Short answer is me too, the reliability with Vera was becoming an issue. I understand that they are going to issue a new UI with their new owners, so maybe that will improve but I think there is a rocky road ahead first.
I was however able to get and keep Powerlink status and am using the rs232 to usb cable for connectivity. Works a treat under HA.
Thanks.
Works perfectly for me. Put the files in custom components and added the USB bit to the example and BOOM!!!
Awesome work thanks @davesmeghead. You going to make it offical any time soon?
I’m really pleased it’s working well for you. I think that it’s near the point where I would consider making it official and getting it integrated with the main HA release. There are 2 things that are stopping me making it official.
The first is that I’ve had a quick look at the formal testing required and I’m not sure that it’s worth it for the few users so far. There may be more users than I know about as anyone can download it and install without leaving comments here. But i’m not sure that it’s at the threshold of being sufficiently “informally” tested yet. I’d like a few more people to test it through the existing custom_components route first,
The second is the time I have available, I’m pretty busy at work at the moment with deadlines so it would be at least a month away that I could put the time back in to this. Tweaking and fixing minor bugs is OK, it’s just the effort that it appears to take to formalise it.
Anyway, thanks again for your feedback, it’s very much appreciated.
Hi everyone,
I am totally new to HA but i have a visonic alarm which i would like to integrate.
Currently using domoticz but considering HA is worth the try.
I bought a USR-TCP232-T module but have a hard time setting it up … even can’t access the website of the thing to change settings… anyhow… once i get it running will it work or do I need a usr-tcp232-e2 unit instead?
Welcome on board. It can be tricky to get the thing set up but once it is I’ve not had any problems with mine for years. Sorry but I can’t offer any help in setting it up, like I said I did it years ago.
Yes, the component will work with this device
Hi Dave, thanks for your help!
I can access the TTL and i checked my wiring which seems ok. The panel is not responding to HA.
I do wonder if I have the correct settings set in the TTL unit.
and here are the TTL unit settings… not sure either if it is correct.
in the log i see only the following related to visonic.
Fri Sep 21 2018 20:44:29 GMT+0200 (Midden-Europese zomertijd)
You are using a custom component for alarm_control_panel.visonic which has not been tested by Home Assistant. This component might cause stability problems, be sure to disable it if you do experience issues with Home Assistant.
Hope you can help me out… much appreciated.
maybe you can also check my TCP settings… i have two options … TCP server or TCP Client…
These are the IP settings… i can choose for TCP server and TCP client… which one should i use?
which one to pick?
I must admit that the setup looks OK to me, but I’m no expert. My setup screens were different to that so I’m not familiar with those screens.
You need it in TCP Server, the component in HA acts like a client and connects to the server. I see that channels 1 to 4 are enabled on the same local port, I wonder if you only set up one connection and disable the rest. Maybe the same for the serial config. You don’t show the DHCP screen but I would turn it off and use a static IP. Can you ping the device from the command line?
I know that there are only 4 RS232 wires but are you sure that you have them correct? Power and Ground connected correctly and the Rx to Tx and Tx to Rx.
@davesmeghead, Been using now for a good couple of week and I’ve come across an issue which I wondered if it has impacted anyone else. I have a bunch of lightwaveRF lights and Energenie wall switches that I use/control via the rfxtrx module.
Been playing with automation of the lights and switches and finally got my head round some of the syntactical differences in handling lights versus switches (particularly single lights and switches versus individual units).
So the automation is calling services to turn off individual switches. All good so far, however it seems that it has also turned the alarm panel (which is also treated as a switch off), even though the automation does not refer to the panel at all only the individual wall switches that I want turned off.
When I use the services tool under ‘developer tools’ and call switch.turn_on and apply it to the alarm_panel it turns all the sensors on once again or rather makes then visible in the UI however they report status of ‘Unavailable’. I’ve tried re-starting HA, but that puts it back to the panel switch being Off and no sensors visible.
Any thoughts?
So been playing bit more. Basically it looks like in my attempts at automation I had issued a service call to switch.turn_off without naming an individual entity and so all switches were turned off. What I should have done was to turn only those switches I specifically wanted off.
To get the Visonic sensors back I had to toggle ‘force_standard’ to ‘yes’ and back to ‘no’ and then do a hard reboot of the HA system itself, to get the two communicating fully. After that the sensors start to communicate correctly.
