How do you trigger a Fire Alarm?

[123]

Is there a way to programmatically trigger a Fire, Medical, or Police alarm (for an ELK M1)?

The M1's ASCII Protocol allows you to arm/disarm it programmatically (using commands "a0", "a1", "a2", etc) but I can't find a similar command to trigger a Fire/Medical/Police alarm. The only solution, and it a flimsy one, is to issue a Keypress command ("kf") to trigger a keypad's Function Key 1, 2, or 3.

It is hardly a robust solution because you're relying on the keypad's function keys programmed to be F1=Fire, F2=Medical, and F3=Police. However, you're out of luck if F1 is programmed to open the garage door! Unfortunately, there's no way to determine a function key's programming.

Anyone know how to do this reliably?


PS
My band-aid solution is to provide a keypad property called "Emergency". If the user enables this flag it tells me the keypad's first three function keys are programmed as Fire/Medical/Police. I can then use the "Emergency" keypad's function keys to trigger Fire, Medical, and Police alarms. The user would have to define at least one "Emergency" keypad per Area.

 

[GraysonPeddie]

I looked through the ASCII manual, and I see no way to trigger a zone by an ASCII command...

 

[Digger]

Is there a way to programmatically trigger a Fire, Medical, or Police alarm (for an ELK M1)?

The M1's ASCII Protocol allows you to arm/disarm it programmatically (using commands "a0", "a1", "a2", etc) but I can't find a similar command to trigger a Fire/Medical/Police alarm. The only solution, and it a flimsy one, is to issue a Keypress command ("kf") to trigger a keypad's Function Key 1, 2, or 3.

It is hardly a robust solution because you're relying on the keypad's function keys programmed to be F1=Fire, F2=Medical, and F3=Police. However, you're out of luck if F1 is programmed to open the garage door! Unfortunately, there's no way to determine a function key's programming.

Anyone know how to do this reliably?


PS
My band-aid solution is to provide a keypad property called "Emergency". If the user enables this flag it tells me the keypad's first three function keys are programmed as Fire/Medical/Police. I can then use the "Emergency" keypad's function keys to trigger Fire, Medical, and Police alarms. The user would have to define at least one "Emergency" keypad per Area.

In a pinch can you program a relay to trip a zone. Kind of a round the world approach but it should work.

 

[123]

Grayson, thanks for the confirmation. I'll have to resort to my band-aid solution.

Digger, thanks for the alternate solution. I'm trying to create a driver that can trigger a Fire/Medical/Police alarm. I hesitate to make this feature dependent upon a dedicated relay. I'm guessing most people already have at least one keypad with Fire/Medical/Police function keys.


Spanky,
Please consider adding a programming command that can trigger an alarm.

 

[brotsten]

Could you setup a user code say 9111 and have a rule that triggers the alarm when that code is entered? Then send that user code remotely to activate the alarm.

Brian

 

[GraysonPeddie]

Could you setup a user code say 9111 and have a rule that triggers the alarm when that code is entered? Then send that user code remotely to activate the alarm. (That is, if you have to instruct a user using your software/driver to create their own rule in ElkRP).

Brian

Well, yes you can. I've added my bolded text, as without it, how would you programmatically create a rule to send it to Elk M1 Gold?

But still, I don't think there's such thing as a "virtual keypad."

 

[brotsten]

Could you setup a user code say 9111 and have a rule that triggers the alarm when that code is entered? Then send that user code remotely to activate the alarm. (That is, if you have to instruct a user using your software/driver to create their own rule in ElkRP).

Brian

Well, yes you can. I've added my bolded text, as without it, how would you programmatically create a rule to send it to Elk M1 Gold?

But still, I don't think there's such thing as a "virtual keypad."

I assumed you had access to the system and could program a rule.

Brian

 

[123]

Your suggestions are all valid and appreciated but I'm trying to get this driver to work with a vanilla ELK M1. I'd prefer not to force the user to preconfigure the M1 a specific way.

Having said that, a keypad with F1=Fire, F2=Medical, and F3=Police is a form of preconfiguration! However, I believe it is a fairly common usage of function keys.

