Paradox Alarm Plugin

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ParadoxAlarm-DevicesView.png

Contents

Introduction

The Paradox Alarm plugin is a Luup component that connects Vera to a Paradox Security Alarm panel (Digiplex DGP-848, EVO or Spectra series) via their Home Automation interface (Paradox PRT3) over USB.

Through this interface, events occurring within the Alarm Panel are exposed to Vera including the status of any attached Doors, Windows, Motion Sensors. Additionally, the interface exposes the current Armed State, Stay Armed State and whether the Alarm is in Breach.

Each of these is exposed as a Motion Sensor to Vera, so that standard Scenes (Lights, Notifications, etc) can be established in Vera based upon events occurring within the Alarm Panel.

How does it work

The Paradox Alarm Panel uses a proprietary interface bus, called Combus, to talk to the devices connected to it. The PRT3 Printer Module is a Combus device that acts as a bridge between the Alarm Panel, and a standard USB (or RS-232) device. In addition, it provides a Printer connector for Raw status updates.

The PRT3 interface can be configured to expose a set of low-level Alarm Panel messages, via either of it's Serial ports, to a Home Automation device. Similarly, these low-level messages can be sent from the Home Automation device back to the Paradox Alarm Panel to perform various actions.

The PRT3 Printer module comes with instructions on how to "wire" it to the Alarm Panel, via it's 4-wire Combus interface, and the subsequent Alarm Panel configuration to get it recognized.

Terminology

Zone
a specific sensor in the Alarm Panel, such as a Window, Door or Motion Sensor. These may either be hardwired, or wireless, depending upon the type of sensor.
Area/Partition
a collection of Zones. Typically there is a single Area in a house. Larger houses are often split into separate Areas (Upstairs vs Downstairs). External buildings such as Garages and Guest houses are also candidates for additional Areas.
Combus
Paradox Security proprietary prototol. This protocol is used for communications between Paradox System components, such as the Printer Module, Zone Expanders, specialized Motion Sensors and the System Keypads.
Remote control
a Key chain remote control device, used to Arm (Lock), Disarm (Unlock) or set a Panic Alarm
Entry Door
a Zone (door) with a grace period delay attached to it. The Alarm will not go off during the grace period.
Breach
the Alarm is currently going off, either with a Bell, or a Silent Alarm.
Arm
the act of setting the Alarm Panel into the "I'm leaving" state.
Stay Arm
the act of setting the Alarm Panel into the "I'm staying" state. In this state the Motion Sensors don't trip Alarm Breach.
Force Arm
same as Arm except that some Zones may be left Open
Instant Arm
same as Stay Arm except there is no grace period on opening an Entry Door.
Virtual PGM
a special type of Zone defined within the Alarm Panel. The Alarm Panel can be configured to establish the conditions under which a Virtual PGM [Zone] is triggered and/or reset.

Messages

Depending upon the specific model of Alarm Panel, there will be support for different numbers of Zones, and Areas. At startup of the Paradox Alarm Plugin, messages are exchanged with the Alarm Panel itself to understand how many Zones and Areas are in the Panel, the Labels for these, and the "current" state for any Zone.

These low-level messages are varied, but include:

  • Retrieve a Zone Label
  • Retrieve a User Label
  • Retrieve a Area Label
  • Read the status of a Zone (open/closed)
  • Read the status of an Area (armed/force-armed, stay-armed/instant-armed, alerting/breach)
  • Zone status change events
  • Area status change events
  • Request Arming/Force-Arming
  • Request Stay-Arming/Instant-Arming
  • Trigger Alerting/Breach
  • Remote control and Voice Activation events

The Paradox Alarm Plugin processing

Startup processing

The Startup processing for the Alarm Panel plugin looks roughly like:

  • determine the number of Areas in the System, and their Labels
  • create Child devices per Area found
    • Armed <Area n Label>
    • Stay Armed <Area n Label>
    • Alarm Breach <Area n Label>
    • Area <Area n Label>
  • determine the number of Zones in the System, and their Labels
  • create a Child device per Zone found using the Label read from the Alarm Panel
  • determine the number of Users in the System, and their associated Labels (**for future use)
  • retrieve the current state of each Area, and "set" it into Vera
  • retrieve the current state of each Zone, and "set" it into Vera

Notes:

  • During startup processing, "out of band" events received are skipped.
    This can happen, for example, if someone triggers a motion sensor event as Vera is starting up the plugin during a Vera reboot.
  • To reduce the number of Zones created, the Plugin will look for "Empty" or "Default" Labels.
    An Empty/Default Label on a Zone indicates that we'll skip over it. If you want a Zone to be mapped to a MotionSensor Device then it must have a non-empty, non-default label. This was done to avoid having up to 48, 96 or 192 "unused" MotionSensor events in Vera.
  • Zone-based MotionSensor Devices are created without the embedded flag, so they can be placed in Rooms.
    These devices are still Parented to the Alarm Panel Device, but can be placed in any Room defined by Vera. The downside of this is that immediately after the installation of the Plugin, all Zones must be placed into a Room, as defined by the Vera UI.
  • The Area <Area n Label> Child device is designed to replace the 3x other Child Devices, and has the logic for Area/Partition events natively implemented as a DeviceType.

Event processing

After startup, the system is set running. It receives events and, for those of interest, it translates them into MotionSensor values to set upon it's Child Devices.

  • Armed n MotionSensor in Vera is set when a User requests either to Arm, or to Force Arm, the Alarm Panel.
  • Stay Armed n MotionSensor in Vera is set when a User requests either to Stay Arm, or Instant Arm, the Alarm Panel.
  • Communication MotionSensor in Vera is set when the Printer Module has difficulty communicating with the Alarm Panel, or the internal buffers are full.
  • Breach n MotionSensor in Vera is set when the Alarm is in Breach (Siren, Silent etc)

NOTE: This version of the Luup Plugin doesn't support remotely Arming, or Disarming, of the Alarm Panel. The underlying Message protocol supports this.

Example event messages

  • G009N001A001 - Arming with Master code, Area 1
  • G013N001A001 - Disarming with Master code, Area 1
  • G004N007A000 - Remote control access, Key 0
  • G004N003A001 - Arm with Stay mode, Area 1
  • G001N015A001 - Zone 15 is Open (Motion), Area 1
  • G000N015A001 - Zone 15 is OK (No motion), Area 1

Installation

ParadoxAlarm-VeraSerialConfig.png

This section not intentionally left blank, it's just not finished yet  :)

Errors

The Paradox Alarm Plugin unconditionally logs all Alarm Panel events in Vera's log file. These events have been translated into their English equivalent from the internal codes that the Alarm Panel uses.

Examples include: 

01 ... luup_log:nn: 001:Zone is Open, 015:Motion Upstairs (Zone 15), 001:Area 1
01 ... luup_log:nn: 000:Zone is OK, 015:Motion Upstairs (Zone 15), 001:Area 1
01 ... luup_log:nn: 014:Disarm with User Code, 002:User Code 2, 001:Area 1
01 ... luup_log:nn: 064:Status 1, 000:Armed, 001:Area 1
01 ... luup_log:nn: 009:Arming with Master, 001:User Code 1, 001:Area 1
01 ... luup_log:nn: 004:Non-reportable Event, 007:Remote control access, 000:Occurs in all areas enabled in the system

Discussion

This section not intentionally left blank, it's just not finished yet  :)

References

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