Years ago I wrote a module for interfacing with the DSC Maxsys series of intrusion alarms - primarily because I had one in my house. It supported the full command set of the PC4108 (if memory serves) serial interface, providing Venturii with interpretations of all the status codes, ready state, armed/disarmed states, zone states, trouble & supervisory conditions, etc - and allowed arming and disarming of partitions and control of PGM outputs from Venturii also. In fact, my first underground sprinkler control was accomplished with the help of PC4204 relay modules. Funny story, because this was their original task, all four relays were set up on schedules within the Maxsys. Later, when I moved control of the sprinklers onto a different system, I re-purposed one of the relay modules as a keybus expander in the garage. Every night at 4:00 am, the system would go into trouble. A sound sleeper, I never noticed this but my roommate who lived upstairs and slept much closer to a keypad had smashed one right off the wall because it kept driving him nuts every night. As it turned out, the first relay is set up on the expander as a keybus power interrupter to allow com bus resets to take place remotely by pulsing that relay. I had wired the garage combus through relay 1 on the PC4204, but forgot it was still on a schedule. Every night at 4:00 am the 4204 would disconnect the keypad power from the garage keypad, putting the system into trouble and waking my roommate Bo up to an infuriating beep-beep every 20 seconds. Of course, the power would be restored 30 minutes later and I never bothered to check the event logs. It wasn't until I noticed the front keypad all smashed up that I asked him about it and began to investigate.
I've since moved and the code for the module that interacted with the Maxsys has fallen MANY versions of Venturii behind. However, with Mark having a Honeywell alarm in his house and me having a newer DSC PowerSeries model, there is renewed interest in reviving this module and bringing this data back into the system. This time what I'd like to do is create a single module that can talk to as many alarm systems as we can find interfaces for, thus reaching a much greater audience with less coding. Mark's even got an interface module that talks both DSC and Honeywell, changeable by dip switch I believe, which simplifies things even further. It's all time. Right now this is the next module to be (re)written on the road map for Venturii. Any thoughts, ideas, suggestions, or volunteers to help develop and/or test and/or document this module are welcome.
