I've got a Vista 20-p with 2 wall mounted controllers... Looking at getting this interface module so I can replace one of those controllers with an android tablet, that will view zone statuses, and be able to arm or disarm the Vista. Will that be possible without me pulling out the little hair I have left? I am competent, but dont qualify as a real geek.
Hi Andy,
I just installed my interface about a month ago so I'm no expert but it is a fairly easy process (just watch the youtube video). Right now I've tapped into my three door sensors and the Stay and Away statuses from the main panel. I am able to view these five "contacts" in my Hubitat dashboards. If you want to add the Stay / Away statuses, check the Doc that David posted on the first page.
I haven't gone as far as adding in the ability to arm / disarm the system but it just requires adding in the relay (it comes with the kit) and I've been too busy to do it. From what I've read, you would need to program in another zone on your Vista as a key switch and there is something about the delay that selects the difference between Arm Stay and Arm Away.
This thread is exactly what I've been looking for for the past few days of research trying to figure out how to:
- Enable SmartThings to GET the armed status of the Vista 20P (e.g. away/stay/disarmed/burglar)
- Enable SmartThings to SET the armed state of the Vista 20P (e.g. away/stay/disarm)
There's info out there on how to set and get arm/disarm/burglar but this is the first thing I've found that hints at the ability to work with specific arming states.
Awesome work by Peter Babinski and David Parsons - thank you.
If I'm understanding this correctly, I will need 3 outputs on the Vista 20P which will connect to 3 zone inputs on the Konnected interface board:
1. Output burglar state
2. Output AWAY arming state
3. Output STAY arming state
Then I will just need a single zone on my Vista 20P configured as a keyswitch and by using the device handler built by Peter Babinski, I'll be able to set the following momentary durations to set the armed state of the Vista:
- Under .5 second (instantaneous) disarms
- Between .5 and 1 second arms AWAY
- Longer than 1 second arms STAY
This is according to the Vista 20P User Manual (see attached VistaKeyswitch.JPG)
I've also been experimenting with zone types 20, 21 and 22 (see attached VistaArmingZoneTypes.JPG) but I'm not sure these do what I want. I was hoping a momentary contact on an input configured as one of those zone types would arm or disarm the system but I can't get it working. It seems to want to configure those zone types for an unsupervised RF button.
Peter/David - are you guys still around? Am I understanding this all correctly?
Thanks,
Dan
I have since moved on from Konnected. I did research into the GPIO of the chip used and the Konnected interface pin assignments and found that the relay tripped every time the device rebooted. I would get a Key Switch Fault showing up on my keypads afterwards and would have to key in to reset the status. I may or may not have posted in this thread linking to the diagnostics of the chip and an oscilloscope but it’s there.
I also think I saw someone try and use my smart app but the Konnected codebase may have diverged from my original commits and it may no longer function (although maybe it could with some love yet I have no way to test now).
My current setup is an Alarm Decoder pihat on a pi zero and works much more seamless. The code is completely open source as compared to Konnected 2.0.
Feel free to hit me up on GitHub or just my last name at gmail. I love that Konnected got me into this world of smart alarms but have moved on to more customizable pastures.
Thanks, @Peter Babinski
Last night after reading your post about the AlarmDecoder solution, I did some research and just by sheer coincidence, had the parts I needed to set it up. I took apart my Homeseer Z-net on a hunch and sure enough, there was a Raspberry Pi B+ and on closer inspection of the device I've been using to connect Homeseer to my Vista 20P, it was a Nutech/AlarmDecoder AD2USB. So I got the Raspbian image from AlarmDecoder, put it on the Pi, connected the AD2USB, configured the WebApp, installed the device handlers, installed the SmartApp and have things sort of working.
The complexity of this solution and what I had to do to get it working is mind-boggling. This solution is not for the faint of heart. I guess that's open source for you. It certainly didn't help that Samsung has their SmartThings cloud infrastructure split into different shards so the things I was installing in the IDE weren't showing up on my hub or finding the webapp.
Anyway, this the wrong forum for AlarmDecoder info but just wanted to pass that along to anyone following along that was thinking about heading down that path. It may work great but I'm a little turned off by the complexity.
I've been going back and forth today with Konnected support and they are telling me the momentary duration can be configured in the Konnected cloud on a per-relay basis. This apparently means I can configure relay #1 for .5 second and relay #2 for 1 second and achieve STAY/AWAY arming. For disarm, I think I would send a momentary to either relay and if the system is armed, it will interpret any momentary as DISARM.
I can't really confirm any of this until I buy one and try to set it up though.
So, I have read through this entire thread..and my goodness it has been SUPER helpful, I have tried to talk to support as well, but that is sort of helpful.....So I do have some questions, but I think it is more about the Konnected app setup and the SmartThings app as well.
