AD2USB over network / ethernet

Seems like a valid fix to me!

Hoping my comment will bump this thread for others with a Vera Secure experiencing this issue…

The solution described in this thread is the only workaround that could get my AD2NetworkAppliance to work on my Vera Secure. Multiple calls and emails to Vera (the last call ended after an hour with the support tech telling me it ‘couldn’t be done’ and the AD2Network ‘wasn’t supported’) were useless.

Thank you!

Are the modified attachments from this thread still needed or has everything been pulled into the main plugin now? I’m on 3.12.

Thanks!

UPDATE:

I followed Kevin’s directions here: http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,26672.msg272946.html#msg272946

All working now.

UPDATE2:

I spoke too soon. The status is not being updated. Otherwise I can arm and disarm. Anyone have any great ideas? Thanks!

i have the alarm decoder webapp running in docker on my nas. everything is working fine. Is this enough to follow the directions to get vera ‘overNetwork’ working?
Or does the rPi appliance have the serial app running as well?

i dug through the dockerfile for the rPi.

Looks like i need to add the ser2sock repo as well. I can’t simply use the webapp URL in vera.

I am installing ad2pi network appliance and I am getting “Error:Device not ready” when trying to arm on Vera Edge UI7? Keypad on web browser and regular 6160 keypad works. Anybody have any idea how to fix.

I used to have the EVL-3 with my Honeywell and that plug-in is gone (had to replace my Vera). I take from reading this thread that I can use the AD2USB plug-in with the AD2USB-Pi device and get basically a network based interface for my Ademco/Honeywell alarm to Vera? Is this working well? Couldn’t tell from the thread if this had settled into maturity…

Hi Everyone, I know this is an old thread, but I wanted to post my lessons-learned from my experience with Vera and the AD2USB device recently - hopefully, this spares people in the future a lot of time and frustration!

  1. I’ve had a Vera device (Vera3, VeraPlus) now for close 10 years and an AD2USB device for as long. Originally, the AD2USB was connected directly to the Vera via USB and using the AD2USB plugin it worked brilliantly for the first 5 years. Occassionally, on power loss, etc. the serial port settings would get reset and reconfiguring the serial port fixed the issues. However, about 3 years ago, the Vera would just start showing “Can’t detect device” on the Vera Panel device - by pressing the “Clear” button, it would go away but inevitably, it would come back. I tried everything from configuring a lua startup script to reset the serial port, to creating a scene to press the clear button every 5 minutes, etc. Nothing worked… What was strange was that in the Can’t detect device state, pressing the Vera plugin keypad twice would actually work…

  2. So, after living with it for 3 years, I saw the post about using the RPi and ser2sock and decided to try it out, but as I was building the RPi, I saw that I already had a Mac Mini 2012 already running as a server in the data closet and so instead of the RPi, I put ser2sock on the Mac, got it configured and tested it with the Alarm Decoder Panel (which works until Mac OS X 10.14 Mojave - Catalina breaks the mono-dev library they currently use so it doesn’t run). With the ser2sock (which does work on Catalina) confirmed working and the Alarm Decoder App working, I turned to configuring the AD2USB plugin as described in this thread… this turned out wasn’t so straightforward due to a bug with existing AD2USB plugin users.

Quick aside - The Alarm Decoder App actually serves as a socket relay server itself, so you don’t need ser2sock if you run the app as a serial server - it essentially can duplicate the ser2sock functions - but I’d highly recommend using ser2sock running as a background service so you don’t need to keep the panel app running.

Here’s a summary of what I did to finally get it to work properly:
(VeraPlus with firmware 1.7.4970 (7.31), UI7)

– Mac Mini (running 10.14 or EARLIER)/Raspberry Pi

  1. Attach AD2USB to USB port (make sure you find the right device in /dev/ !!!)
  2. Install ser2sock following build instructions on git repo: GitHub - nutechsoftware/ser2sock: Serial to Socket Redirector
  3. Install the mono-dev package for your device according to links/instructions here: https://www.alarmdecoder.com/wiki/index.php/AlarmDecoder_Keypad
  4. Install the Alarm Decoder Keypad app (does not run on Mac OS X 10.15!!)
  5. Configure and test Alarm using the Alarm Decoder Keypad

– VERA
0. Install the AD2USB plugin from the Vera App store if you’ve not already done so in the Vera “Apps” panel
0a. Under Apps/Develop Apps/Luup files, upload the attached updated L_VistaAlarmPanel1.lua file to replace your existing file (don’t forget to back up the existing one!)

  1. If you’ve had Vera running the AD2USB plugin already via Serial/USB, go to the Alarm Panel device (the one with v2.45 and the Clear button), click Advanced/Variables and find IODevice - change this to “0” - Vera requires an input here if you’ve ever configured the plugin before.
  2. Even if you’re just doing a clean install of the plugin, follow #1 above and check that IODevice does NOT have a number configured - if it is non-zero, change it to “0”
  3. Using the same device as in #1, click Advanced/ … New Service/Variable
  4. Enter:
    New Service: urn:micasaverde-com:serviceId:VistaAlarmPanel1
    New Variable: overNetwork
    New value: 1
  5. Find the Params tab (two tabs to the left of the New Service tab) and enter the IP address of the device running ser2sock with a colon and then the port number (e.g. X.X.X.X:10000)
  6. Find the Partition Device in Vera for the Alarm Panel (the one with the keypad), and set the KeypadAddresses to the numbers associated with your existing Vista Keypads and the AD2USB keypad address
  7. Save changes
  8. Reload Vera

At this point, your Vera should be able to communicate via IP to ser2sock and control the AD2USB.

What changed from previous postings?

  1. I fixed a bug in the L_VistaAlarmPanel1.lua file which still tried to use the serial/USB port if there was an existing value in the IODevice field
  2. The horrible “Can’t Detect Device” message is gone!

The sole remaining issue I’ve found is that the PIN code is not storing properly after reboot, but I got around this by setting the PIN in scenes that I use to trigger the alarm - there is another thread on how to do this in startup LUA, but I didn’t use that.

WIth the ser2sock set up, you can use the Vista Alarm not just with Vera, but Home Assistant and other apps.

Good luck!

PS. In case I can’t attach the update LUA file to this post, here’s a DropBox Link:

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