Thanks to everyone on this board I was able to connect my Alarm to vera and it works great. Thanks to all for your time, knowledge and passion. I do have a question though, is it possible to have Vera send you a notification only when the system is breached? I’ve added logs to the devices but I get emails when it is tripped, regardless if the alarm is armed or not. I would like to only get notifications if tripped when system is armed and alarmed breached. I’m sure this can be done with Luup commands but I’ve had limited programming experience with this and thought I’d ask before playing with it.
It shouldn’t need any Luup.
- Create a scene, and go to the Events tab.
- Select the partition device (not the whole security system and not one of the sensors).
- Select Partition is Breached.
- Select Yes for Is Breached?.
- Set whatever notifications you want as you would for any other scene.
If this isn’t working, it’s a bug, and I’ll need your help to debug it.
Worked great - after all this time don’t know how I missed it - thanks for the help!
I have one more question - I’ve been using the Caddx / Vera config without issue but from time to time as I make changes and save the Vera Config and Luup Restarts the caddx sensors delete and then get rediscovered. Everytime this happens they show up in global instead of the room I had placed them in and they also get deleted from whatever scene I had them a part of. Does not happen to the alarm partition or device, just my alarm sensors/zones. I go ahead and re-label and move them back and everything is fine, just wondering why it happens and if it is easy to stop it from happening.
Yeah, this is a known bug. Here’s how it happens:
- Plugin is in startup code, during which it is asking the alarm panel about the zones it has.
- Plugin starts creating child devices for each zone. Devices that existed last time just re-use the old device number, but devices that didn’t exist last time are created anew.
- It’s partway through, and resets (perhaps there’s an error in the plugin code, or Vera killed the Luup plugin process, or the user clicked SAVE). Only some of the child devices got created.
- Plugin restarts, and goes through the startup code again.
- Plugin starts creating child devices for each zone. This time, some devices got deleted between steps 3 and 4, so they are created anew.
I think that the only safe way to prevent this from happening is to get the plugin to build its child device list from a local cache rather than by querying the alarm panel. The downside is that if you add a new zone to your alarm system, the plugin won’t find out about it. It’s that uncertainty that has stopped me from fixing the bug. I have added the bug to code.mios.com as a reminder (#12 (Be more robust about partial startups and child device creation) – GE Caddx Networx NX-584 NX-8E Alarm Plugin).
Thanks for mentioning this; it demonstrates that the bug is widespread and that it’s annoying.
Futzle -
Haven’t seen many comments so I thought I’d chime in for you - I installed this and it installed just find, no issues. Looked good as well. Seemed faster, though that could be just me. Things appear to be in different places and honestly I didn’t spend a lot of time reprogramming everything with the alarm so I can’t say 100% that it worked but from what I played with it seemed great. I did go back however as i didn’t have a lot of time to play and needed everything working for my family. One thing I did notice, sensors showed real time status but the actual state of the sensors and alarm for that matter did not seem to show.
I’m using an NX6 panel and 1.1.1245 on vera.
On another note - I had asked a few weeks back about the sensors dropping and then reloading - I think I’ve found a pattern with this. As long as the alarm is in a non-changed state vera saves fine and the alarm stays saved, though if vera goes to save mode and a sensor is tripped, like a person walking by the motion sensor, then vera seems to delete all sensors and reload and renumber all. Not sure this helps but thought I should mention.
Thanks for the great work on this, it has helped me sell the whole concept to my family - hoping I’ll have time this week to play with this again.
Hi napolitano172,
I’m not sure I understand. Did not “show” where? I’m just trying to understand if it’s something I haven’t implemented yet, or if it’s a configuration problem specific to your panel, or something else.
On another note - I had asked a few weeks back about the sensors dropping and then reloading - I think I've found a pattern with this.
Thanks, that’s helpful. Last week I did notice a window in the code where the luup.start() and luup.sync() calls bookending the child device enumeration could fail. What I’ll try to do is compact those calls to make the opportunity for failure as small as possible. I’ll post here when it’s done.
[quote author=futzle link=topic=4060.msg39668#msg39668 date=1304544367]
Hi napolitano172,
I’m not sure I understand. Did not “show” where? I’m just trying to understand if it’s something I haven’t implemented yet, or if it’s a configuration problem specific to your panel, or something else.
Sorry for not being clear - within my Vera page - I am able to see what state the sensors are in, arm or bypass, and for that matter what state the alarm is in as well - looking at it the active state has a greenish color letting me know they are armed. When I installed this the sensors showed active movement (red), but I could not tell what state the sensors were in, arm or bypass as no greenish color showed the active state of the device.
To be fair I only played with it for an hour and then went back as I didn’t have time to change everything I have linked to the alarm. I plan to try again when I have more time later this week - I’ll let you know how I make out.