I am a new Vera Plus user and have been tooling around in this forum, the MiOS Wiki and on NuTech’s site trying to understand how the Vista20-AD2USB-Vera devices are supposed to play nice with each other. I am one of those guys with an older house with hardwired contacts that upgraded his panel from a Vista 40 to Vista 20 and settled on Vera for HA. After much reading of posts, I have concluded what must be quite OBVIOUS to many of you that already went down this path, is that the AD2USB with Vera plugin is designed to read the EXISTING configuration from the Vista panels where the ‘Cheat Sheet’ is filled out to match the panels configuration and away you go. I surmised this as many of you referenced your alarm company stopping by to first install the panel (and presumably program it from a physical keypad) and then you plugged in Vera-AD2USB afterwards.
So I have a brand new Vista 20 that hasn’t even been wired into any contacts, much less any programming. No, and I don’t think trying to pull the config off the Vista 40 and importing it into the V20 is a good use of time. Nobody that I read about seems to have undertaken the process of programming the hardwire contacts, motion sensors and glass-breaks into the Vista via a keypad or even the virtual keypad app that NuTech provides. As a seasoned IT Systems Engineer, after looking thru Honeywell’s Vista Programming Manual, although tedious, it doesn’t seem that difficult to do. So can somebody confirm my that I have the correct concept stated here or maybe that I’m way out in left field?
I’ve done lots of programmmg of my Vista panels from the keyboard having upgraded my panel multiple times. It’s not a big deal but can be time consuming. Also have used Honewells software but for a one time install its no worth all the investment to get it working and I have to spend time remembering how to get it connected each time. Plus their panel software is very inflexible and esoteric. Just dive in and do it from the panel. Copy down the configure from the old panel and markup the worksheet in the manual to work from and it will go fine.
OK, so I thought a follow up post would be good for all you lurkers who had a morbid curiousity as to how this all worked out. As the one reply to my post (so far) was spot on about programming the Vista panel, I can now say that I fully agree not to fool with the Honeywell “downloader” app and just get an Alpha keypad (like 6160) and a programming manual and it’s totally do-able. Or you can call “a guy” and write him a check if you would rather not be bothered. Frankly, after getting through the learning curve, I am quite content now knowing that I will never need a professional to come by and make changes to my Vista 20p programming. The biggest issue I had was getting the detached garage PIR’s to work. After days of pulling my hair out over this, I surmised that the original installer must have used an Ademco “Remote Point Module” in the garage that was now buried in the walls somewhere. After replacing all the PIR’s and seeing they had power OK, it was weird that the “polling loop” connected to a zone was unresponsive to any PIR trips. Ended up letting the Remote Point module continue to supply power but ran new contact wires to all PIR’s and back-hauled the NC loop via the abandoned keypad wiring. Works like a charm, but had to do it this way since the Remote Point modules are NOT compatible with the Vista 20, grrrr!
So the AD2USB to Vera interface, while having some minor quirks, is fairly stable. I had to get help from Vera’s excellent support folk with two main things: (1) When setting up the system, there will be several times you may need to power down the Vista and reset it. Vera doesn’t like that and there is a CommFailure parameter that needs to be reset in the Alarm Panel’s Advanced settings (2) Using the “cheat sheet” ended up setting up all the devices as motion sensors regardless of what it actually was. Support pointed me to this link http://wiki.micasaverde.com/index.php/Luup_Device_Categories and from the Advanced menu for each incorrect device, you will need to change the category and sub-category numbers to the corresponding values for the device in question. So I now have a fully functional Vera-Vista 20P integrated system that I will probably setup with an Internet monitoring company and will be proceeding to add other HA devices like NVR/cameras, water, environmental and other sensors and controllers- you know, the fun stuff!
Thanks for sharing. I am going to be firing up a 128BPT (way overkill, i know…but I have it) and installing in my house. I have already bought the AD2USB and was about to embark on the journey. I was kind of hoping that it would pull the name and type from the point description, but I guess not. I will be using all serial devices so I wonder if its different.