[OBSOLETE] DSC -> EVL-3(4) -> Alarmserver -> Smartthings

love the new changes, finally i feel like we have a setup that competes very well with the serial connection version. there are still some minor issues with the toggle for chime but thats to be expected until all the bugs are worked out. i’ll continue to update my git based on yours just so i have my copy in case you stop updating :slight_smile:

We are moving to a new home in a few weeks and the existing alarm is an 8-zone GE system… Looks like that isn’t compatible with the EVL-3, so I’m looking at swapping out the panel.

Is the Vista20P a good choice? I can pick one up for about $50. If you were in my situation, which panel would you get?

this only works with DSC panels. There’s a whole separate alarmserver for Honeywell+EVL integration, but i don’t have one to test to make the changes to be compatible with this, so right now this is DSC only…

That said - get a PC1864 v4.6. Don’t settle for less. The cost difference is too minor to matter. Make sure it’s v4.6 or you can’t use easy enrollment or CO detectors (which technically need 4.5, but…just go for >=4.6…)

if you get the TR5164 and a PK5500 then you can use 2-way devices like a WT5500 wireless keypad for additional keypads

if you already have enough keypads and they are wired and you don’t care about wireless keypads, go with an RFK5564 + PK5500 for any extras which gives you 64 zones, but only one-way wireless so no wireless keypad support. You can also get the touch screen keypads…i don’t have any experience with those.

I swapped out a PC1555 with my PC1864 after I moved in…mostly because i wanted more than 8 zones as well, and wireless devices and whatnot. It was pretty straightforward overall, just time consuming. I used my label maker and put little labels on all the zone wires and what not, which made it a lot easier, but added time to the process.

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I love the changes… the Chime enable/disable is a handy feature for sure.

i also have a pc1864, i got the kit on amazon for 112 bucks. you can buy all the components or there is a kit that includes keypad, cpu, wall box, power, battery, siren, and a keyfob. someone was selling 3 of them for 112, so i bought all 3 and resold 2 on ebay. the kit is usually like 250.

OK some more changes are up now.

I re-did all the icons, so now everything has icons that make sense. You can see the fun I had tracking down what are the available icons here:

We should all push smartthings to make it easier to pick icons! This is just crazy! Anyway, I think all the new icons make a lot of sense, it looks a lot better now.

I also used no break spaces for things like “No Trouble” and “No Chime” as well as “Sensor Reset” Hopefully those spaces work well for everyone! For me, it means the text doesn’t get wrapped onto another line and get cut off, which is what it was doing before and it looked bad. It’s looking much better for me, hopefully it works for everyone else too. If it didn’t work, you might see some crazy characters like Sensor\u00A0Reset, if you see something crazy like that (while in the smarthings app…), let me know, but so far it seems to be working well.

Anyhow, please try out the latest stay/away panels - they look much better now I think.

Gonna work on the new contact/motion/etc devices later…got another cool surprise coming up too!

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This is very nice now :slight_smile:

I have wireless smoke and CO2 devices, I take it there are no support for them yet? I have just set them to 4 wire smokes for now but not had a chance to see of they actually report ok yet.

I’m gonna make a CO device which should act the same as 4wire smoke but just show up as a CO detector in smart things capabilities. But 4wire smoke should work for now, or even zone contact…

it’s only 2-wire smokes that are funny. the 4-wire smokes and co detectors mostly act like anything else, we’re just re-mapping the states to the smartthings devices so smartthings thinks they are actually smoke detectors instead of just thinking it’s an open/closed contact, which it still basically is ,but yeah…

if you think it’s nice now, just wait til you see what i’m doing now…

we’re gonna have a zone bypass slider where you can slide to select zone 1 - 64, then hit a submit button to send the bypass…that’s actually pretty much already done and working…I’m also implementing the 8 status LED’s that are reported as part of event code 510…this is so you can actually see that zones are bypassed. It’s not 100% but it’s getting there. it was a lot more annoying to implement than i thought since it doesn’t send a partition number - event 510/511 is ALWAYS partition 1, and rather than sending a partition number it sends a 2 byte hex status code which i have to interpret to convert it into the 8 status LEDs (yes 8…though my actual panel only has like 3-4…i think some of the other stuff shows up as items on the LCD rather than actual LEDs)

Updates look great. I have one basic question however… Sorry I missed it if it was already covered. Why do we need both the away and the stay panels? It seems that we can make most settings changes and see status changes on both panels. Thx for the quick education.

