This works so well! Texecom Burglar Alarm Smart Home Integration

[@TheRayalex]

I was about to tear the Texecom from the wall and change it with Smart Home appliances. You just changed my mind :D Thank you, just what I needed!

[@solidus4prez]

Are we allowed to make this a purple burglar alarm?

[@und4287]

Next video: Painting the panel cover purple

[@Gjbsecurityandalarms]

This is amazing I’ve literally just had a client ask for assistance in offering this solution for him home. So I will be chatting with him Saturday and showing him this video you are a legend

[@iam_anderdingus]

I also have a Texecom Premier Elite with Ricochet wireless sensors. I bought and installed the Smartcom and it works perfectly 👍

[@joedry1774]

This is just awesome. I have the smartcom on mine but I just didn’t know the alarm was this flexible. Now to go round and find things I can turn on and off with the alarm when I leave the house 😄

[@georgemorris757]

Incredible work! Thanks for sharing! - Ive bought and installed the same hardware at home, would you mind sharing (parts of) your node red flow, it would really help me get started as a node-red novice!

[@camerongray1515]

Thanks! It's a bit tricky to share flows since they're so environment specific, but here's the specific sections I'm using to read the status from the panel: gist.github.com/camerongray1515/65e3328794b2718a6bad0a8914f14d97. It periodically sends "ASTATUS" and "LSTATUS" messages to the panel to get the arm status and LCD text respectively and then parses those along with the other status update messages such as Zone events. All of the different message types are split out by the "Message Type" block and these can be used to trigger various actions based on the event.

[@thingsmadebyjoe]

Wow this brings back memories. The integration of texecom alarms was one of my first projects for a now defunct IoT company. I used a Particle Photon microcontroller and some level shifters and wrote a whole parsing library. I might still have the code somewhere

[@garybowers5724]

This is freaking awesome, I have the same Texecom system but have the external module that makes it "smart", I'm now tempted to replace it with this solution - having the ability to integrate it into HA means you could do some cool stuff, like in the morning when the PIR picks up movement it could turn the lights on for my morning coffee :)

[@alexwaslin1541]

Thanks

[@camerongray1515]

Thank you very much! 😀

[@alexwaslin1541]

Hey Cameron, just looking at adding some additional features to node-red / HA. Would you happen to know the key asci character for the ‘chime’ key, to allow chime enable / disable via HA? I’ve search everywhere. Thanks you for pulling all this together- very useful!

[@YD500]

Would like to give this a try soon. With the plan being to setup a home assistant screen. I’ve not ventured into home assistant yet but presume I put a script behind an on screen button to arm/disarm etc…?

[@WMartinNI]

Intruder alarms will alarm with a keypad tamper if the user code is entered incorrectly too many times in a row and subsequently lock the keypad for a predefined period. I've not used Texecom too much but it's a good system and I've no doubt it would be impossible to brute force without you knowing someone was trying.

[@andrew1210931]

Appreciate this video, this is exactly the project I was imagining to integrate my Premier Elite - thanks :)

[@jonathangreener7734]

This is awesome - thanks for sharing. I've done the same setup as you, and have my armed/disarmed/triggered state pulling through node red into HA and also the zone states through to HA. One thing I'm struggling with is being able to arm/disarm the alarm from HA itself - I have a manual alarm in HA and I can pull the status through from that into Node Red but getting stuck at issuing the key commands back to the texecom panel. I've managed to issue one command but not successive commands to input the code for example. Did you get as far as that?

[@TheGuptfauj]

Could you please tell me which connectors you used for your wiring harness. I'm trying to build the cable but struggling to find good connectors locally and not sure which ones to get

[@n13ldo]

Perfect. Been thinking about moving to a Texecom system for HA integration and put off because of cost of IP connectivity. Not sure which Texecom Alarm panel to start with though. I fitted a Nexus 8 system in our house 23 years ago. Time for an upgrade :)

[@Thomas-fc7uo]

Great video. I did a similar thing with my internal cameras but I was worried about the constant setting and unsetting power cycles affecting the cameras so I used a separate switch like you did but used a 12v relay powered by the alarm output on a set signal. I then put one of the 4 data cores of the Ethernet uplink through the relay. Therefore when the alarm is set it powers the relay and rejoins the Ethernet link then once the alarm is unset the power drops the relay breaks contact but the cameras remain powered but not on the network. Also a lot simpler as it is not relying on any integration of other equipment.

[@danyalm10]

Thanks for another excellent video on this alarm system.

