Cjcharles, I would like to buy the Wemos chip from you. I can’t seem to send private messages. Can you leave me the details how I can buy from you? thanks
@Gupta_ash It looks like the Wemos isnt enrolling, which almost certainly (95+%) means you will need the Arduino board in order to improve timings and voltages for the serial connection. Im not sure why but this seems very common with US Powermax Pro and UK Powermax+ (other US/UK models seem fine such as Express, Complete, and even UK Powermax Pro works fine) - Visonic have obviously varied the chips and firmware that they use in every model!
Im actually working on an improvement (to Wemos firmware) which will make it possible to set up your own Arduino board as the code on the Arduino will be much simpler. Hope to have something in about a week or so (at a push). In the meantime I can post one out to you, I imagine it is pretty cheap as it is a very small board so would probably work out as like £11 including postage to the US, but you’re also welcome to wait.
@Nightraver I have updated my main post with a link to my new online shop (fully secured and guaranteed by me)
Thanks @cjcharles, for your reply and all the help. Is it possible for me to program the adrino board myself with current firmware or do I need the new firmware for wemos. I saw few comments about needing this board before so assuming there is some work around.
Please let me know.
The Arduino is a totally separate chip which needs some extra firmware on it in order to deal with some Powermax models due to the hardware/firmware decisions from Visonic. Its only a tiny chip and runs fine on an Arduino Nano 328P.
In my Github page you will see a sub-page for the Arduino firmware and some flashing tips, but I havent been able to export my Arduino code as it is based on some very random libraries that are a pain to get working. As I mentioned above I am close to simplifying the code for the Arduino (by changing the Wemos code mainly) and then you could flash it through Arduino studio, but not ready just yet.
2 Likes
The Wemos and Arduino were working with my Powermax+, but now there is no communication with the alarm. I can connect to the Wemos from a web browser and see “Not Ready”. I set the Powermax+ to Factory default to see if this would help and now The Powermax+ will not Enroll the “Powerlink” Wemos. The wiring hasn’t changed. Would you have any ideas or diagnostics that I can run on the Arduino and Wemos to see if they are still ok?
I’m looking into doing this but I’m a bit of a novice. How exactly do I power the Wemos from inside the alarm? I have a PowerMax Complete but the instructions aren’t entirely clear to me. 
Amazing! I just read through the discussion you’ve had here. Great stuff. I am a Tech support Specialist. And Visonics Powermax/Powermaster is in my portefolio.
CJcharles. would you be so kind and share your contact info with me? You may add me on LinkedIn, or write me an email.
I am wondering. Would this work for the Powermaster as well?
I have a ISP router which is configured through a webinterface. It’s not possible to give devices a fixed ip in the router. Is it possible to give the Wemos D1 a fixed ip in the chip itself?
@sacredshapes
In addition to the extra stuff Ive sent you in your PM, I have attached a few photos of where you can draw power for the Wemos from inside the panel. You should then plug this power into the Barrel connector (centre pin positive as in the diagram on my Github link) to benefit from all of the Wemos’ protection and power control circuitry. The easiest option is taking power from the cable between transformer and into the alarm - that is 12V and GND (red and black). The harder option (which has a slight benefit of being battery backed up, but unless your internet is also battery backed up then this is not useful) is to take it from the Visonic PCB somewhere. Unfortunately every version of every alarm seems to have a different locations for this - sometimes there is 12V in the SerialRX/TX pinout, sometimes there is a screw terminal 12V for use in external devices, and sometimes a variety of other similar options. You can see I went for using the DC in cable from the transformer!:
@SteffenADI I have sent you a connect on Linkedin. In principle it should support Powermaster, however I have never had the opportunity to test things as I do not own one, so I do not know for sure. It may work out of the box (since Visonic have kept a lot of overlap between the products), but it may require some tweaks, like the Powermax+ does in the UK.
@Nightraver - Not at the moment, but I will see if I can add some options for this. What model of router do you have? Normally it is possible on all of the ISP routers I have used.
1 Like
Thanks for your help!
Are there supposed to be more photos? I can only see the one.
I took a few of some different things and then decided not to bother sharing but forgot to update text, but in case it helps anybody else, this is the connection on the majority of UK Powermax Pros.
1 Like
Ah no worries.
This should be all the info I need. Cheers!
I might just send u one;-)
Thank you for sharing with me. I will check this out.
Also, Yesterday i had a complete review of the powermaster 360R. might be cool for u to look at in the future.
Fantastic project - thank you ! You’ve just shipped me one of your boards and looking forward to getting this implemented. One question - I have a powermax complete and it only has the Dual RS-232 with 20 pins. I’ve tried connecting the TX and RX to the 10 pin in the same positions mentioned in the guide on GitHub but as none of the zones show up in the Wemos dashboard it looks like this hasn’t worked. Any suggestions ? Thanks !
That’s strange. How old is your Powermax Complete and is it a UK model? Have you tried pressing the little reset button on the Wemos? I assume the Wi-Fi setup worked ok?
Where are you getting power from? Sometimes that can stop the comms from working. However I would expect arm to work even if disarm doesn’t (disarm requires pairing). Perhaps you need to run the enrol process through the Powermax Complete menu (some are automatic and some are manual), disarm and zone information isnt available until enrolled, while arming can be done through the Wemos webpage and doesnt need enrolling.
Thanks for the swift reply. Powermax Complete was professionally installed in 2010 and I assume it’s a UK model. Haven’t tried resetting yet but it connected to WiFi without an issue.
For the test I was powering from an external USB source ( I was avoiding closing the case fully until I’d tested - due to the uncertainty about the tx /rx connections). I’ll give your suggestions a try and connect straight to the 12v to see if that resolves it. Thanks!
Yup that sounds all good. Definitely do the restart and do try with internal power (ideally you can try with the panel open - since I think it should be able to enroll while you’re still in installer mode - i.e. panel open)
Hi @cjcharles I am experimenting with the motion sensors to switch on/off lights with the Powermax+ but in two occasions they got “stuck” in ST (I am not getting any parse() messages anymore). I am still able to arm/disarm from ST and when connecting the wemos via the web interface everything is fine (zone/status). So every time I deleted/recreated the alarm device but I am always struggling in creating the children devices (even with the test function which works fine). I am not sure why sometimes it works (currently it does not anymore).
I think the problem is that I am not getting any maxzoneid event which should be triggered by the getzonenames call. Do you have any other tricks to create/troubleshoot the children devices?
Dip the devices display status correctly in the main device (parent), hence just children which have a problem? If so then this is a big ST bug at the moment and I’m seeing some people have problems across multiple device handlers. I’ll try and message one of the ST staff on another thread if this is the case, otherwise if there is a problem with the parent too then I expect there is something else going on.
Correct me if I’m wrong but you have some wired zones aswell right? (Like zone 30 and 31 or something?)
The parent was not updated either which is expected if the children don’t get updated. The problem is for what ever reason ST did not receive anymore “motion” messages (when I had the “stuck” children, I put a log.debug line at the beginning of the parse() method of the parent and I did not get anything). The problem is probably not the Wemos as the /status page is updated. Is there a way to access the wemos logging (it would be nice to have a /log web page with all the logging/debugging information)?
Currently I am still stuck at the child device creation (it never happened before even if I had always a hard time to create them). I can see that the “maxzoneid” event is not triggered.
I have 8 wireless zones and I don’t have any hardwired zones. Zone 29 and 30 are default defined hardwired zones on the Powermax+.