So i have my setup all done, and it is working and such with a wired and can use the keypad to arm and disarm...thats good----for the most part. Only issue i have is if i arm "stay" and trigger an alarm it has an entry delay...and that is stupid! anyone got suggestion on that?
So first problem, I can only get the switch to program "away" i cannot add a seconday to get the 3000ms trigger for "stay". I have wired the second side of my relay to Zone 1 on my Vista 20P, but when configuring the zone 1 as a 77, it doesn't list a HW type, so it just errors out?
So, I also have the Programable outputs, and Konnected TechSupport said to onfigure them as a "zone" and a door, so they are opened or closed to get the status of the alarm, and its supposed to "trigger" an open if the alarm goes off. So this works, i see the alarm status goes "open" when the alarm is triggered. Now, in order for the SmartThings to see if the alarm is "Armed" is to read this sensor, so automation, "if sensors is open, set home to away" but then, i have the automation of, if i set the home to away, it triggers the arm button...so basically it is a loop of arm, disarm, arm disarm, arm, disarm, arm, disarm. HOOOOOOWWWWW the heck do I get smart things to be able to see if i the system is armed from the keypad?
@Matt Bearce,
Welcome to the party. I just checked the Vista 20P user guide and see that Stay and Night-Stay arming types allow for an entry delay. What is the zone type you are testing with? If it's a zone type 1 or 2 (entry) then the panel will allow an entry delay. Maybe you want those to be zone type 3 (perimeter)
Alternatively, you could arm the system in "Instant" mode which does not allow for an entry delay. If you always use your phone to "unlock" the house before you enter, then you probably don't need any zones with an entry delay.
Unfortunately, I don't see a way to arm the system to "Instant" mode with the keyswitch zone 77.
IIRC there is something funky about zone 1. I'm not using it but I don't remember why. You might try moving your keyswitch 77 to a different zone.
As for the different relay durations to arm in STAY vs AWAY mode... yup. That's a problem. I've received limited help from support on this. I was told it should work but I did not sense confidence for it working with SmartThings which is why I'm waiting to purchase.
So, its on all different zones, but the mode is "away" maybe i will just set it to instant...cant do it from the phone, but i can type it in at night i suppose....
So for the relay...I do have the relay configured to Zone 8, and it activates and deactivates the alarm just fine. You cannot configure it to do stay AND away, however the new platform the relay has 2 options.....so you can configure 2 different keyswitches, but i only have zone 1 free. I tried to wire it up, configure it as a keyswitch, however since there is no "hardware type" in the keypads config, i cannot configure it to EOL, or Normal Open. (and yes i have a relay on it)
But as of now, i have the main thing configured, I can arm and disarm the alarm from my phone in Away mode. But, I HAVE to do it via phone. If i set an automation up for the alarm as a sensor, it goes into a loop? so? i dunno.
I think that its in a decent working state, need to fully test it with alarming and alerts and such to see how it works but....another time.
If ANYONE knows how to configure that "stay" relay for the 3000ms delay...lemme know
also if anyone knows how to get the app to show armed in the phone if activated via keypad......hook it up!
in AWAY mode, entry delay is expected if your zone types are set to "1". That means it's a front door. Unless I'm missing something, what you're seeing is exactly what it should be doing unless you set your zones to perimeter or something other than zone type 1 (entry)
for GETTING the arming status, have you checked this documentation?
It shouldn't matter how the panel is armed, if you have outputs 17 and 18 configured to report arming and alarm status, the Konnected should be able to pick that up.
ya, it was set different with comcast, but maybe they just programmed their "away" to program the away immediate....who knows.
So the link, yes i have it configured this way exactly. But, in the Konnected app you have to assign it as something, the TechSupport guy told me to set it as a door. So i have it as a door sensor, so its either opened or closed........so there is a tile that shows "arm status" and its either "closed" for disarmed or "open" for armed.
Maybe it's me, but mine is set to open as disarmed and closed as armed.
if you select "inverse" it will swap it.
I got my Konnected Pro panel yesterday and finally got it working as expected. Here's a few things I learned:
- Don't use zone 1. For anything. It's weird.
- I configured just zone 8 as a keyswitch zone (77) and hardware type NO (Normally Open)
- I have a dual relay board and two outputs on the pro board. The wiring from the Konnected outputs to the relay is very straightforward - just +/- and then a wire for each output. The common terminals for both relay outputs are connected to the low side terminal for zone 8. The NO (Normally Open) wires from both relay outputs are connected to the high side of the zone 8 terminal.
