Honewell Galaxy G2 Alarm Panel - Integrating with Vera Lite

Plugins & Plugin Development Unmaintained
1

Hi all,

First time Europe-based poster and recent owner of a Vera Lite!

I hope to install in an older home over the next few months and looking to get all the bits together beforehand.

Currently using a 1-year old Honeywell Galaxy G2 series alarm panel, which I am hoping I can integrate with Vera.

It seems like my alarm has the ability to connect an RS232 lead without too much trouble (Honeywell Galaxy 2-44 RS232 Lead [A228] - £37.21 : Security Warehouse. Security Supplies. Cheap Prices for Texecom, Pyronix, Visonic, Scantronic, Honeywell, Online Security Products, Trade Prices, Cheap Suppliers of Texecom, Honeywell, Pyronix, Visonic, Scantronic, Cooper, Dedicated Micros, GJD, Voltek, Risco, Rokonet, Dualcom.) but I am struggling to understand where I connect this to then.

Do I need to route this back to a PC, use a serial-usb adapter and then use plugins to operate?

If so, this would mean that the security system is then dependent on a constantly powered PC, which I would like to avoid.

Appreciate your experience and thanks for reading.

2

First of welcome! You need to make sure that your alarm panel is compatible with Vera. Not every alarm panel will work. You can see a list of alarm panels here that have plugins developed for Vera:

If the alarm panel is not compatible, you will need to make sure that the panel exposes it’s interface via the serial port and that there is api available to communicate with the panel. If this is all true, you will need to create a plugin that can communicate with the panel.

  • Garrett
3

Vera has a USB port on the back of it. If you can get the serial cable from the alarm panel to Vera, that’s sufficient. Failing that, there are other low-power options for getting the signal between Vera and the panel that don’t require an always-on computer.

If you can describe your house wiring layout, including how close your panel is to your LAN, we can offer suggestions.

Then there is the software side of the problem, which Garrett has already described.

4

@garrettwp

Thanks for the reply. I have looked closely through the pages you suggested and think I have found enough to give this a good try!

In particular, dfad1469 seems to have good success with his Honeywell RS232 plugin and he mentions:

" I will say that I have read documentation from Honeywell that states that all security system RS232 interfaces use the same protocol. Therefore, they should all work with my plug-in, but, as you stated, that is untested."

So I will take the chance and order the RS232 lead and USB converter and see what happens!

Will update this page when I start getting it together.

Cheers.

5

@futzle

That’s great - I wasn’t sure if that could be used for this situation.

Assuming this works, the Vera device will likely be eventually housed near the alarm panel, so the lead I found would be long enough to try.

I could then run network cables to my computer from it for future changes/monitoring/etc.

From my post above, the software side does seem like another big challenge, but I will see how I get on with dfad1469’s good work.

Thanks for your help.

6

Hi pierda

How did you get on connecting to your G2?

7

An update for those looking to get more from the Honeywell Galaxy G2 alarms, there is a very well priced Ethernet device made by http://www.sm-alarms.co.uk/ that features a free app to remotely control the alarm keypad.

This might be a compromise to allow remote control of the alarm and a multi-sensor could be used to tell Vera if sensors/alarm have been triggered.

8

I wonder how close the UK Galaxy Panels are to the US Vista20p panels? The AD2USB interface looks really interesting.