Galant Panel

[barneyd]

I have a Ademco Galant panel with a 6160 keypad. I'm trying to use this to link to my home automation system but I'm not getting much out of the AD2USB.

I'm receiving keypad messages but they don't contain the type of arming (full, part or night). Also, although I get an "armed" email when I set the system, I get a "disarmed" one on expiry of the exit timer. I then get nothing on entry. Email on alarm triggering works fine.

I have enabled the address filter for all the available addresses on the panel (0-3 for keypads, 4 and 5 for RF receivers and 8-10 for expanders) and programmed both the Trigger module and expander outputs but I see no expander messages at all.

As Vista panels are supposed to be able to use Galant peripherals, I thought the protocols should be the same and therefore AD2USB would show all keypad bus messages on a Galant system.

Anybody got any experience with Galant panels or could offer some assistance in getting all keypad buys messages to show up?

Thanks

[kevin]

If you could load up the beta firmware from here: http://www.alarmdecoder.com/wiki/index.php/Firmware

You will have access to debug flags when you do this. Once you have flashed the firmware, connect to the device with a serial tool such as putty

Once connected, enter the text @48

Once you have entered @48, go through your house and set off zones, arm, disarm, etc - copy all the output you see, and send to ad2usb@support.nutech.com - engineers can look at the debug data and see if it's a possibility something that can be easily fixed to support your galant panel properly.

Once this is done, to resume normal functionality, just enter @00 into the putty/serial session

[barneyd]

Thanks very much.

Sample log and panel manual sent by email.

[barneyd]

Thanks to some great work by Sean, AD2 is now compatible with Galant as a keypad.

Looking forward to seeing the expanders working to complete the capabilities of AD2 with this panel. That should also give compatibility with the Galaxy G2 range as well.

[barneyd]

Hi,

I was really hoping to be able to get AD2USB to work with my panel. Although the unit now generates key presses I am still not able to use it for the purpose I wanted, which is to tell if the system is armed (note my comments in earlier posts about the way the "armed" light works on this panel).

The Galant panel shares ECP peripherals with Galaxy G2 so providing compatibility would open the device up to a lot more panels.

I'm now having to look at interfacing directly with the communicator outputs on the panel. It's going to be a lot more wiring and circuitry but at least I have a plan B if you tell me AD2 isn't going to work.

[kevin]

I suggest keeping the dialog open with Sean you had over email for supporting features of this panel. Unless you have an extra one of these panels you can send to us for our lab, the best bet would be to continue to trade debug information with Sean and get these things implemented.

Thanks,
Kevin

[barneyd]

Given the small amount of work that it took to get the keypad emulation working with the Galant, I'm hoping it wouldn't be too difficult to get the expander emulation working.

The Galant (also known as Accord NT) architecture allows for:
[*]up to 3 x 8 input/4 output expanders at addresses 8 (= zones 13-20), 9 (= zones 21-28) and 10 (=zones 29-36). Outputs are programmed through menus 85, 86 and 87.
[*]one trigger module (not addressed)

The current ad2 firmware doesn't seem to emulate these.

As with the keypads, there is no programming for expander addresses in the panel. The fix for the keypads was for them to acknowledge a polling message from the panel that was sent on leaving programming mode. It appears that the Galant panel works out what peripherals are connected to the bus by trying each address and seeing if a device responds.

If it woks for the keypads, would the same be true for expanders?

Would it be possible to create a firmware version that responds to a polling request at address 8, 9 and/or 10 to say that the device is present? (Maybe with the response controlled by whether expander module #01, #02 or #03 were programmed as Y). I'm not sure if the outputs on the expanders would need to be controlled as relay module #01, #'02 and #03.

I don't know what address the trigger modules thinks it is because it has no address DIP switches, unlike the expanders. Maybe the presence of that could be controlled by whether relay module #04 is programmed as Y.

For my application, if the trigger module emulation can't be made to work, just the expanders would be great, I'd still be able to pick up 12 outputs (actually as I have some RF zones occupying the range 13-20).

It would be really good to be able to detect alarm conditions (in particular "confirmed alarm") by means of changes of state indicated by !REL messages. It might also be good to be able to emulate virtual zones with the L command, although this is not currently a requirement for me.

Thanks