- I have a "zone" configured in the Konnected app that triggers output 1 for 2000ms which arms the panel in STAY mode
- I have a "zone" configured that triggers output 2 for 750ms which arms the panel in AWAY mode
- triggering either outputs while the panel is armed, will disarm the panel
- Outputs 17 and 18 on the Vista panel are programmed according to the documentation (arming/burglar status respectively) and connected to two different zone inputs on the Konnected interface boards
- The two zones connected to outputs 17 and 18 are configured as doors as mentioned above. They show open/close depending on the arming of the alarm of burglar status
It took a whole lot of trial and error to get to this point. The documentation has huge gaps. The document that describes Vista 20P setup does a good job of showing wiring and panel programming but completely misses the big-picture end-to-end concepts. I couldn't find any info about setting things up in the app like configuring the Konnected outputs, trigger durations, setting up the 17/18 outputs as door switches, etc.
initially I had tried setting up a keyswitch on zone 12 on my Vista expansion module but I couldn't get that to work. I think the 4219 requires EOL resistors and does not allow you to configure NO/NC hardwire type for the zone. Then I tried zone 1 and had no luck with that either. Lastly, I set zone 8 (my keyswitch zone) to NO (Normally Open) despite the keyswitch documentation and wiring diagram showing to use the NC terminals on the relay output. Before this I was having all kinds of strange behavior. The vista 20P documentation says it uses a NO keyswitch so this makes more sense to me.
I'm happy that I was able to get two relay outputs with different trigger durations connected to the same keyswitch zone to trigger STAY/AWAY, I think it would be way cooler if the app would let you select output 1 twice to configure two different durations. I don't see why it wouldn't be possible for it to use the same output with different durations.
in any case, it seems to be working but it still needs a lot of testing. I've been using AlarmDecoder with SmartThings for the last few weeks as a temporary solution since ditching HomeSeer w/ AD2USB and even though Konnected was really complicated to get working due to poor documentation, it does feel solid and much cleaner than AlarmDecoder.
Dan, could you post a picture of the dual relay?
That’s the only thing I cant figure it out. I think I understand what you are saying but I want to make sure I get it. I have my relay setup on zone 8 and I tried zone 1 but ya didn’t work.
So ya I’d LOVE a picture of the wiring from relay to vista 20p please please
here's the relay unit and a picture showing the pro board and the relay unit.
After looking at this again, I realize I could have just looped the relay output 2 up to the relay output 1 and ran a single high side wire up to zone 8. The black wire goes to the low side terminal for zone 8.
I don't know if I'm breaking any electrical rules doing this but it does seem to work just fine. I figure since I have the normally open terminals of the relays connected to each other, should be no harm done and nothing being fed backwards from one relay to the other unless they were somehow activated at the same time and even then I'm not sure it would even matter.
It's been working really well for the last few days (AWS outage aside)
I still think it would be really awesome if Konnected would change their software to allow multiple objects in the app address the same relay with different trigger durations. Then you would only need a single relay.
The only thing that kind of bugs me is the lack of a discreet disarm function. To disarm, you just hit the keyswitch again with either the STAY or AWAY buttons. One of these days, the system will fail to arm/disarm then I'll have to troubleshoot whether it failed to arm when I left home or failed to disarm when I came back home.
Now that this is working, the next thing that is on my mind is auto bypassing when a zone is faulted or at the very least, notifying me that the system didn't arm as expected. That will probably just need some logic in my smartthings automations to check 5-10 minutes to confirm the system is armed and notify me if not.
one thing I'm now noticing is that zone 8 (my keyswitch zone) is showing faulted on my alarm panel sometimes when using the relay. This doesn't make any sense - how could a zone configured as a keyswitch be in a faulted state? It doesn't seem to be causing any problems and I can still arm the system when it shows "08 FAULTED" but I'd like it to not do that. Let me know if you see the same thing once you get it working.
My follow up comment seems to have been lost so this may be a duplicate if the first one shows up again.
I'm getting a "FAULTED 08" message on the alarm panel when I use the relay to arm/disarm the system. Hopefully this is normal, it doesn't seem to be causing any issues and doesn't persist after the relay does its thing.
Matt - to clarify for you, both of the green wires from the relay are connected to the high side terminal of zone 8. The black wire goes to the low side terminal.
Dan
ALL, I have been successfully able to use Zone1 on VISTA20P for the KeySwitch. I have been using for past few weeks without any issue. Figured this out after researching how a PHYSICAL key switch would be wired on VISTA...
Details as I remember them:
At some point, must reprogram Zone1 as Keyswitch (Type 77).
Set Relays to NO (Normally Open) and wire the required EOLR in PARALLEL with the relay(s). (yes, this is opposite of what Nate says for other zones/boards).
