Alarm Decoder reboots every two hours

[jcacavias]

Hello -

I recently moved and installed a new vista 20p alarm panel. I moved the ad2usb and pi 3b+ from my prior residence where it worked flawlessly for several years. Recently my alarm decoder started showing a “alarm decoder has booted successfully” message every two hours in the logs. The device appears to function correctly until that point. After the boot message, the web app shows the “please wait... loading” message and basically becomes non responsive (I can still navigate around the webapp, but it does not respond to keypad presses or events coming from the panel) until I do a hard reboot on the pi at which point the process starts all over again. The only oddity in the logs of the webapp are this periodic boot message.

I’ve flashed the sd card several times with the latest pifactory build as well as upgrading (which seemed to make things worse). Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

[jcacavias]

An update here...

The webapp shows a boot message every two hours and the webapp keypad continues to be non-responsive, but the log messages in the webapp continue to come through. I also installed the desktop version of the keypad which appears to still work, so the problem appears to be isolated to the webapp itself.

Events (filtered for "boot" messages) from the webapp:

2021-3-18 4:28:17 AM BOOT The AlarmDecoder has finished booting.
2021-3-18 2:28:17 AM BOOT The AlarmDecoder has finished booting.
2021-3-18 12:28:17 AM BOOT The AlarmDecoder has finished booting.
2021-3-17 10:28:17 PM BOOT The AlarmDecoder has finished booting.
2021-3-17 8:28:18 PM BOOT The AlarmDecoder has finished booting.

Additionally, each time the boot event appears, the web app also shows these messages. This pattern repeats every two hours:

2021-3-18 4:28:17 AM BOOT The AlarmDecoder has finished booting.
2021-3-18 4:28:05 AM LOW BATTERY Low battery detected.
2021-3-18 4:27:31 AM POWER CHANGED Power status has changed to True.
2021-3-18 4:27:31 AM READY Ready status has changed to True
2021-3-18 4:27:30 AM FIRE Fire status has changed to False
2021-3-18 4:27:30 AM LOW BATTERY Low battery detected.
2021-3-18 4:27:30 AM ALARM RESTORED The alarm system has stopped signaling the alarm for zone (249).
2021-3-18 4:27:30 AM CHIME Chime status has changed to True
2021-3-18 4:27:30 AM FIRE Fire status has changed to True
2021-3-18 4:27:30 AM ALARM The alarm system has been triggered on zone (365)!
2021-3-18 4:27:30 AM CHIME Chime status has changed to False
2021-3-18 4:27:30 AM POWER CHANGED Power status has changed to False.
2021-3-18 4:27:30 AM READY Ready status has changed to False

[mathewss]

If I had to guess your AD2 firmware is not happy.

See if you can telnet to port 10000 on the pi using putty and record and report back what happens when you send an '=' command.


Best
Sean M.

[jcacavias]

So this is interesting. When I see the "Please wait, loading..." screen on the webapp, the webapp keypad is not responsive and I am unable to telnet to the device. When I open the desktop keypad app, it seems to "spark" the alarm decoder back to life and then I can telnet back into the device again and the webapp becomes responsive.

Once I was able to telnet in and run the "=" command, this is the result:

!sn:ffffffff
!boot....................
!
!Ademco Keypad Emulator V2.2a.8.6
!Copyright (C) 2008-2015 Nu Tech Software Solutions, Inc.
!Reproduction without permission is prohibited
!By Sean Mathews <coder@f34r.com>
!For support email AlarmDecoder@support.nutech.com
!www.AlarmDecoder.com
!Reading configuration.
!UART init.
!Ready. Press ! for configuration.


I've also tried to downgrade the firmware to the the prior version (as noted above) and the behavior did not change.

[mathewss]

Odd. It almost sounds like your running the keypad app on a computer with the ad2usb connected to the pc and the pi is connecting to the GUI keypad app using ser2sock in the keypad. In any case something is wired in such a way to make them dependent. By design this can be done but it should be documented so sanity can be saved.

So where is the ad2usb?

Best
SM.

[jcacavias]

The AD2USB is hooked to a raspberry pi 3B+ in the alarm panel. The pi is hardwired into the network. The Pi has the latest version of the PIFactory AD image running on it which includes the webapp. I installed the desktop keypad on my laptop and have it configured to talk to the pi/Alarm decoder via the network (Socket Client). Let me know if that doesn't make sense.

[mathewss]

Run through the setup wizard on the webapp again.

Confirm ttyUSB0 is selected and that it is shared over ser2sock.

Maybe a remote desk share or send me pic of the steps to confirm settings. All should be defaulted except the uart selection for the USB.


Best
Sean M.

[jcacavias]

Sorry to bump an old thread, but wanted to share an update in case someone else has the same issue. It appears as though this is a Home Assistant integration issue, not an alarm decoder issue. When I reload the home assistant integration for alarm decoder the behavior immediately rectifies itself in the keypad. It does happen again a couple of hours later usually, but at this point, its a home assistant issue to fix.

Thx,

JohnC