | title  }}
        friendly_name: 'Panel Status' 
      visonic_panel_mode:
        value_template: >-
                    {{ state_attr('alarm_control_panel.visonic_alarm', 'Mode') | title  }}
        friendly_name: 'Panel Mode' 
      visonic_panel_last_event:
        value_template: >-
                    {{ state_attr('alarm_control_panel.visonic_alarm', 'Panel Last Event') | title | replace("/", "by") | replace("  ", " ") | trim | replace("Fob 01", "David")  | replace("Fob 02", "My Daughter") | replace("Fob 03", "Wife") | replace("User 01", "Your Phone") }}
        friendly_name: 'Last Event'

You can then use them in the Frontend by calling up, for example, “sensor.visonic_panel_mode”

unreal · October 12, 2019, 12:27pm

Hi Dave,

The panel mode was not displayed correctly in lovelace and remained on download while in reality it was on standard plus. Problem solved, thank you also for the template help.

DavRebelo · October 28, 2019, 6:09am

Hi, I have a Visonic Powermax, Original model I think, picture below:

And I would like to connect it to my Home Assistant, I read the entire thread but ended up more confused than when I started,

I have a couple of questions:

Can I connect it to Home Assistant?
If it is possible, can anyone help me do that?

Thanks,
David

davesmeghead · October 30, 2019, 7:27pm

Hi David,

It looks like you may not be able to connect the original Powermax, this has been tried already. It seems like it depends on if you have a re-seller version or not I think. sosandstrom has tried this already and I don’t think that he succeeded. Check out the www.bankras.org link in the post below for more info.

DavRebelo · November 1, 2019, 6:12am

I see… this is disapointing.

Is there any test I can do to find out if my Powermax can be connected to Home Assistant?

Mark-Mills · November 1, 2019, 10:02am

Hello,
Is anyone else suffering with false alarm triggers? I have been getting this regularly for the last few weeks or so. I was running on a NUC with lots of automations and other stuff going on which I suspected was causing the problem. So I moved to a dedicated Raspberry Pi (4) which has nothing on it apart from this and I still get false alarms. If I turn off the PI then everything on the alarm has been working correctly with no false triggers.
I’m connected via Wifi currently running v0.100.3 and the latest version of this component.
Looking at the logs I can see one of the sensors does show a trigger on movement but this doesn’t seem to happen when not connected to Home Assistant.
I’d really like to get this working properly as it’s incredibly useful and the icing on my home automation cake!
If anyone has had similar issues I would be grateful of any advice.
Regards
Mark

DickiePhitt · November 2, 2019, 12:49pm

I have a Powermax Pro and USR-TCP232-E Serial Server which on the surface are working well together however, I am finding that on an irregular basis (can be days or weeks) the USR-TCP232 appears to freeze (no change in TX or RX count) and the Lovelace overview remains but, of course, the alarm/disarm and other functionality doesn’t work.
Annoyingly this tends to occur whilst I’m out of the country but has, to date, been able to be resolved by remotely rebooting the USR-TCP232 & HA.
This week the same happened but the USR-TCP232 wasn’t accessible remotely this time and required the Powermax to be powered down and up before it could be reached.
I’m thinking that somewhere I’ve got the USR-TCP232 set up incorrectly, or some parameter is too tight. This is the RS232 page.

Any thoughts gratefully received.

barsamgr · November 2, 2019, 7:49pm

Hello to all.
This is my first post here, although I’ve been following the progress of this component since the beginning. At the first releases I gave it a try, but I was not able to use it with my iTach IP2SL module, so I kept my VERA Edge as the handler of the alar system.
My setup is a Visonic PowerMax Pro Panel with iTach IP2SL for serial communication. I had this setup since I bough the Alarm system as it was intended for the VERA plugin and it was confirmed to work flawlessly.
So… couple of days back I decided that it was time to try again.
Initially it all seemed fine and I was able to connect to the panel through the iTach module and operate it. But I noticed that after going to powerlink mode, the PIRs were not updated any more, and the state change was very slow. So I started digging into the code to see if I could find the cause. After enabling the debugging, I discovered that a type of packet stoped being sent by the panel, and this was “0d A5 00 04…” although packets “0d A5 0d 04…” kept coming.
After straggling for 2 days with a lot of debugging and comparing with the VERA plugin, I was able to find the problem, and I am reporting it here so that maybe I can help others to overcome this issue.
So after changing 2 parts of the code, the problem was solved and the PIRs are updated without any problem and without any delay.
Both changes were in “pyvisonic.py”

