alarmdecoder.com

Hi, I'm working to port the alarmdecoder binding for openhab, as the v1 bindings are going to be deprecated in 3.0.

I have a vista20-SE, and I don't get the faults when open a zone. By default , if I do nothing the alarmdecoder just stays stuck on zone 252 (0fc) (powerup default) no matter what zones I trip. There's a message that says "press * Key" and when that is pressed I see the zone field update correctly. But afterwards it stays stuck on whatever that value is until I press the * key again. No doubt this is coming from the alarm system itself since I see it on the keypad as well.

Are there instructions, if any, to have the alarmdecoder show the faulted zone, without having to press "*", so that the correct status can be forwarded to openhab?

I see some comments in the docs about enabling and emulating LRR to get additional info. Will that give realtime info on zone faults?

Also, on this page:

https://www.openhab.org/addons/bindings/alarmdecoder1/

There is a cryptic reference to this old forum post which can no longer be seen:

"Although not mentioned in the quickstart guide, and only documented on an odd thread , configuring the virtual relay boards is absolutely necessary on panels like the Honeywell Vista 20p and similar, or else all of the eight on-board zones will not be visible!"

What does that mean exactly and will that solve this problem?
Any help would be appreciated so I can port the binding. Thanks.

I'm having a similar issue with my Home Assistant setup and Vista 10SE board. Did you figure this out? Do we have to configure virtual relay board to see faulted zones in real time while system is disarmed?

Just to close this out after talking to the alarmdecoder guys: All the panels require "*" to be sent to show the fault zone if disarmed.

If you are running the alarmdecoder service/webapp it looks at the panel message and sends the * when necessary. So probably the person that wrote the HA integration also ran the alarmdecoder service.

I'll add an option to send * in the binding itself. That way the user can chose to run the binding alone or with the alarmdecoder service. I don't see any option to turn off the alarmdecoder service behavior , so it will always send * if it sees that message.