Sensors not recognized and not updated

[Kate]

Hello guys,

I installed this plugin on my HS3 PRO S6 latest version. After setting my EVL3 credentials and my user code for arming and disarming, I have one root device, one partition and one device.

The Alarm system has 1 zone configured and 3 sensors within that zone. Your user guide states, that this plugin will configure one device per partition.

I can successfully arm and disarm the alarm system with all sensors closed. If any of my sensors is triggered, I am no longer able to arm, which is how it should be.

However, I cannot see or add any of those 3 sensors as devices into HS. Just to try it out, I configured 3 zones and I can see 3 devices now, but none of them change if I trigger any of my 3 sensors in my home.

Questions:
1) How do I create 3 devices in HS for my 3 sensors of my zone 1 on my Vista 20p?
2) How do I ensure that those 3 devices get updated based on their status?
3) Please don't tell me that I have to create one zone for each sensor on my Alarm system as this wouldn't make sense. Can you confirm that I don't need one zone per sensor?

Thanks in advance.

[spud]

the plugin is only capable of reporting status for zones (not sensors), so I guess you need one zone per sensor if you want to get individual status of each sensor.

[Kate]

the plugin is only capable of reporting status for zones (not sensors), so I guess you need one zone per sensor if you want to get individual status of each sensor.

I am sorry, but that doesn't make sense. Alarm systems are configures with zones, where you have e.g. first floor and second floor as one zone each. Within each zone you have multiple devices e.g. window and door sensors.

The number of zones is limited per alarm system and you can have multiple partitions as well.

You are proposing to change and reprogram a complete alarm system, where each device has to be in its own zone.

Smartthings and Vera both work with my existing alarm system and as a matter of fact, the Vera plugin for Ademco Honeywell Vista is amazing as it reads the complete configuration of the alarm system and creates everything for you and that plugin is free of charge. Too bad Vera sucks so much.

With that said, this plugin for Honeywell Ademco has a price tag and has nowhere close to the functionality desired and now I would have to repropram my alarm system to make it work with this plugin. I don't think I am going to go down this route.

[cwfluke]

I am sorry, but that doesn't make sense. Alarm systems are configures with zones, where you have e.g. first floor and second floor as one zone each. Within each zone you have multiple devices e.g. window and door sensors.

I don't think I agree with your statement about alarm systems being that way, specifically the Ademco systems. I have an Ademco Vista 20P at a duplex house and have each unit on a partition in the same panel. Each sensor is setup in the panel individually so that each sensor is recognized individually by the panel and is set to a partition and a system zone (different then the sensor zone).

I've had two Vista 20P's, one installed by a professional monitoring company, and one I did myself. Both had each sensor as individual zones and is how the programming documentation shows it. When I look at my Eyezon web portal for the Envisalink, it wants zones and not sensors. What they want is to identify when an alarm is triggered, which sensor triggers, in that you should setup each sensor as a zone so that when the monitoring center sees the alarm, they know rather it is a front door, window, motion sensor, etc.

The issue I see with setting up entire floors as a single zone is that you couldn't trigger off individual sensors depending on how you arm the system, STAY vs AWAY vs INSTANT, etc. On the Vista 20P, I don't see how you could have more than one sensor on a zone unless they are chained together, which the panel couldn't tell the difference for each sensor. For wireless, each zone has a single serial number and can only have one sensor per zone.

Maybe your issue is with Ademco terminology and not this plugin. For me, it works exactly as the professional monitoring company installed one system, how the documentation I used to program the other system shows it, and is how Eyezon (Envisalink) has it on their monitoring system portal, all having it setup with each sensor as it's own zone. This plugin uses zones in the same fashion as ADT and Eyezon, both system I have integrated together with this plugin at two homes. I have individual motion sensors show up in Homeseer and provide ongoing room occupancy, as well as each door showing up and triggering events.