All I did was to disable the MSG_ALIVE message when in powerlink mode, and send message MSG_RESTORE instead of MSG_STATUS while in powerlink.
I am not sure if the MSG_ALIVE was even a problem, but it was never used in the VERA plugin, so i thought it is not of any use.

davesmeghead · November 2, 2019, 11:54pm

Hi Ardash and welcome,

I’ve taken a look through your post and I really welcome your suggestions, I’ll incorporate your proposed code changes and test them with my Panel over the next few days or so. Your proposals seem sensible, I just want to make sure before everyone starts using them
You didn’t confirm this in your post but I assume that the code changes you made have now made your Home Assistant setup work? Do the PIRs pass through updates etc?

Can I ask you a hardware question. With your iTach IP2SL, does it use proper RS232 voltage levels or does it use TTL. The interface to the Panel is TTL unless you have a converter.

Now for a bit more on those A5 message from the Panel

The “04” means a Zone event has happened.

0d A5 00 04
0d A5 0d 04

The only difference is the 00 to 0d. This is just the message count from the Panel which I ignore anyway, my code would not make a difference between these 2 messages. The MSG_RESTORE and MSG_STATUS should trigger the panel to send the sequence of A5 messages and so the message count is not relevant.

davesmeghead · November 3, 2019, 12:02am

Not without wiring it up and trying it, and that means buying the hardware (approx £20 or $20). You don’t need an HA install, just install python 3 on your computer (Windows or Linux and connected to the same network as the panel) and use test.py from my component.

barsamgr · November 3, 2019, 9:00am

Hi Dave,
Sorry for missing things at my message, but I focused on the problem and I forgot to mention the result.
Yes my setup now in HA is working perfectly with instant response.

Regarding the messages. I know that you are ignoring the count, but here is the big problem. 0d does not include the zone number so the code does not know which zone was triggered. Check the block of A5 packets at the image:

Before the change all these 04 00 were not sent by the panel once the first MSG_STATUS was sent to the panel after changing to powerlink mode. No idea why, but I suspect that it is triggering something that should not be triggered.

As for the iTach IP2SL I imagine it is TTL because I never used a converter. I also forgot to mention that it is a POE module, so no external power was required.

davesmeghead · November 3, 2019, 11:07am

First of all, I’m not that knowledgable in the area of networks, but here goes:

It may be the software in the USR-TCP232, is there an update available for it. Could you swap it for a different one?
It may be that your network switch or the setup where you have HA is dropping the TCP connection (maybe timeouts I don’t know)

Within my component I have a “disconnect” handler on the communications itself, if the communication with the panel stops then I try to restart the Component to re-connect to the Panel. Is it possible for you to enable logging and upload your log file here when you get the problem. Restarting HA will wipe out the log file so I’d need you to save the previous log file somehow first

davesmeghead · November 3, 2019, 11:13am

I have to admit this one is a strange problem, I’ve not seen this before. Have you sorted it? Was it working previously and has just started doing this?

Is it the sensor itself that may be faulty? Have you tried replacing the battery in the sensor? My Component only reports what the Panel reports so I can only assume that there is a problem with the Sensor, the Panel or maybe a conflict in radio frequency (RF). Do you have zwave near it as the visonic sensors and zwave use similar frequencies I think. I’m clutching at straws here though, I very much doubt this is the problem but what you describe is really unusual I can’t think of anything else.

Mark-Mills · November 3, 2019, 1:34pm

Hello Dave,
Thanks for the reply. Coincidentally, I was just planning to post an update. After having 3 or 4 nights of false alarms, then disconnecting Home Assistant and having 3 nights without any false alarms I got woken up at 7:30 this morning with the alarm going off! I am not sure whether to feel pleased or not about this So this ties up with what you were saying and there doesn’t seem to be any possibility this component could cause the alarm to be triggered. I don’t have any zwave devices but do have Xiaomi ones. Maybe they use similar frequencies. But I will leave the alarm turned off at night for a couple of nights and see if I can use the log to see what triggers the alarm and then, assuming some consistency, isolate that sensor.
But thanks again for the response. I appreciate your thoughts.
Cheers
Mark

pocket · November 3, 2019, 4:13pm

Was your serial interface still connected to the panel? If so, what specific interface are you using?