Elk and w800 newbie experience

noshali

Active Member
So I setup the w800 with my elk. Love the ability to control through palmpad etc (no pc) but that is not why i set this up.

I mainly set it up as I have 2 DS10a (S1 and S2) connected to my garage door and wanted to announce every time garage door was open, was opening or was closed. Elk does not have opening or closing pharese in its audio vocablary so had to use entering just to see if it works.

S1 is off (magnets togehter) when the garage door is closed and on when the garage door is open.
S2 is ON when the garage door is closed and on when the garage door is open.
BOth are on when the gar door is somehwere in the middle, opening or closing.

I used the w800 and set it up using electrons post. I assigned G1 to first sensor and G2 to second sensor. Setup some rules by changing the status of (G1 G2 lighting) and it worked well.

Findings:
Here were the issues. My son walked over and pressed G1 off and guess what, I got the Garage door closed announced. Hum so I then went back and assinged 3 devices (lighting) from different house codes to avoid that problem. I also had to update all the rules etc. Very tedious and time consuming. I could have done 2.

The reason why I wanted to setup standard x10 devices were so that I could update these and see it on my homeseer pc (also did not know any other way yo get this done). I am sure that I am doing this backwards but the reason was latelty my pc hangs and my wife has no clue if our autistic son opened the garage and went out to play if she is in a different part of the house.

So:
1. There has to be a better way of doing this.
2. How can this be incorporated in the security aspect of ELK.
3. Also getting status other than announcements and text to keypad needs to be done but could not figure out how without using homeseer and standard x10 devices from lighting.

The concern is that anyone can take a remote and send x10 commands. What if someone sends on on all housecodes etc.

I have a lot of money invested in x10 motion sensors and DS10a so want to use them.

regards.
 
I am not sure I understand you exact setup, but if your goal is to let HomeSeer know the status of the garage door, then I suggest using Elk (virtual) outputs tied to HomeSeer virtual devices. Instead of using G1,2,3 use G 17,18,19 or x1,2,3.

You would use a rule within Elk to translate the DS10As to setting Elk (virtual) outputs, like Output151,152,153. I would then use Electron's my.elk script config to translate Output151 to x1, output152, to x2, etc. Then you can see these devices in HomeSeer and write rules around them, but they aren't actually X-10 and cannot be interfered with.
 
Where are the virtual outputs? When I go to Automation-> Outputs i only see 32 outputs. I tired using outpu1 and it would go into alarm. So went with g1 etc.

regards,
 
ElkRP has a limitation that you can only name the first 32 outputs, that is why you only see the first 32. But you can use any of the 208 within rules. Virtual outputs are also how timers are implemented, for example if you want something to happen only if a zone has been violated for 5 minutes, you would activate a virtual output for 5 minutes. Then when it goes off, you check and see if the zone is still violated.
 
I don't get it, you mention you are using DS10A's, but they don't use X10 house/unit codes, they use unique security codes (which is why the W800 is one of the very few devices which can support this device). Am I missing something?
 
Electron,

You are not missing anything. I just want to have ELK monitor the garage door sensors (DS10a). I setup everything based on how you said and it works fine. I just was trying to find a way to have Homeseer also know what is going on so I can monitor.

I assigned the text strings from ds10a to lighting g1 etc so that everytime ds10a send a text string the g1 gets updated and hs will know...I now want to stop that based on the reasons mentioned above.

I also wanted to ask you if your script works when connecting to the elk using the ethernet module. I do not intend to connect any other way to the elk.

regards,
 
Ah, ok, now it makes sense, sorry about that. I would definitely use one of the virtual outputs to indicate the state of the door (that's what I do for most of my sensors). If you want the DS10A to be part of your alarm zones, I guess you could use a real output, and wire it to an input, then create a rule which turns the output on/off based on the commands it receives.

I use my.Elk with the XEP module without any problems. I use the free HW_VSP software in order to remap a virtual com port to the XEP. This allows you to use serial based applications (such as my.Elk) over IP.
 
This is what I did using virtual outputs.

Sensor 1 is set to output 100 When it is on then output is on and vice versa
Sensor 2 is set to output 101 When it is on then output is on and vice versa

I setup the following rule which works:
Whenever every 3 Seconds
AND output 100 state is on
AND output 101 state is on
then announce Misc vm (garage door is activated)
This rule is to let me know when garage door is being opened or closed or if one of the kids stopped the door in the middle. leaving both sensors on and outputs on.

2nd rule
Whenever every 30 Seconds
AND output 100 state is on
AND output 101 state is off
then announce Misc vm (garage door is open)

3rd rule
Whenever the following text is received "this is the text when s1 turns off"
then turn output 100 off
then announce misc vm (garage door is closed)

Here is the problem.
When I open the garage it turns output 100 on and starts the 1st rule and it works
when it is totally open then 2nd rule should kick in as s2 turns off inturn turning output 101 off. output 100 is still on...BUT the announcement keeps on coming till I close the garage.

2nd rules does not seem to be working. what am i doing wrong???

regards,
 
noshali said:
2nd rule
Whenever every 30 Seconds
AND output 100 state is on
AND output 101 state is off
then announce Misc vm (garage door is open)

Here is the problem.
When I open the garage it turns output 100 on and starts the 1st rule and it works
when it is totally open then 2nd rule should kick in as s2 turns off inturn turning output 101 off. output 100 is still on...BUT the announcement keeps on coming till I close the garage.

2nd rules does not seem to be working. what am i doing wrong???
which announcement keeps coming?

I assume you are trying to say that "garage door is open" is never said? Your rules look right to me, so I would verify that the outputs are really what you think they are and that you are waiting the 30 seconds.
 
The first announcement kept coming so I changed the rules a bit and it seems to be owrking fine. However, something vey starnge happened. All of a sudden the announcement "Garage door activated" started coming on every 3 seconds so I figured someone opened the door but when I wnet to see the garage door it was not opened by anyone. I had to open and close the door to reset the outputs so that it would stop announicing every 3 seconds.

DOn't know why that would happen.

any ideas or has anyone faced similar things.

regards,
 
If the outputs are not what you expect, then look at the rules setting the outputs based upon the DS10A signals received.
 
When using wireless sensors upon powerup, the receiver will not know the state of the sensors until an hourly supervisory transmission. I do not know if the DS10A has a supervisory transmission like the Caddx/GE transmitters.

Upon system startup or powerup all the outputs will be turned off.
So, write a Rule to set the outputs into a proper state upon powerup or watchdog reset.
WHENEVER SYSTEM STARTUP OCCURS
... set your outputs into a default state.



Hardwire switches would be a better solution because you have instant status of the switches.
 
WayneW said:
If the outputs are not what you expect, then look at the rules setting the outputs based upon the DS10A signals received.
I checked the outputs and the rules. I opened and closed the garage at least twenty times (no exaggeration) to see if works as deisred and it did everytime.

The strange thing is that after a certain period of time the every 3 second rule kicks in and does not stop till I open and close the garage.

I timed it...once it was 49 minutes after I had closed the garage and then it was exactly an hour after the last time I opened and closed the garage.

I would love to use the wired sensors but the wiring is a problem right now. Also, I have so many ds10a and ms10a already installed around the house.

I deleted the 3 second timer so that I don't wake up in the middle of the night to open and close the garage to reset the outputs.

Also, I did not do a powerdown. By powerup you mean that there is a possibility that the outputs go to their default state after a certain period of time. If that is the case then it would not apply to my scenario as the 3 second rule only kicks in if both outputs are turned on. In my case if the garage door is closed then output 100 is off and stays off till someone opens the garage.

Wish I knew what was causing this.

regards,
 
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