When Relay activates, the relay CLOSES the loop and the EOLR is bypassed. This activates the KeySwitch as expected.
NOTES: If you are making the wiring changes without powering down your Vista (no-one --should-- do that, but ... you know), you need to deactivate/delete the Zone1 programming or it will think it is still in fault. A power recycle after wiring complete OR deleting the zone config and starting over after wiring complete seems to clear whatever state that caused the fault.
The relay activation time (as mentioned above is important). I had to adjust mine and add 100-200 ms to get consistent behavior. (too little time, it sometimes ignored my trigger). I am using Hubitat, and I agree with earlier comments that it would be nice if the same device could be used with different delay times. I had to use both relays to mimic STAY vs AWAY behavour. Both relays are wired in parallel to the EOLR and all on Zone1. Each relay is tied back to a different device in Hubitat, which have different settings for milliseconds to reflect STAY vs AWAY arming.
I hope this helps someone. I was desperate as I needed that extra zone so had a little more incentive to figure this one out.
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thanks, Jason - good info. OK so it's possible on zone 1, that's cool I'd like to move my keyswitch there and free up a zone. What do you mean by putting the EOLR in parallel to zone 1? as opposed to what? Would you mind describing the wiring path from relay COMs/Outs to Zone 1 high/low side? Or a picture? Assuming 2K EOLR? thanks, Dan
Hi Dan, I'm restating a lot of extra detail as it might help others. Judging by your comments above, I think a lot of this you already know...
Terminals 8 and 9 are the High and Low (respectively) Terminals for the VISTA20P Zone1. According to VISTA 20P documentation, Zone 1 REQUIRES a 2000 OHM EOLR to provide constant resistance.
Basically, we want to wire this so there are 3 parallel/possible paths for electricity to flow between Terminals 8 and 9 on the VISTA. Which path is taken, depends on which paths are open/closed and which of the closed paths have the least resistance. (Electrical current flows down the path of least resistance)
So, our 3 paths are defined and wired as follows:
PATH 1: VISTA 20P Port 8 <--wired--> 2000 OHM EOL Resistor <--wired--> VISTA 20P Port 9
NOTE: This path seems a bit weird in that you are simply wiring the two terminals together WITH 2000 OHM resistor inline.
PATH 2: VISTA 20P Port 8 <--wired--> Relay1 NO (Normally OPEN) (NO1)
VISTA 20P Port 9 <--wired--> Relay1 COM (COM1)
PATH 3: VISTA 20P Port 8 <--wired--> Relay2 NO (Normally OPEN) (NO2)
VISTA 20P Port 9 <--wired--> Relay2 COM (COM2)
When both Relays are Open (normal), electricity cannot flow through the relays and thus will flow will travel through resistor, as no other pathways exist.
When Relay1 closes, then electricity flows through relay1 where there is minimal resistance and does NOT flow through EOL Resistor. The VISTA20P board detects the voltage change. This is a momentary switch and after the 750ms the relay returns back to Normally open, forcing current to flow again through the EOLR and thus returning voltage back to the original reading. The delay in Hubitat for Relay1 is set to 750ms, which satisfies the "AWAY" arm/disarm for VISTA.
When Relay2 closes, then electricity flows through relay2 where there is minimal resistance and does NOT flow through EOL Resistor. The VISTA20P board detects the voltage change. This is a momentary switch and after the 2000ms the relay returns back to Normally open, forcing current to flow again through the EOLR and thus returning voltage back to the original reading. The delay in Hubitat for Relay2 is set to 2000ms, which satisfies the "STAY" arm/disarm for VISTA.
As you mentioned earlier, it's a bummer we have to use two physical relays for this purpose, as they are doing exactly the same physical function. The only difference is the software configuration in Hubitat setting a different delay time (750ms vs 2000ms). This is really a change needed from Hubitat to abstract logical device configuration from physical device.
My VISTA wiring for terminals 8 and 9 are pretty crowded, since there are now 3 wires in each terminal. Be careful to make sure all 3 are making good cont
act with the terminal. My first attempt one wire was NOT making good connection and VISTA declared the Zone as FAULTED. I had to correct the connection a
nd then reset the Zone (either via power cycling VISTA board or by deleting the Zone1 configuration in VISTA and re-adding it. Without resetting the zone
the VISTA appears to remember the previous faulted status and not re-initialize the zone.
Of course you can use only one Relay if needed, and you'll just have to set your relay delay in Hubitat to 750ms (AWAY) or 2000ms (STAY) and live with only
one option.
** Be sure to re-program Zone1 to Zone type 77 (keyswitch) in VISTA!! **
I can try to scribble up some diagrams later and post if it helps. Please let us know how it turns out.