3.0 Honeywell Vista 128 BPT Houselogix Driver

[Jeffrey]

On 3/5/2020 at 12:22 PM, Robeng32 said:

Ferbor, the 128BPT was connected to the 4232CBM on 2.10.6 and was working.   The client wanted to move to OS3 so we switched to HSIM and currently having a few difficulties.  We are back on site next week with the alarm company to make another attempt to gett this to work.  I believe the problem is with the keypad address within the panel.  Its not set up properly to communicate.   Will update next week.

Did HSIM work in 3.0?  I am still on 2.10.6 and this is one thing that is causing me hesitation to try the move to 3.0. 

Thanks,

Jeff

[sweekley]

HELLO,

Has anyone been able to make the 128BPT panel work with 3.0 or has C4 came out with a new driver for this panel? Any help will be appreciated.

[DLite]

1 hour ago, sweekley said:

HELLO,

Has anyone been able to make the 128BPT panel work with 3.0 or has C4 came out with a new driver for this panel? Any help will be appreciated.

Yes, I have it working well with 3.0 using the HSIM hardware and driver.  The only limitation to be aware of is the short delay in reporting zone closures if you have multiple zones open -- see earlier in this thread. 

[AK1]

There is a commercial version of the 4232CBM Control4 driver that specifically supports 128BPT panel, amongst others.

[ferbor]

Finally, after several months of delay, my HSIM arrived to Argentina so I can now share my experience with this device and driver. Unfortunately my experience is not good. Or we are doing some incorrectly,  or the driver has not some basic capabilities an alarm driver must have (from what I ready on this forum many people use this feature I believe the HSIM is lacking)

I am currently running version 2.10.6, not being able to upgrade to 3.X due to this driver.

First the good news: the installation of the HSIM to the alarm panel and the recognition by my C4 system was very easy. It worked at the first attempt and it was able to read all the zones from my alarm panel with no problems

But when checking the zone status on C4 touchscreen the first problem appears. I have 126 zones on my alarm panel and the zone status screen was not reporting the correct information. I understand that this is mainly due to the "Zone Close Timeout", which I quote below, so I was expecting to adjust this setting to solve this issue.

"Zone Close Timeout - The HSIM module is connected to the keypad bus. It receives information about open zones on the partition through the bus interface. The Honeywell security panel does not directly provide information about zone open/close events. However, because the module is connected to the keypad bus it receives periodic broadcasts from the panel listing the 'open' zones. The driver captures this broadcast and uses it to set the zone state to open. If a subsequent broadcast shows the zone is no longer open, the driver sets the zone state to closed. The Zone Close Timeout property defaults to 30 seconds. If you are getting false positive 'closed' events on zones it will be necessary to increase the timeout value. It is important to note that the longer the polling cycle, the more potential latency between knowing when zones are closed. However, if it's too short and the panel isn't responding quickly enough, the driver will report open zones as closed."

But before doing this, we tried what is one of the most important reasons for me of integrating C4 and the alarm system, that is to bind C4 sensors to the alarm sensors. In this way I can trigger an action on C4 based on the open/ closed status of the sensor. I use this mainly to receive "security" notifications of when a door is opened or left opened for some time.

So, in order to try the HSIM we bound a C4 motion sensor to the motion sensor in the room  I have all my racks. When the motion sensor detects motion the light is supposed to turn on. I currently have this programed like this with my 4232 CBM module and it works instantly. But with the HSIM nothing happened.........I activated the alarm motion sensor and the lights did not turn on.

Going back to the status of all zones, the information displayed on Honeywell's panels is the following:

a) On my Honeywell Vista Tuxedo touch panels the status of all the zones is showed perfectly at a glance. If al zones are closed and one or two are opened this is immediately reflected on the screen.

b) On standard keyboards the open zones are showed one by one on a sequential form (one after the other).

So I tried something. .....I started moving in front of the motion sensor while looking at one of the standard Honeywell keyboard. Nothing happened, so I keep on moving. The room's light only turned on when the keyboard display showed that the corresponding zone was opened.

This means that the "standard keyboard" not only shows the open zones one by one due to space limitations on the small screen but this is due to some kind of sequential check of the status of the zones. This totally matches to what C4 mentions about the zone status and "Zone Close timeout" which I quoted above from the driver's documentations. Unfortunately only now I understand correctly the limitation of this.

From further searching on the internet I believe that:

- Tuxedo and 4232CBM use ECP (Enhanced Console Protocol) to communicate with the panel and

- Standard Honeywell Keyboard and HSIM use a "standard protocol" where this instant zone status is not available.

