Yes, I’ll try that. I’m using it on a daily basis so if MQTT halts for some reason I will notice. Thank you.
Looking good - running fine for 12 hrs
Less disconnections aswell as not crashing? Hopefully so!
None so far - 15 hrs
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@Peter2 That must indeed be a very very old model as it has some quite weird features that certainly aren’t common on Powermax plus models. I can’t guarantee it will work but will say you have a few options:
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I have done some testing of a new RS232 adapter that might make board connection very simple, one small adapter straight onto the pins that you can see under the power cable, and connecting straight onto the Wemos. This would be super simple and I reckon has a 50:50 chance of working.
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You can also buy a new panel and not replace the zone sensors. A new panel has a good chance of being compatible with old sensors and might cost less than 50 GBP or 70 USD, especially if you have a look on eBay where there are plenty floating around. It would require some tinkering to get all set up but does offer you another option to getting it running without totally changing your system (the above kit would almost certainly be compatible with the new panel unless it was also super super old). That’s my impression anyway!
Having the login issue since latest upgrade I took the chance to reflash to a new NodeMCU unit with a smaller footprint that fits better in my panel. I’ve had in running for 24+ hours, no problems… But. Today I noticed it had disconnected from MQTT broker and would not reconnect until soft rebooted. 
I will keep an eye on it to see if that was just a hickup.
Curious! Bloody MQTT!
You can always do a full reset of the device with the 5 quick power cycles as per github instructions, that should have fixed your first device. For info now, but potentially useful!
Yeah, I know, but I’ve had that smaller NodeMCU laying around for a while. Now my setup has a nice and tidy look to it. It’s been running for 24h+ now, keeping my fingers crossed the MQTT disconnect issue is a thing of the past.
The problem report feature is really nice! I’ve added that to Home Assistant.
edit One thing caught my attention… I have some sensors with low battery warning. However, there’s a " Unknown (Z31) low batt"… I don’t have a zone 31. Any ideas?
Possibly a siren box?
Really interesting with MQTT! I’ve used another version earlier but think I’ll go for this and modify for my needs to use with my home automation.
I have a question, maybe it’s already answered, the doorbell button of the power max alarms, what’s the reason for this? Or to continuo my thought. I would like to give command to the Power Max to trig this sound, is it a found command for that? I also thinking about bypass the real doorbell and control by the esp8266, with seeping kids etc. it would sometimes be possible to bypass the signals and instead get an SMS or notification at Kodi, or maybe the sound out of the alarm central.
Curious one @Frisk - I have not seen any documentation on triggering the doorbell sound through the serial integration, but in theory it is possible and the platform would easily support it. One possible option would be to have a relay board triggering a fake zone, which in turn is set to be a doorbell sound. Then you would need to use Webcore (or similar) to link the doorbell with the relay in order to have customisable control…
I was able to connect Wemo to PowerMax+ via UNO in the middle. I do get Alarm Status and Zone names, but I’m having issue with ST App. In app I changed IP and tried both Serial & IO for ‘Method to trigger alarm’ but it does not pull status from Wemo. Here is the error I see on ST web page under Live Logging:
If I tap on Refresh button -> java.lang.NullPointerException: Cannot invoke method getDataValue() on null object @line 334 (refresh)
If I tap on Configue button -> Configuring Alarm (getting zones+types, configuring IP/port/timeout)
uri /status
java.lang.NullPointerException: Cannot invoke method getDataValue() on null object @line 317 (configure)
Could you please see what is going on?
Thanks in advance
What approach did you use to add to Home Assistant?
I am thinking this through too.
First I setup a sensor in configuration:
- platform: mqtt
state_topic: “alarm/problem_report”
Then I added a conditional card in Lovelace UI so it only shows when there’s an error message:
type: conditional
conditions:
- entity: sensor.mqtt_sensor
state_not: “No problems detected”
card:
type: sensor
entity: sensor.mqtt_sensor
name: Visonic Status
Yes, I do have a siren box but it is not low on battery and there is no Zone 31 to be found in my panel?
I have changed the bad batteries and the panel is all green and happy, but MQTT tells me “Unknown (Z31) low batt”.
I have done a full reset and proper power off/on.
Can you send me an export of the /status page on the Wemos dashboard please. Thank you!
Hi Chris, I started to look into webCore in a bit more details and I am trying to find out if I can create an if statement that is true when the alarm is in the arming away and/or arming home state? I can see the tiles in the smartthings app changing to orange with this text, but I am unsure how to check on this in WebCore.
Also I would like to see if it is possible to check in Webcore when the alarm is in the entry delay status, so I can trigger an action to announce that the alarm needs to be disarmed?
Any ideas for this?
Thanks
Bart
Arming is easy, you can look for state change from disarmed to pending, and that should capture all events.
Disarming is a bit harder since in theory the alarm doesn’t change away from armed until it is disarmed (otherwise it would be a security risk), there is no pending. That said if you checked for currently armed status and then also see the entrance zone opening (the equivalent trigger for the alarm to sound entrance noise) then it would give you an equivalent through ST.
Nice one. I’m trying to extract the individual zones and map against binary sensors for the batteries using regex_search on the payload (without success so far).