[@Nevexo287]

Really neat solution, I'm surprised there was no trickery needed to get Wintex to talk to the serial port server, I half expected it to do something with ComIP first. The camera solution is cool too, I realise your PoE switch is 5G so the cameras have no right being connected to it, but in some installations using the APIs (or I suppose banging commands in over SSH/telnet) on the switch to enable/disable PoE on the ports would work too. On an unrelated note, glad to see the Cisco CBS' still going strong, the CBS250 we got the same day your video came out is still going strong in it's home at a castle, really great switches. Thanks for the video! :)

[@longnamedude3947]

Which Castle did you equip with Internet Access? I assume this is either in Europe or the UK as pretty much nowhere else these days has any castles that are still standing (maybe Japan & China do?).

[@Bacon_Face_1]

Thanks for the guide! I'm interested in doing this myself actually (also got the Texecom after watching your videos ;) ). Do you know which module I can buy that does 2CH UART to Wifi? Thanks!

[@Ror0c]

Nice setup. I do something similar with power to my cameras, but I do it via the network switch's API to enable/disable the individual PoE ports they are connected to.

[@NivagSwerdna]

@23:05 So you get events even when the system is unset? That's so cool!

[@joshua01]

You’re solution is great! but i think ring system would be able to achieve somewhat partially similar automations? as the system and sensors run on zigbee protocol and can be used thru ha with a zigbee combi stick and linked to the smart plug of choice. But yours is way more reliable solution as it doesn’t rely on cloud services. Really liked the in-depth video

[@camerongray1515]

You probably could achieve a similar effect, but for me I would always rather go for a "conventional" alarm system and then add on smart functionality rather than a completely smart alarm that relies on app control and cloud connectivity for even basic functions.

[@PatrickAustin]

Very cool setup. Thanks for sharing!

[@substandard649]

This is excellent, thanks for sharing. I think an Ethernet esp32 programmed with Esphome could take care of the of the smart home aspect of this, then regular home assistant automations for the logic.

[@camerongray1515]

You technically could, and you could then offload the message parsing logic onto the ESP, this was my original plan for this project. However, you'd also need to use some sort of logic level shifting circuit because the Texecom panel uses 5v logic levels for its COM ports whereas the ESPs use 3.3v logic levels.

[@terrymarky9996]

Fantasic work, I have been waitng for this video. I currently have premier 48 and 64w panels that I have been using RPIs and ser2net to connect to Wintex, am going to convert both over to that serial ethernet converter, much more elegant solution. Also wondering how easy this would be to intergrate to HA to perform automations and trigger lights to come on with PIR detectors ib each room

[@camerongray1515]

Definitely would be relatively easy to integrate, may just need a bit of scripting. I'm personally using Node-RED as a layer between HA and the panel, but there may be something you could do within HA itself, not sure. Only warning I'd give if you're planning on using PIRs to trigger events is that wireless PIRs will go to sleep for a while after detecting motion so they may not be ideal for this as you'd likely miss some events in high traffic areas. Wired ones would be fine though.

[@joedry1774]

@@camerongray1515 you could get around that by configuring the wireless PIRs to be ‘always awake’ I think Texecom call it. This does reduce the battery life of them a bit though

[@877cms]

Can't get putty to connect to Crestron on port 2, any ideas? - EDIT RTFM had com ports set incorrectly in Wintex!

[@jackbrown1260]

Do you still get sensor activation data when the alarm is disarmed and you are using wireless, battery-powered sensors?

[@camerongray1515]

You do, however as standard the wireless PIRs sleep for some time after detecting motion which may be an issue for certain home automation use cases. Apparently this sleep can be disabled a the expense of sensor battery life but it's not something I've ever looked into.

[@johnnysh1000]

Great video, I have an issue that latest version of wintext and this ethernet module wintex says "wintex specified port is not valid" when I connect to wintex ??? it does connect and I can communicate and read / write to texecom elite 88 panel but always get an error box at time of connection, any ideas please, I have set port 2000 for com1 and 3000 for com2 , both coms connect but display a box saying wintex specified port is not valid

[@johnnysh1000]

I have sorted it, I added the port number under setup/modem/TCPIP/Ricochet local port, by doing this the port error message is no more 🙂

[@UnfortunatelyAj]

Did they ever fix the security flaw that passwords were sent in the clear over base64 ? The idea sounds good but an open port on your router right to this device seems very insane to me

[@camerongray1515]

I'm not sure about that particular side of things but personally I'd NEVER recommend opening something like this up to the outside world. With my setup it's only open for whitelisted LAN access from my home automation server. If remote access was required, I'd use a VPN or similar, not just port forward to it.

[@metaljay]

Have you ever thought about trying this with an ESP8266? I’m currently giving it a go with the same 12v converter and a LLC for the 5v>3.3v on the comport. I know Ethernet is always king; but still worth a go

[@camerongray1515]

That was actually my original plan for this, it would definitely work although for my setup, I ended up going down this route to avoid having to mess around with LLCs. An ESP is definitely a great option, especially if you wanted to have the ESP handle all the protocol decoding and then expose the alarm over something like MQTT.

