Elk disarm does not disarm devices in Vera

I have most of the basic stuff working now, so am looking at the predefined modes in Vera.

First thing I notice is that the state of my individual devices does not change to disarm when I disarm the Elk.

Am I missing some config here where Elk is not reporting the status back to Vera? Does anyone have this working?

Like look at the capture below, my ELK is disarmed but my garage devices still show up as armed in Vera.

I could be wrong, but I think that it’s an indication of the state of the sensor, ie.- armed=door closed. If anyone can correct me if I’m wrong, please do.

Assuming that the Elk panel plugin works like other alarm plugins: this is normal and correct. The armed status of a sensor is a Vera-side concept that doesn’t map to anything that the alarm panel knows about. You can play with this switch however you like and it doesn’t how the alarm panel partition behaves. If your panel is armed, then tripping a zone will make the siren sound, whether the sensor is armed or not.

See two earlier semi-relevant threads about the difference between armed partitions and armed sensors: http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,15316.msg116481.html#msg116481 http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,36995.msg275963.html#msg275963

You can use this distinction to your advantage: use the alarm partition status to turn on/off security, and the sensor status to turn on/off automation.

Thanks for the response.

Is there any way I can change the Vera state of the devices based on Elk state? I understand that this might require some changes to the plugin code but is there a API on the vera side that the plugin can called when suppose its disarmed?

-AM

Yes, I expect that you can make a couple of scenes that are triggered by the alarm partition’s arm state, and make those scenes arm or disarm the sensors. I just don’t know what you’d gain by doing that.

With my alarm integration I use the House Mode plug in and the Mode settings do what you are talking about. When Armed Stay, trigger a scene that changes the Vera mode to Night, and go into the Mode dashboard and set what sensors you want Armed. When Armed Away trigger Away Mode on the Vera, and set the sensor arm/disarm in the Mode dashboard. Ditto for Home, when you disarm the alarm, set the Vera mode to home, and make sure your sensor states are what you want in the Mode dash board for Home.

That is the most straight forward way to do what you want.

Thanks, I will have to check out the Home Mode plugin you are talking about. It seems to be doing what I want.

-AM

I must be missing something here. The Vera state of a device (Armed, Bypass) has nothing to do with the alarm panel. Frankly I don’t understand exactly what it has to do with anything.

All my devices are armed all the time, Why would you want them to be anything else?
That being said, I do have 1 thing that I bypass. I have 2 PLEG devices for my lighting. When I arm away, I have my PLEG lighting control go to bypass and another PLEG lighting control go to arm. My armed lighting control puts my lights on a mode that turns them off/on so my house has the occupied look from outside. Otherwise they are normally controlled via OC sensors when I am in house.

But security devices? Why would they not ALWAYS just be armed?

@bucko, if you use any of the newer notifications in UI7 for security devices, you will know why you don’t want your interior motion sensors armed while you are home… you will get endless notifications and alerts about the motion sensors being tripped as you move about the house. Don’t need to know someone is home tripping the motion sensors if I am already home :slight_smile: But for example my flood sensor… I leave that armed all the time… definitely want to be notified that my washing machine is leaking even if I am home. Since I have some sensors that are part of my security system, but some that are just z-wave Vera devices, having them all armed in Vera when I am away is good, having only some of them armed when I am home is also good, if I want to use the built in alert system (vs a plug in).

OK I see. I am on UI5 and have always kept everything armed. UI7-different animal

[quote=“shallowearth, post:6, topic:194524”]With my alarm integration I use the House Mode plug in and the Mode settings do what you are talking about. When Armed Stay, trigger a scene that changes the Vera mode to Night, and go into the Mode dashboard and set what sensors you want Armed. When Armed Away trigger Away Mode on the Vera, and set the sensor arm/disarm in the Mode dashboard. Ditto for Home, when you disarm the alarm, set the Vera mode to home, and make sure your sensor states are what you want in the Mode dash board for Home.

That is the most straight forward way to do what you want.[/quote]

Works perfect! This is exactly what I wanted. Thank you.

-AM

What he said above!! I got 8K txt this month…thank god I am on unlimited plan ::slight_smile:

Wow, ok. This stuff is a lot more confusing than I thought.
Can someone here that triggers scenes based on the arming or disarming of your system let me know the trick that I’m missing please? I haven’t had any success.
I’ve used Lua code to prevent the scene from executing based on the type of arming/disarming of the system, but it only works as intended when I do a manual test of the scene rather than changing the arm state of the system (as it is supposed to function).
Thanks in advance.

Sorry Quixote, way more info needed. What are you trying to do exactly? you shouldn’t have to use any LUA code for disarm, stay, or away, but If you want LUA code debugged you should post it.

Also what security system are you using?

[quote=“shallowearth, post:14, topic:194524”]Sorry Quixote, way more info needed. What are you trying to do exactly? you shouldn’t have to use any LUA code for disarm, stay, or away, but If you want LUA code debugged you should post it.

Also what security system are you using?[/quote]

Yes, of course. Sorry for my vagueness.
I’m using an Elk M1, and I want to have announcements on my mobile phone using email messages sent to me which are then transformed into texts and read aloud by my phone using an Android app called eNotify.
I can manage most of that, but the problem is triggering those messages based on alarm system events.

Here is one scenario:
I walk to my front door and disarm the system from “Stay Instant”, open the door and exit, arming the system using a system I have outside my front door. I receive an alert telling me that the system is “Armed Away”. I will receive a text if the front door is opened while the system is armed in any state. Returning home I disarm the system (receive a text), enter and set the system to “Armed Stay Instant”. In this case, the system differentiates between the two armed states and sends no text indicating that the system has been armed.
So far I’ve been trying to use the built-in triggers presented with scene creation (eg. - “Partition 1: Area 1 is Armed”), Sending “Smtp Notification Custom action” with the plugin as an action and some snippets of Lua like this entered into the Lua code section of the 3rd step of scene creation:

local allow = true
local status = luup.variable_get(“urn:micasaverde-com:serviceId:AlarmPartition2”,“DetailedArmMode”,6)
return ((status == “Ready”) == allow)

I’m using the states “Ready”, “Armed”, and “StayInstant”.
I hope that’s more clear. Please let me know if I’ve left anything out.
Thanks.

Your LUA as written will allow the scene to run if the State is Ready
Not sure why that code would be needed, if you are triggering on Disarm, the state will in fact always be ready so that LUA would always be true.

I don’t have an Elki have a concord and the basic scene triggered support Armed away. Vs Armed stay, which makes it easy.

So are You saying you only have Armed as a trigger and then have to look at the details to tell the difference between a stay and an away?

Timing of the variable being set to actual away (if not instant) might be your issue.
I would try triggering the scene on arm, then use LUA to say if not StayInstant then run notification

local allow = false
local status = luup.variable_get(“urn:micasaverde-com:serviceId:AlarmPartition2”,“DetailedArmMode”,6)
return ((status == “StayInstant”) == allow)

Ok, I feel like a complete moron now. :-[
I think my confusion stemmed from the wording of the triggers and I figured “Armed” encompassed all forms of being in an armed state, including stay mode. Duh.
Thanks, and sorry for the trouble. At least I learned some Lua from this.