So my band-aid solution is to assign a flag to a keypad (Emergency=True) in order to indicate its F-keys are programmed with the desired Fire/Medical/Police functions ... and in that order!

A more flexible approach would be to flag each function key as being either Fire/Medical/Police/None. This gives you the flexibility to put the functions in whatever order you prefer (i.e. F1=Medical, F2=Police F3=Fire). I hesitate to use this approach only because it is more of a configuration hassle for the user. You must flag three function keys per keypad as opposed to simply flagging a keypad.

Your thoughts?

 

[GraysonPeddie]

I assumed you had access to the system and could program a rule.

Brian

Which we're back to square one. "Is there a way to trigger a fire/medical/police alarm via ASCII when developing a software/driver?"

The answer will be that I don't think it's possible.

One thing that I might want to bring this up is I saw the ELK-TS07 with built-in ElkRM and I don't know what ASCII commands the ElkRM sends out when pressing either Fire, Medical, or Police function keys. Maybe Spanky can shed some light on what ASCII commands the ElkRM sensd out when either of three functions had been activated...

 

[123]

I just looked at photos of the M1-KP keypad and the TS07 ... they don't show the same arrangement of function keys.
KP: Fire, Police, Medical
TS07: Police, Medical, Fire

Not the same order! Rats!

I don't think the TS07 sends special commands. Using the "sd" command you can get the name of each function key ... and that's probably what you see on the TS07's screen. That's nice for us clever human beings who can read the key labels and interpret their meaning ... but not so good for a software driver. The key label could be "Fire" or "F1=Fire" or some other variation. You don't even need a label if you're using physical keypads (the label only shows up in virtual keypads). I could search for the "fire" string within the key label but that won't work if you prefer to use another word ... or "fire" in another language.

Hmmm, the user may just have to flag the function keys after all.

 

[GraysonPeddie]

Well, if you have ElkRM, maybe you can just listen to RS232 packets if you have the equipment/software that allows for packet sniffing...

 

[Spanky]

Program a function key on some keypad to trigger alarms:

Request Keypad Function Key Press (kf)
09 – Length as hex
kf – Function key pressed
NN – Keypad 01 to 16
D - Which function key pressed, 1 to 6 ASCII, ‘*’ = 0x2A to silence trouble beep on keypads. ‘C’ = 0x43 to control Chime, ‘0’ function key value will only return the “KF” command
00 – future use
CC – Checksum

Example: 09kf01100D4 Keypad 01, Function Key 1 to be pressed

To trigger burg zones will require connecting an output to a zone input. You can use the J16 connector output which puts out 12VDC when turned on and tie it to a zone input set for EOL or normally open.

 

[GraysonPeddie]

123, the best solution for right now, is you'll need to provide the readme.txt file, stating that a user must program their keypads so that fire, medical, and police functions can be executed by the driver.

 

[123]

Program a function key on some keypad to trigger alarms: Request Keypad Function Key Press (kf)
...

Thanks Spanky, it is what I suspected.

For the driver to work properly, it must know what each function key does. If I program F1 to trigger a Police alarm, the driver must be instructed to use F1 for this purpose. Otherwise, the driver has no way of knowing each function key's programming.

Each function key (in the driver) will have a combo-box listing the following choices: Fire|Medical|Police|Other. If you flag F2 on Keypad 1 as being Medical, the driver will know to use F2 to trigger a Medical Alarm (and, yeah, you'll need to program Keypad 1, F2 properly on the M1!).

Grayson,
Thanks. I'll add the instructions to the Reference Manual when I issue the first beta.

Cocooners,
If you're wondering "what the heck is this all about?" it is because Premise provides a generic Security Keypad. This generic keypad can be used with any brand of security panel and the driver handles the details. Push the Stay button and the driver commands the security panel to arm in Stay mode. That's easily done with an M1 because it has a dedicated command for this purpose ("a2"). Push the icon with flames and the driver commands the panel to trigger a Fire alarm. That's a little tricky to do with an M1 because it does not have a dedicated "trigger Fire alarm" command. And so we've concluded that you have to tell the driver which function key is the designated "Fire alarm" key.

 

[GraysonPeddie]

Well, with no such dedicated command to trigger a fire alarm or any zone, we're out of luck, then...