Hope that helps others.
@davesmeghead Thanks for this plugin!! I was able to switch from openhab to home assistant once I found this. Running it over a usb/serial interface and it all looks good so far. Will let you know if i run into any issues.
@davesmeghead Nice work! However when using the component it ‘screws up’ the working of many other components in my HA setup so I had to disable it again. Did you test the component in a setup with (a lot of) other components?
Hi and welcome onboard. The only way that I can possibly look in to this is if you set logging to debug and upload your log file. I can then look through any potential problematic interactions, although I am not aware of any.
I have zwave with lots of switches, lamps etc, I have harmony hub/remotes, sonos speakers and things like nest, I’m not sure that it’s relevant though. I can only test with what I have, that’s why it’s uploaded here and not yet integrated with the main HA release.
Please upload you log file so I can try to work out what the problem is, thankyou
Hi all,
Firstly, awesome work on this component. I’ve been slowly expanding more and more on my Home Assistant and I started thinking if it would be possible to get an alarm that could integrate with HA - then I stumbled upon this as I have a Visonic Powermaster 30.
I’m not too keen on the idea of wiring stuff into the alarm board, so I was wondering if it would work with a combination of the RS232 kit and an “external” RS232->Ethernet convert ?
I know this is probably a more expensive approach, but as my alarm is monitored through a service (GSM module), I would prefer not to tinker too much with it 
Any feedback is appreciated and keep up the great work here!
I must admit I’m not sure, my question on the RS232 kit is that it might change the voltage levels. The RS232 on the connector inside the alarm panel is TTL logic levels, so does the RS232 kit change these to full bivoltage levels. Having said that, the RS232 to ethernet convertor you identify may take in the bivoltage RS232 levels so you could be OK, you’d need to check.
How does the GSM module interface to the alarm panel? Does it already use the RS232 connection inside the panel, if so then is there a second RS232 available as I don’t think so but then I have a PowerMax Pro?
I know I’m giving you more questions than answers but these are the kind of things you’d need to check out, I’m sorry but I don’t have any experience in using it like you’re proposing with your panel.
I’m using an internal GSM module as well, should not cause any issues. I can still use all GSM features together with the usr module…
Or do you mean that a 3rd party is monitoring your panel and might not like you tampering with the panel? I think if you are using a USR-TCP232 module with standard mode the panel won’t even notice (besides shutting it down for the install).
I didn’t think of that so it’s a good question too. But I think it would be OK. The USR-TCP232 and the component in HA mimics a powerlink module so if you could fit a powerlink module with what you already have then connecting something that mimics it should be OK too, even in powerlink mode.
Just thought I’d shar with you something I’ve done to ‘enhance’ the visual element of your component under lovelace.
I’ve been playing with a small form of icon colour depending upon state. I use it with icons to show movement and door opening state being returned from my alarm system. Each alarm sensor as you know returns a value ‘T’ for triggered state and ‘-’ when in a non-triggered state.
I have defined binary_sensors, like this;
- platform: template
sensors:
office_movement:
device_class: motion
value_template: "{{ is_state('sensor.visonic_z07', 'T') }}"
front_door:
device_class: door
value_template: "{{ is_state('sensor.visonic_z01', 'T') }}"
which means that I can then place sensors on picture-elements cards to show the entity icon only, using
- type: state-icon
tap_action: more-info
entity: binary_sensor.office_movement
style:
top: 89%
left: 53%
vs
or onto entity cards for the full status
- type: entities
entities:
- entity: binary_sensor.hallway_movement
name: Hallway Movement
secondary_info: last-changed
- entity: binary_sensor.kitchen_movement
name: Kitchen Movement
secondary_info: last-changed
- entity: binary_sensor.office_movement
name: Office Movement
secondary_info: last-changed
vs
Hope that helps.
Looks really good, thankyou for sharing. Just one suggestion, as well as “T” for Triggered, I also set perimeter (magnetic sensors) to “O” for Open. This happens when a door is left open for example, the “T” condition is replaced by an “O”.
Good point, so the binary sensor definition for doors, needs to be updated to
front_door:
device_class: door
value_template: "{{ is_state('sensor.visonic_z01', 'T') or is_state('sensor.visonic_z01', 'O') }}"