Is this correct or my understanding is incorrect? If it is correct, why C4 developed a driver for 3.X for the HSIM which has less features than the 4232CBM, and not for the latter.

I really hope somebody corrects me and tells me that the HSIM is capable of doing what I need since if not my only possible course of action if to change the panel for a DSC Neo.

Looking forward to your comments!!

Best regards

Fernando

 

 

[DLite]

13 hours ago, ferbor said:

Finally, after several months of delay, my HSIM arrived to Argentina so I can now share my experience with this device and driver. Unfortunately my experience is not good. Or we are doing some incorrectly,  or the driver has not some basic capabilities an alarm driver must have (from what I ready on this forum many people use this feature I believe the HSIM is lacking)

I am currently running version 2.10.6, not being able to upgrade to 3.X due to this driver.

First the good news: the installation of the HSIM to the alarm panel and the recognition by my C4 system was very easy. It worked at the first attempt and it was able to read all the zones from my alarm panel with no problems

But when checking the zone status on C4 touchscreen the first problem appears. I have 126 zones on my alarm panel and the zone status screen was not reporting the correct information. I understand that this is mainly due to the "Zone Close Timeout", which I quote below, so I was expecting to adjust this setting to solve this issue.

"Zone Close Timeout - The HSIM module is connected to the keypad bus. It receives information about open zones on the partition through the bus interface. The Honeywell security panel does not directly provide information about zone open/close events. However, because the module is connected to the keypad bus it receives periodic broadcasts from the panel listing the 'open' zones. The driver captures this broadcast and uses it to set the zone state to open. If a subsequent broadcast shows the zone is no longer open, the driver sets the zone state to closed. The Zone Close Timeout property defaults to 30 seconds. If you are getting false positive 'closed' events on zones it will be necessary to increase the timeout value. It is important to note that the longer the polling cycle, the more potential latency between knowing when zones are closed. However, if it's too short and the panel isn't responding quickly enough, the driver will report open zones as closed."

But before doing this, we tried what is one of the most important reasons for me of integrating C4 and the alarm system, that is to bind C4 sensors to the alarm sensors. In this way I can trigger an action on C4 based on the open/ closed status of the sensor. I use this mainly to receive "security" notifications of when a door is opened or left opened for some time.

So, in order to try the HSIM we bound a C4 motion sensor to the motion sensor in the room  I have all my racks. When the motion sensor detects motion the light is supposed to turn on. I currently have this programed like this with my 4232 CBM module and it works instantly. But with the HSIM nothing happened.........I activated the alarm motion sensor and the lights did not turn on.

Going back to the status of all zones, the information displayed on Honeywell's panels is the following:

a) On my Honeywell Vista Tuxedo touch panels the status of all the zones is showed perfectly at a glance. If al zones are closed and one or two are opened this is immediately reflected on the screen.

b) On standard keyboards the open zones are showed one by one on a sequential form (one after the other).

So I tried something. .....I started moving in front of the motion sensor while looking at one of the standard Honeywell keyboard. Nothing happened, so I keep on moving. The room's light only turned on when the keyboard display showed that the corresponding zone was opened.

This means that the "standard keyboard" not only shows the open zones one by one due to space limitations on the small screen but this is due to some kind of sequential check of the status of the zones. This totally matches to what C4 mentions about the zone status and "Zone Close timeout" which I quoted above from the driver's documentations. Unfortunately only now I understand correctly the limitation of this.

From further searching on the internet I believe that:

- Tuxedo and 4232CBM use ECP (Enhanced Console Protocol) to communicate with the panel and

- Standard Honeywell Keyboard and HSIM use a "standard protocol" where this instant zone status is not available.

Is this correct or my understanding is incorrect? If it is correct, why C4 developed a driver for 3.X for the HSIM which has less features than the 4232CBM, and not for the latter.

I really hope somebody corrects me and tells me that the HSIM is capable of doing what I need since if not my only possible course of action if to change the panel for a DSC Neo.

Looking forward to your comments!!

Best regards

Fernando

 

 

I have a Honeywell Vista128BPT connected via the HSIM to Control4, and I am on OS 3.2.  I have worked through some zone status problems. Here are some things to check; hopefully, one of these will help.  

1. Earlier versions of the HSIM driver did not properly update zone status.  The one released in April (maybe it was v118 or something) seemed to fix that.  Make sure you are running the latest version.  (In my case, the early driver version did not update zones for those of us who run the Honeywell TotalConnect module alongside the HSIM. The more recent driver versions seem to have fixed that problem.)