[@metaljay]

@@camerongray1515 fancy a challenge and for another video content? I’m happy to donate you an ESP8266 D1 Uno (has integrated power step down)

[@PuchMaxi]

2:31 Holy moly, it's not a static picture! Haha

[@CJ-vo3jx]

Cameron, I have a Premier Elite 24 with Smartcom but managed to find a used Comport+ module (to give me a 3rd com port) and a ComIP on Gumtree for £25 - so I am about to install these and set COM3 for Crestron. I would then like to integrate to Home Assistant as you have done. I appreciate your comment about sharing NodeRed flows and agree that the latter parts of your flow (i.e. the specific things you trigger) are not of any value to anyone else, but the TCP crestron parsing and decision logic (and the polling) would save me some time in getting going with this. Would you be willing to share those parts?

[@camerongray1515]

That's a fair point! Here's the specific sections I'm using to read the status from the panel: gist.github.com/camerongray1515/65e3328794b2718a6bad0a8914f14d97. It periodically sends "ASTATUS" and "LSTATUS" messages to the panel to get the arm status and LCD text respectively and then parses those along with the other status update messages such as Zone events. All of the different message types are split out by the "Message Type" block and these can be used to trigger various actions based on the event.

[@CJ-vo3jx]

@@camerongray1515 Thanks so much, Cameron! I appreciate you sharing this. I will read through the logic later, use it as a starting point and then modify it as required.

[@ea9mrn]

This is very neat, thanks for sharing. Unfortunately I purchased the Smartcom before I found this video. I have Wintex working fine with it. Comport 1 set to Smartcom and Comport2 set to Crestron. I am able to telnet to comport2. But when I arm and disarm I get some jumbled characters at the prompt and it also does not response to ASTATUS. I assume its some kind of translation issue. I've tired a few differnent baud rates (on the putty side) but this does not seem to make any difference. Anyone had any success with Crestron/telnet using a smartcom.

[@Potts1966]

Nice video. There is a com port 3 on your panel, it's the row of pins to the right of the panel tamper spring. You need a cable and a small board to get a white 4 pin connection. I believe they are included with the SmartCom. But 5 minutes with a scope would give you the pins needed.

[@camerongray1515]

Ahh of course, I forgot about that extra board. I installed a Premier Elite 24 wired system for a friend years ago with a SmartCom. Turns out one of the panel's com ports was faulty so until we could get the replacement PCB sent out, we used the board you mentioned to get a 3rd com port so we could get the SmartCom working.

[@kbhasi]

(4:59) I'm somehow surprised that some people had managed to reverse-engineer Crestron Connected.

[@rickwookie]

From the Crestron module you can see the raw TX and RX data so it's pretty straightforward so see what's going on. It's not strictly "Crestron Connected" though, that's something else.

[@kbhasi]

@@rickwookie Oh. I see. I thought it was because I remembered seeing an Epson projector installed at a public venue that had the branding on it.

[@RWL2012]

42:22 is that a mini PC on top of your camera? 😆

[@camerongray1515]

It's a Blackmagic Video Assist - external monitor and recorder that takes video from the camera over HDMI and records to an SSD allowing me to record in Blackmagic RAW at much higher quality than the camera can do internally.

[@RWL2012]

​@@camerongray1515ah I see, thanks!

[@blakegray9883]

Most commercial alarms now days support IP modules

[@RMyren]

had to put this in 0.75 playback speed for it to sound normal

[@rickwookie]

The fact that dc-dc converter doesn't use yellow for +12 V d.c in. and red for +5 V d.c. out is making me stressed.

[@SonuSingh-s8d3z]

Good

[@Victor-vu1ug]

if you push someone hunger in how? may case gone

[@camerongray1515]

I'm not sure what you mean?

[@longnamedude3947]

This second comment by you uses some seriously broken English. Could you try retyping what you initially wrote and putting it through Google Translate again, Thanks.

[@Neuer_Alias_erstellen]

cool

[@greg778123]

😎

[@FuzzyKaos]

LOL please say "purple burglar alarm"

[@Victor-vu1ug]

just invite someone from the bar that see all you have, you probably don't nee it? Are you blind?

[@camerongray1515]

Huh?

[@longnamedude3947]

Do you mean that because he's done a video on his security setup that he gas now critical compromised his security? Yes, that is a possibility, but only if you know where he lives. It's why I refrain from sharing where I live and where my security measures are physically installed. I have no problems with sharing what I have installed as I know that once people know I WILL defend my home with aggression they will think twice about attempting to break in and steal or touch anything at all.