Bitmap of open zones

[alanrothenbush]

Forgive me this backhanded way of contacting you, but I have a question and this is the only way I could think of.

The short version of the question is this: Does a Honeywell panel send a list of open zones to a keypad?

Here's the long version. I have a lot of zones in my house .. a lot. I have contacts on all the doors and windows as well as the locks. (Big deal that the door is closed, is it locked?)

Problem 1 is that I have "dumb" keypads at the doors. They don't say "Garage open", they say "17", which means I also have a list of names and numbers on a piece of paper by the panels.

Problem 2 is that on a summer day, all the doors and windows are open and so my keypads spend a minute or more telling me about, as they slowly flash the open zone numbers. 11 17 13 34 4 5 9 and so on (and on and on). I can go close something and then have to wait a long time before I know it's closed. Worse, I have to remember what number it was that was closed and then wait long enough to convince myself that it's no longer in the list.

This is, quite frankly, insane, as user unfriendly as can be. DSC keypads tell you instantly that a zone is OK. The supposedly "better" Honeywell system does not.

Anyway, my plan for item 1 was an Arduino and an LCD. When the Arduino saw an F7 message with "FAULT 17" in it, the LCD would display "Garage Unlocked"

This works fine; there's just a big lookup table of fault codes and names; easy.

But problem 2 remains, the potentially LONG time before knowing that a zone is no longer open.

I was wondering if you have any reason to believe that the panel sends open zone information to the bus/keypad as a single complete message? Maybe those unknown bytes are bitmaps of zone status?

Thanks for any thoughts.

[JJM-Student]

Though I am not directly involved with this project, I followed it closely while I worked a different kind of project leveraging a home security panel.

I think the solution presented here aids you with Problem 1 directly as it facilitates the addition of "open" panels rather than purchasing dedicated, proprietary panels for the improvement you're seeking.

However, I think there are a couple of issues brought up in Problem 1 and 2 as you defined them which might benefit from a different approach. Instead of extending the existing panel communication scheme, you may do well to directly monitor each zone in parallel with an isolated comparator circuit sitting between your microcontroller of choice and the existing panel. This system could then incorporate communication and/or control of any interface you'd choose to monitor the statuses of all your zones. You mention "a lot" of zones but perhaps quantifying that could be more helpful (32? 64? etc.). Obviously the more zones you have the less practical such a system might be (especially if you're using a remotely located zone expander and/or zone doubling on any of your existing zones). At the same time, such a solution would actually layer on the type of intelligence you might be seeking whereas the system here primarily extends the existing functionality of the traditional panel and control interface without necessarily adding other unique zone intelligence (as you may be imagining/seeking?).

In the project I referenced earlier comparators connected an EEPROM but a similar solution could work with a microcontroller. In case you need some guidance on comparators I'll include a link to a decent starting guide.

If you have any questions on my old project feel free to start up a conversation there!

Best,
Jon

[alanrothenbush]

Thanks for the time! Excellent idea, except for the fact that most of my zones are RF zones, and I haven't found anything to read these sensors.

Mind you, I haven't looked that hard for other receivers ...

Thanks again.

[Dilbert66]

The vista 20p uses a very basic protocol and does not send much in the way of info. The expectation is for the keypad emulation to keep track of what is currently bypassed/alarmed/faulted, etc until the panel sends another f7 to update statuses. Closures are never announced with the panel zones. You therefore need to setup a time to live and automatically close when this expires.

Please see my ESP8266/ESP32 ESPHOME/MQTT implementations (based initially on this library) for an example.

https://github.com/Dilbert66/esphome-vistaECP

[alan-bc]

The vista 20p uses a very basic protocol ... You therefore need to setup a time to live and automatically close when this expires.

Thanks for this!

As I've said often recently, I am astonished that so BASIC a security system function .. telling me what's open .. is so very hard. I've had a number of different security systems in my houses over the years and this is by far the dumbest.

I gave thought to a TTL in the code, but the TLL would have to be

of possible open zones * update rate of the panel * 2

With 30 zones in the house, that's easily 2 minutes, and that's NUTS. I still have my very first security system, a BSR X-10 system, completely wireless, and I just checked it. Even that old thing would update in near real time .. within a second or two.

So the current plan is a 4x40 LCD display, arranged as two columns. That will list 8 open zones, a workable number even on a summer day with lots of windows open. The open zones round robin, so an open zone will stay on the display for about 20 seconds until it's replaced by another open zone. (I guess this a sort of TTL.)

This lets me read the display, run around a bit .. close this, close this, close this .. then come back and see what's still open, run around some more and so on. Ugly, but workable, and maybe workable enough to leave in place.

(Frankly, when I had to locate an OLD Hayes modem and build a pseudo Telco interface just to talk to the panel with a computer, I started to have some doubts about these Honeywell panels ...)

Thanks again.

[Dilbert66]

Actually technically, only the on board 8 panel zones would need a ttl since the other expander (4219/4229) or rf hosted zones could be monitored (via the 98/9E cmd responses from the devices) and updated that way since you do get open/close events immediately with those. That's what I do anyhow. If you really want to know the immediate access to the on panel zones, a hack is to setup a relay follower on the zones and use the relay output to detect the zone activity.

[Dilbert66]

Thanks for the time! Excellent idea, except for the fact that most of my zones are RF zones, and I haven't found anything to read these sensors.

Mind you, I haven't looked that hard for other receivers ...

Thanks again.

Cmd 9e responses will give you all the RF zone info

[alan-bc]

Cmd 9e responses will give you all the RF zone info

Well, that sounds great, except I don't see that command in my Programming Guide. Am I missing something?

[Dilbert66]

Sorry that is in the ecp protocol. Not a system cmd

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