I world be very interested in a way to interface powermax with vera such that I could use the sensors from powermaxpro to trigger light controlled by vera. Is this already possible or are there any plans for such an interface?
BR’s
Sten
I second this.
third!
Quattro…
B.t.w. It’s nice to meet you here on the forum, welcome to you Sten!
I could be a little off-base here, but since the Visonic PowerMaxPro security system purports to be X10 compatible, there’s a strong likelihood that it would interoperate with Vera through an Insteon/X10 PLM (powerline modem) … something that the upcoming firmware for Vera can handle.
However, I know nothing of the Visonic unit’s ability to send specific “events” or “unit codes” for each of its sensors, nor whether it’s going to send standard X10 commands.
On the other hand, almost any “alarm system” has dry contact closures or some other hardware circuitry that could be monitored by a low-voltage, multi-channel interface (available in both Z-Wave and X10 flavors), and thus create a response (such as triggers for scenes) in Vera.
Just thinking out loud… I hope you get your wish!
X10 was not really what I had in mind as I always remember that as an unreliable interface but it could offer an alternative and quick way to implement it.
Another solution is this unit http://www.waakzaamwonen.nl/catalog/product_info.php/pName/wireless-pc-interface-visonic-ontvanger-tbv-homeseer (dutch description) which basically is a self contained unit that receives the sensors of the visonic powermax and tranlates them to rs-232 text strings (if I understand it correct). There seems to be a homeseer driver in beta provided with the unit which perhaps could be a starting point for developing a dedicated vera driver.
Yet another solution is a brilliant peace of code that I received from a Norwegian guy called Steinar who actually succeeded to write a perl script that installs a small program on powerlink (powerlink is a linux box providing web interface to powermax) that spys on the link between powermax and the powerlink and sents the sensor events to the host computer executing the perl script. I got this script working on my linux box and it reports all events generated by the powermax central. I do not know (yet) how to integrate this script into vera (as I am still awaiting the delivery from ezhome - hi there to you ezhome nice to meet you too!) but when I get it I will do some experimenting. So once I understand how your box works and with a bit of help I may succeed to integrate this Norwegian code into a device driver for powermax. This would provide a very powerful way to control lights and other units using the PIR and key sensors of the visonic powermax unit that many people already have installed and working perfectly in their homes.
BR’s
Sten
Sten,
If you have an interface board like that, along with a detailed description of the ASCII Protocol and some scripting background, then you’re off to the races.
I have a different Alarm (a Paradox EVO with an APR-PRT3 Serial interface) and it exposes my Alarm panel directly as a USB connection, although RS232 is also available.
I scrounged around the net to find the Programmer’s guide for it’s ASCII Protocol.
Anyhow, I have this hooked up to Vera, and have written all the Vera/luup code to “see” it’s Alarm sensors (Motion, Windows, Doors, etc) along with Alarm State (Away Armed, Stay Armed, Breach) and turn them into UPnP SecuritySensor1 devices.
In turn, these show up as child “Devices” in Vera and I can attach standard Scenes to each of them. For testing, I attach Scenes that [SMS] notify me when the Sensors trip, or the Alarm is Armed or Breached.
It’s also nice since all my Alarm’s motion sensors are hard-wired, so I’ll eventually use these to trigger lighting events, and not be changing batteries 
It works, there are a few rough edges that I need to take out, but the basics are there and could likely be translated to another type of Alarm panel. I hope to get it added to one of the future luup releases, as it may help others to write more variations.
A picture of the runtime is attached, showing the first few sensors. The AwayArmed, StayArmed and Breach Devices are at the bottom of the list and out of view during the capture. I have various windows open, which is making zones 2, 3, 4 & 5 “darker”.
I stripped the color from the upload, as I have an ugly color scheme I’ll see if I can do a better capture tomorrow.
Nice work Guessed!
That is exactly what I had in mind for the powermax setup. However, I still have to learn to program the vera box using their LUP language and that may require some effort and time (which I have very little of right now).
It would be excellent to have something similar to guessed for the Visonic. I imagine there must be a lot of Visonic alarms out there!
Any progress in this area? I love my Vera and it’s time to buy a security system. the Visonic PPROKTGPE PowerMax Pro looks like the perfect solution
This would definitely be nice as I have a Visonic Powermax system as well. The mobile web UI is pretty good since they upgraded the firmware, but integration with Vera would be nice.
e.g. All Off scene triggered by an Arm Away from the alarm system =)