How to detect DSC on Battery power

Plugins & Plugin Development DSC Alarm System
#1

This is a fantastic plugin and I have been enjoying it very much. Thank you.

I was wondering if there would be any way to get from the DSC panel that it is on battery power. I see it will throw 840 led on but won’t say why the led is on so it could be any error state.

Also, If the network was lost to the evl3 it just sits there none the wiser until it tries to send something to the panel. Is there any way to check a heartbeat once a minute or something?

#2

The DSC reports the following codes:
800 - Panel Battery Trouble
801 - Panel Battery Trouble Restore
802 - Panel AC Trouble
803 - Panel AC Trouble Restore

I haven’t tried these specific codes, but you can create an Advanced Scene, at the Panel level object, to react to these events. I’d imagine that the Panel AC Trouble (802) would be sufficient to cover what you’re looking for.

If Vera disconnects from the EVL, then the newer firmwares will eventually detect-and-reconnect. This takes time, but it does happen.

Unfortunately, MiOS doesn’t have an event for this “reconnect” event so we can’t know to re-poll the Panel to sync the status. UI4 had a critical bug that prevents us from periodically polling to refresh the status (it would corrupt the Vera config) so we’re stuck for a while until UI4 has been weened out of the user platform.

I’ve avoided putting in Version-conditional code to do this, since it becomes hard to maintain over time.

You could manually issue a SendCommand “001” periodically, just in case it’s disconnected, but this option is expensive and would likely make the panel unresponsive from time to time. If you run a simpler command, it would reconnect but still be out of sync.

What’s needed to correct it properly is a “Reconnect” event at the MiOS Level. This would allow Plugin authors to “do the right thing” when Network reconnects occur. The API’s haven’t changed in ~4yrs, so I wouldn’t hold out hope for this…

#3

I run the PING sensor against the evl3 to detect loss of network between it and VERA. Still won’t tell you if VERA needs a reload upon reconnect, but at least I know when the connection is broken long enough to trip the PING sensor.

#4

That’s a good idea. Unfortunately this would only tell me if somebody unplugged the network cable or the switch failed or something. Since the evl is on the keybus power, it will last much longer than the backup battery which is powering my modem and switches and the one powering the vera for that matter.

#5

Doesn’t work for me on 1832 and 3DS. The only codes VERA seems to get are 650 Partition Ready and 841 Trouble Status (LED OFF)…

#6

There are some recent related posts indicating that the 2DS/3DS doesn’t pass-through certain commands.

eg. http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,17852.msg140890.html#msg140890

You’ll probably want to reach out to them about this code being missing as well.