EDIT: I think Imfigured it out… Re reading the install instructions. Basically each provides a switch formuse in routines. Right? So if I dont use the commands in routines then I may only need one of the pannels? Just curious.

yes that.

there’s no way to use the buttons in side of the panels from routines and other things.

the stay/away is the function of the big main button which also acts as a switch device in smart things.

Jordan have you followed the last few posts on this thread?

Also my chime only shows toggling chime 24/7 never the status.

did you enable the extra event codes in alarmserver.cfg for the chime statuses?

and no i hadn’t seen that - i guess yet another version is popping up? I guess its written in some kinda .net or whatnot…well, i am not about to start learning that, lol. but interesting none the less…would be nice to make a frontend to setup the smartthings api some day, that’s definitely a huge usability thing. but i mean, most of us have this working already so it’s not a huge deal.

wait til you see the new panels i’m working on though, probably will have more features than anything you’ve seen to date…

after seeing that and a few other panels though - makes me think it might be worth making custom icons…seems it’s the only way to make it look nice.

Yea I checked the cfg file but I’ll update it again.

I believe that thread is the original kholloway but it looks like it’s morphed some.

haha like this thread it’s gone everywhere.

you need to update dsc integration too…if you hadn’t.

'663':"partition chime",
'664':"partition nochime",

but i’ve got a lot more coming…get ready for zone bypassing and all 8 led statuses. I ended up having to redo the code for that - my initial implementation would send all 8 statuses every time it came in and it was causing it to slow down the app significantly, i refactored the code a bit and it’s almost ready, just a few more minutes i hope

i figured it out, i updated my github repo but not the actual alarmserver on my linux box.

i was just looking into ws4913 which i think i might buy 2 of, co2 detector.

yeah if you go wireless, those are your only option.

if you go wired, you can use anything. I used all system sensor in my basement since they seemed nice, I used a co1224 which is nice because its got a built in supervisory relay, so no extra relays are needed. i haven’t bought any wireless co’s yet, but i was planning to get those…

OK latest code is up…bypass slider/switch should hopefully be self explanatory but you basically just drag it to where you want and then hit bypass. the big box will show the value the slider is set to to make it easier. the status leds are also pretty explanatory, make sure eventcode 510 (AND 511) is enabled in alarmserver.cfg…this will need new new dsc integration + alarmserver + panels.

cool, upgraded all. so the slider just lets you pick a zone to bypass?

I installed the latest too… let me ask a newby question… what is bypass function used for? To disable a zone?

Also, and when you bypass a zone… how do you turn off the bypass? Or does it do that automatically after a period of time or something?

Thanks for all of the nice work on this!

you just run it again on the same zone, or, you can arm and disarm, it will unbypass after you disarm

and yes the slider just lets you pick the zone to bypass…

also I noticed i missed eventcode 511 - you also need this enabled in alarmserver.cfg for the flashing status led.

i also just found an issue where it kind of takes a while to activate the bypass - it’s waiting for a timeout on the terminal. I need to make it send a # character so it bypasses immediately. It seems this does actually improve the speed, so I’m gonna try to add it to all the 071 commands, some more updates coming soon i guess!

OK. I found a bug where if the hex value sent is real low that it would generate only partial binary values, i needed to pad it out to 8 characters, but now it’s working wayyy better.

new alarmserver + stay/away + dscintegration is needed again

Apparently if you send “00” as the bypass, it will remove all bypasses, which is handy. I’ve adjusted the slider so it lets you go down to 0. Now we can just drag the slider to 0 and hit bypass, and it will remove all bypasses. Nice.

There’s some other stuff you can do as well:
Additional Bypass Commands:
Bypass Recall: Press [99]. The keypad will recall the last group of zones that were bypassed
Clear Bypass: Press [00]. The keypad will clear the bypass on all zones.
Save Bypass: Press [95]. The keypad will save which zones are manually bypassed.
Recall Save: Press [91]. The keypad will recall the bypassed zones that were saved.

Not sure I care about those right now - but it might be worth making buttons to individually press those rather than trying to use the slider for all of it…if anyone actually cares about those i can add them…but for now i think it’s good

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nice… I like having the “0” to disable all bypass.