Communicate Between Alarm Panel and Raspberry PI

[large_ghostman]

If your going online with the system lock the PI up tight, its not too hard to get into the PI if you try hard enough . I got locked out of mine until I realized something.........

 

[spec]

Thanks Spec. I have some of those documents and would not be able to setup the alarm system without them. Several I have not seen and are a good reference. I will make sure I keep an electronic copy of all of them. Unfortunately none of them talk about how the panel and keypads talk to each other and I understand why they might keep that information to themselves. Most people shouldn't need to mess with what they have and it is probably more sensible to upgrade to a newer panel to get wifi or mobile support.

I gave back the oscilloscope, but was lucky enough to find something when I posed a question about controlling these signals in a raspberry pi forum. Piscope. Looks I can use a raspberry pi with software created by someone smart to create a oscilloscope capable enough to do what I need to do. There are also libraries there I can use to manipulate that data signal.

My next steps are to get the pigpio libraries and piscope software on my raspberry pi, build the simple level converter and see if I can duplicate what I saw on the scope. From there I can use the libraries and capture what the panel is saying and eventually talk back by modifying the data signal. More shortly. Thanks!

Hi back,
Oh, sorry none of the linked documents supplied the information you require- I hadn't checked them and just posted the links.
You imply that the manufacturers might not want to release the data that you want, but have you asked them? It is often surprising the data you can get.
Meanwhile, good luck with your project. I'm sure many of us would be interested to hear how it turns out.
spec

 

[backporch]

I know Paradox only sells their products through suppliers. There is really no way to contact the manufacturer. I don't think a supplier would have knowledge of what is going on under the covers nor would they want to spend time talking about a 14 year old alarm when they make money selling new systems. If I were paradox I would not be willing to give out information like this to people who are tinkering with the alarm's communication in ways never intended. That was a lot of assumptions by me, but I can't see why they would share even if I could find the right person to talk to.

I will definitely keep this updated as I make some progress. At this point I think I have gone from a question as to whether this is possible to understanding that it is. Now I need to focus on starting the conversation between my raspberry pi and the alarm panel, listening at first and eventually talking.

Thankfully, with the invaluable help of people on forums like this I have been able to make some real progress in a short amount of time with technologies I have very little experience with.

 

[Keepsafesystems.ca]

I can get all paradox parts and have been installing their equip for about 20 years now.
They do have a bi directional RS232 module available for the RBI series and maybe the spectra. I am pretty sure you can at least get status changes via the printer module.
As far as arming and disarming, you do not need to get overly complex, just use the keyswitch arming method and fire a relay. You can use a pgm out of the spectra to I dictate zone status, armed status and pretty much whatever you want

There is also an IP module available for the newer panels.

As for interpreting the bus. Paradox uses an encrypted bus which requires all devices on the bus to be registered by serial number. It is not cheap and slow like the busses on many other alarm panels. Their bus works well and carries a lot of information. Just put a wire tracer inductive probe next to it and you will hear it.

You can contact me through my we site at keepsafesystems.ca

 

[Fernando123]

Hello bach!
How was your project? what could you do?