Guest seanm Posted March 10, 2004 Posted March 10, 2004 Hello, I would like to know what are the top 5 or 6 control panel manufacturers and do they use any other protocols apart from SIA. I'm especially interested in the output sent to the central station by the top selling control panels and would this output use any other protocols apart from SIA. Thanks in advance, -sean
Guest dale Posted March 10, 2004 Posted March 10, 2004 I would say the top control panel manufacturers are: Ademco Microtech (makers of the Galaxy), Texecom, Scantronic/Menvier (cooper Security), Pyronix (love them or hate then they are popular), ADE. The main protocol seems to be SIA, but with different format operating such as Pulse Format, Fast format etc. Different companies tend to use different formats, such as Ademco Microtech tend to use Fast Format as I think they created it.
Guest dale Posted March 10, 2004 Posted March 10, 2004 I do think that many of the companies are pretty secrative about exactly how the systems communicate as they will sell you black boxes that will decode remote signals but when I researched this I couldnt find much information on how the different formats work. D
Guest seanm Posted March 10, 2004 Posted March 10, 2004 Thanks for the replies. What I would like to do is connect up a pc to the an alarm control panel. For example on the galaxy 16 there is an rs-232 port for connecting to a pc. So I want to write a program that will read these messages, ie tell you what alarm is going off etc. I would liike this software to be portable for the popular control panels, i.e not have to write different code for different panels. BTW, I know there is software for the galaxy that does this, but I want my software to work on other control panels and do other things with other hardware. on the PC. What I'll probably do first is try and read the control panel output coming into the pc serial port via the rs-232 module on the control panel. Hoepfully this makes sense. Any ideas or feedback welcome! -sean
Guest dale Posted March 10, 2004 Posted March 10, 2004 Be careful this practice is illegal in some countries and manufacturers may not take kindly to you "hacking" their equiptment. I did try asking a manufacturer for the serial port control commands for their system and their response was basically "no chance!". All I wanted was to create an expansion board so I could control the system over the net via PC. Their argument was, would Vauxhall give you the diagnostic codes and information on how to interface with the control systems in their cars! Nope because if you change something the car may be unstable and could not perform as designed, same with alarms (so they say). D
j.paul Posted March 10, 2004 Posted March 10, 2004 Ademco Microtech (makers of the Galaxy),Texecom,Scantronic/Menvier (cooper Security),Pyronix (love them or hate then they are popular),ADE. You missed DSC of your list, also DSC sell a card that fits inside your computer and turns it into alarm receiver which can receive any alarm formats eg sia, Fast Format etc jpaul There are no stupid questions, but there are a LOT of inquisitive idiots.
Guest seanm Posted March 11, 2004 Posted March 11, 2004 Be careful this practice is illegal in some countries and manufacturers may not take kindly to you "hacking" their equiptment.I did try asking a manufacturer for the serial port control commands for their system and their response was basically "no chance!". All I wanted was to create an expansion board so I could control the system over the net via PC. Their argument was, would Vauxhall give you the diagnostic codes and information on how to interface with the control systems in their cars! Nope because if you change something the car may be unstable and could not perform as designed, same with alarms (so they say). D I'm not really sure how this is hacking, if all I'm doing at first is opening hyperterminal and reading the input from the pc's serial port. I've also been in contact with one alarm control panel/system manufacturer and they mentioned nothing about this being illegal. But maybe thats just them. I'm not sure what you mean by exapansion board. Are you talking about a board that plugs into the rs-232 port of the control panel. -sean
amateurandy Posted March 11, 2004 Posted March 11, 2004 The RS-232 interface analogy to cars (Vauxhall, was it by Dale?) is interesting. Almost all modern cars have a diagnostic socket called OBD-II (On-Board Diagnostics version 2). These are pretty standard in Europe, USA and maybe worldwide, but the commands are "extended" by most manufacturers and even the physical/electrical interfaces are not all exactly the same. Through this you can find out almost everything about a modern car as they're totally run by computers. In Europe it's VERY difficult to get software for a PC and quite difficult to get an OBD to RS-232 adapter. In USA this information has to be public, so there are people who use the information to write software for many car ranges. The USA software generally works fine on European models and lots of people (me included) have bought a relevant version and can link their PC's into their car to do (perfectly valid) things that a dealer would charge you for, e.g. check details of logged diagnostic events after a warning light comes on, turn off daytime running lights on a Volvo, change remote key from drivers door to all doors, validate a new key, etc. The car manufacturers don't complain because they can't. The information was forced into the public domain by US legislation, though they try to hide it in Europe. So, why don't Alarm Panel manufacturers have a standard PC interface to make you guys lives easier? Sounds like a proposal for some sort of trade body (he says, as a rank amatuer).
Guest dale Posted March 11, 2004 Posted March 11, 2004 Sean, As far as I am aware in the UK it is not illegal (although I wasnt going to assume that you were from the UK as we have some international visitors, it is for example illegal in the US). The expansion board I designed pluged into the RS232 port and was going to have an RJ45 network connection with a micro web server to issue commands in, although I abandoned the idea as many manufacturers are bringing out ethernet cards for their systems anyway, so it would not be much use wasting my time building one. Also its worth mentioning that there is already software used by ARC's that can talk to most alarm systems with built in comms, and I seem to recall that //.National Installer.// have a system so they can reprograme most of their control panels off site (im sure an //.National Installer.// engineer will correct me if I am wrong). As for amatuerandy, some alarm manufacturers do have RS232 interfaces, but the plugs are not standard RS232 DB11 plugs. Also, I seem to recall that most RKP's are connected to the control panel using RS485, so again another interface exists (in theory). Im going to have to get an interface to my car, as there is nothing worse than getting a warning light then having to pay Vauxhall £35 to tell you what it means. D
Guest granleyss Posted March 11, 2004 Posted March 11, 2004 Wouldn,t really recommend the DSC series not many companys use the DSC range apart from Britsh Gas but they where really designed for the american market the best panel ever is the texecom premier range we,ve started to use these and are phaseing the galaxys out.
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