Visonic Powermax and Powermaster Component

[davesmeghead (Dave)]

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 (gjvdp)]

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 (David Rebelo)]

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:

1. Can I connect it to Home Assistant?

2. If it is possible, can anyone help me do that?

Thanks,
David

[davesmeghead (Dave)]

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.

Visonic Powermax and Powermaster Component

Hi, I have a regular PowerMax system, that I am trying to connect to HA using the Visonic component and the Ethernet USR-TCP232-E2. I think the issue is related to the RS-232 part, as the USR-TCP web UI displays the following a few seconds after restarting Home Assistant: Module Name: USR-TCP232-E2 Firmware Revision: 3014 Current IP Address: 10.0.1.3 MAC Address: **** Run Time: 0day: 0hour: 52min: 8 TX Count(ETH): 0/0 bytes RX Count(ETH): 37/0 bytes Conn Status(ETH)A: CONNECTED( 1)/LIS…

Visonic Powermax and Powermaster Component

I got response from Sector Alarm, Swedish reseller, and they confirmed their version of PowerMax firmware has the RS-232 pins disabled

Visonic Powermax and Powermaster Component

Does this help https://www.bankras.org/projects/electronics/ftdi-ttl232r-3v3-to-visonic-powermax/ Edit: sorry I’m repeating a link from another post, but this is about the original Powermax and not the pro It looks like, counting left to right, the panel pins are: pin 2 is TX, pin 3 is RX, pin 4 is ground. So, on the RS232 device you have, you connect pin 2 to RX, pin 3 to TX and pin 4 is ground. You need to cross over RX and TX.

[DavRebelo (David Rebelo)]

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]

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]

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 (Ardash Barsamian)]

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 (Dave)]

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

@barsamgr

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.

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 (Dave)]

@DavRebelo

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

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 (Ardash Barsamian)]

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 (Dave)]

@DickiePhitt

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.

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 (Dave)]

@Mark-Mills

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 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]

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 (Rob)]

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

[Mark-Mills]

Hello Rob,
I’m using the USR WIFI232-D2 Uart to WIFI Module (https://www.amazon.co.uk/USR-WIFI232-D2-Module-Ethernet-802-11/dp/B00R2J3O1Y) and when previously disabling had removed the power connection.
Something strange is still going on as when I went out earlier I armed the alarm using the key fob remote which seems to have caused the alarm to lose connection to my HA server

I can see I left the house at exactly 4:06 and armed away the alarm which is exactly the time I lose connection.
Regards
Mark

[davesmeghead (Dave)]

@Mark-Mills

I can see I left the house at exactly 4:06 and armed away the alarm which is exactly the time I lose connection.

Hi Mark, can you upload a log file to pastebin please, I’ll take a look through to see if I can spot anything.

[Mark-Mills]

Hi Dave, is the home-assistant.log that is in the config directory? Which doesn’t seem to have much in it. Maybe I need to have the log level turned up to give something more useful.
Cheers
Mark

[davesmeghead (Dave)]

You need to put this in your configuration.yaml file. Look here for more details

[Mark-Mills]

https://pastebin.com/AW5n9Bdj
Sorry for the delay, I am a pastebin virgin!