Anybody using the DSC plugin with a DSC alarm system?
Anyone… am I alone? :-\
I wish, I have my whole place wired, but my system doesn’t have the IT-100 interface board, not sure if it will support it, and the system has been off and not monitored for over 10 years. But, every room has motion sensors and door/window sensors that I’d love to use…
Even if it doesn’t support the IT100, a new board isn’t terribly expensive. Even if you had to upgrade it, it’s still a really cheap way to add sensors to Vera. I paid out about 205 bucks for the whole alarm kit and 65 for the IT100 and now have all the doors, downstairs windows and a PIR sensor all available to Vera now as sensors.
A DSC PC1832NK is only about $65; so for about $130 with the IT100 included (the cost of 2 or 3 Zwave sensor depending on the type) you could perhaps use everything again?
Of course, I’m not sure if your keypad is compatible and you would also either need a USB adapter or a WIZnet to interface it to Vera!
Also with the amount of batteries these HRDS1 zwave door sensors are eating recently, you’d save some money in the long run 
Sounds like something I should do for short change…even the barn and garage is all wired up with D/W and motion sensors that use AAA batteries, so Im assuming they are 900Mhz or something to report back. I’ve got limited know-how on this thing, a manual, 2 keypads and no codes and the batteries are all dead and transformers missing.
I figure I’ll wait till Vera is stable and running perfectly before I add more sensors, but thanks for the info and I know who I’ll be PM’ing when Im ready
I’m not currently using it, but I had planned to buy a DSC alarm system primarily because of this plugin’s existence.
This was the kit I started with:
I found out my place was pre-wired already, so apart from about 5 wired door sensors (a couple of bucks each) and cheap tone generator / wire detector, it was all quite good value for money… I’ve got 5 doors hard wired, 3 windows with wireless sensors and a PIR motion sensor hooked up.
Just got to add some more window sensors (upstairs at some point), a glass break sensor and maybe some smoke detectors once I’ve figured out if there’s a way to integrate them with either the existing smoke alarms or replace them without breaking code requirements or compromising safety in any way.
Thanks, that is the same kit I’d been looking at. Since you posed the question though, It doesn’t appear that too many people are using the plugin. Do you think there is a danger of it being abandoned?
Well the developer (Javier) I beleive no longer works for MCV. I think the plugin needs some work still due to some potential security issues and some other odd behaviors which I haven’t worked out yet if it’s something I’ve misconfigured on the panel, or if it’s not working or configured correct on the plugin side.
Sensors work fine and update almost instantly, but to arm it seems like I have to press the arm button twice; and likewise this morning I couldn’t get a scene (that had arming included) to do the same…maybe for the same reason?! Disarm doesnalthough work, although I suspect there are still some things I have to configure on the panel itself as my keyfob disarm button doesn’t seem to work either, or it only works perhaps for stay arming?!
Notifications also don’t seem to work for arming, or the panel actually being in “alarm” state.
I need to disconnect the siren to do some more in depth testin and troubleshooting as my wife will kill me, and in any case we have a young baby who won’t appreciate growing up deaf either
Is the IT100 the same as the DSC5401?
I tried it awhile back with a usb-to-serial cable and had no luck.
I know the IT100 replaced it! The best way to find out would be to compare the developers guides to see if the implementation is the same, or similar enough to work for the majority of the supported commands.
I’ve attached the IT100 guide because I already had it.
I have the IT-100 but have not wired it in yet. Is it worth the hassle?
Depends on what you want to achieve?
For me yes because I can now use the sensors to trigger scenes etc and also get notifications about doors or alarm conditions. The sensors are also way more reliable than some of the Zwave equivalents.
I now also have more options to disarm or arm, along with also disarming via scene that’s triggered when a PIN is entered on any of the Kwikset locks.
Very much so. I’ve been using the dsc5401 with Misterhouse for years and the hassle of not having to program the date for DST alone was worth the price paid for it.
Well I guess that settles it for tonight’s project!
@techsan, did you get it up and running?
I can’t get any notifications for alarm / disarm or any of the other notification types (some are under the partition and some under the parent device) and I wanted to see who else was running this, and if they had issues before raising a ticket?
I’ve also found that it seems to have an issue with 4 digit PINs; disarm (and one or two of the other buttons) wont function if you have the panel set to use 4 digit PIN’s! You either have to change to 6 digit PINs, or pad the 4 digit one with 00 at the end.
I found a copy of the Spec for this interface here:
[url=http://www.baranharper.com/pdfs/dsc/it-100%252520developers%252520guide.pdf]http://www.baranharper.com/pdfs/dsc/it-100%252520developers%252520guide.pdf[/url]
Page 6, “Partition Disarm Control - With Code” requires a 6-digit PIN, but the [tt]get_code(…)[/tt] method isn’t padding it out with 00’s per the spec. Similar for the arming code…
This method can be altered to “pad” as needed:
[url=http://code.mios.com/trac/mios_dscalarmpanel/browser/I_DscAlarmPanel2.xml#L116]http://code.mios.com/trac/mios_dscalarmpanel/browser/I_DscAlarmPanel2.xml#L116[/url]
It’s hard to tell from the code, but I believe it should be set at the Partition, but there might be a problem in this file:
http://code.mios.com/trac/mios_dscalarmpanel/browser/D_DscAlarmPartition.json#L194
which should be changed from:
"name": "Status",to
"name": "PartitionStatus",Of course, I could be wrong 
OK I just tried that and unless the notification system is down, no dice I’m afraid!
I can see for the most part that the panel seems to communicating the corresponding statuses to the plugin, but nothing after that.
Any other ideas?
Turn on verbose logging and capture a bunch of the dumps for what should be the notification event. Edit out all the “Password” data that would go into that, and then post it here.
Unfortunately the code is scant on “extra” logging, but we can probably work out the notifications component from it, since that’s just interactions with [MiOS] Variables, which is all standard in the verbose logs.
NOTE: I believe you have to “[x] force Luup restart” after you reload this file to get it to pickup the changes.