2. I have 67 zones. It sounds like you have more.  The more zones you have, the longer you'll need your zone closure timeout to be.  I would suggest using the maximum zone closure timeout of 180 seconds, which is what I use.  

3. I have had issues, particularly after a driver update, where the zones disappear temporarily.  Go into the security panel/Zones screen on one of your navigators, and make sure you can see all your zones there.  If not, change the number of zones in your driver properties to try to get C4 to read the zones back in.  I usually just add one zone, click set, and then subtract one zone to return to the original number of zones.

4. Note that the zone closure timeout is only relevant if you have multiple zones open.  If you open a single zone, C4 should update instantly, and if you close that zone, C4 will also update instantly.  For testing purposes. just try opening a single zone -- preferably a window or door -- to see if C4 updates properly.  As a first step, check to see if you see the zone open in your security panel/Zones screen on one of your navigators. That will work even if there is something wrong with your contact sensor binding, so it is a good first step in troubleshooting.

HSIM provides the functionality you are seeking, so hopefully you'll be able to get it working.  I can confirm that the driver works very well for me in updating zone status.  I hope you find a solution and get this working!

 

[ferbor]

Thanks D-Lite for your comments,

We will give the driver a try as soon as my dealer can come again to my home. Meanwhile I can reply some of the points:

1. The driver version we are using is 120 (running on C4 2.10.6) so I believe this is not the issue then.

2. I have 126 zones. We will try with 180 seconds.

3. I will take note of this in case I am able to leave the driver fully functional.

4. This is my main issue. I have more or less 50 contact sensors for the security blinds, 50 contact sensors for the windows, 5 door/ gate contact sensors and the rest are motion sensors. During the day all 50 blind contact sensors are open and if it summer almost the 50 of the windows. In this situation the alarm is not activated but when the garage gate or some of the street doors is opened I receive a notification on my mobile. So this is the scenario where I need that, as soon as a gate is opened I receive the notification on my mobile.

When we tried the driver we did it in this scenario (almost 80 zones opened). I can try to do it, as you suggest, with all zones closed, but I am sure that it will work in that situation since it will be the only opened zone. 

I am sure that the zone binding was correctly done since, as mentioned on my previous post, If I continually move in from of the motion sensor at some moment the light turned on. This was exactly when the alarm panel, during its cycling through all the open zones, showed the zone of the motion sensor. I am not sure if I am clear explaining this.

Do you have any programming that is triggered when a zone is opened (like a motion sensor)? Is this working?

Thanks!

[DLite]

On 8/18/2021 at 9:10 PM, ferbor said:

Thanks D-Lite for your comments,

We will give the driver a try as soon as my dealer can come again to my home. Meanwhile I can reply some of the points:

1. The driver version we are using is 120 (running on C4 2.10.6) so I believe this is not the issue then.

2. I have 126 zones. We will try with 180 seconds.

3. I will take note of this in case I am able to leave the driver fully functional.

4. This is my main issue. I have more or less 50 contact sensors for the security blinds, 50 contact sensors for the windows, 5 door/ gate contact sensors and the rest are motion sensors. During the day all 50 blind contact sensors are open and if it summer almost the 50 of the windows. In this situation the alarm is not activated but when the garage gate or some of the street doors is opened I receive a notification on my mobile. So this is the scenario where I need that, as soon as a gate is opened I receive the notification on my mobile.

When we tried the driver we did it in this scenario (almost 80 zones opened). I can try to do it, as you suggest, with all zones closed, but I am sure that it will work in that situation since it will be the only opened zone. 

I am sure that the zone binding was correctly done since, as mentioned on my previous post, If I continually move in from of the motion sensor at some moment the light turned on. This was exactly when the alarm panel, during its cycling through all the open zones, showed the zone of the motion sensor. I am not sure if I am clear explaining this.

Do you have any programming that is triggered when a zone is opened (like a motion sensor)? Is this working?

Thanks!

Hi Ferbor,

Thanks for clarifying.  I do find that the driver becomes less reliable in reporting closures when there are many zones open.  We had an HVAC outage last year where we left many windows open, and I remember we had situations where the system reported false closures. The best you can do here is just increase the zone closure timeout.  On the other hand, I have found it pretty reliable at reporting zone opening, even with many zones open — motion sensor programming should work ok, assuming my experience carries over to your system.

I do have programming triggered off zone openings and closures, and it works very reliably for me. However, we rarely have more than 3-4 zones open at once.  
 

Try the longer zone closure timeout and see if it helps at all.  Hopefully it does.

Good luck!!