Anyone had success getting the internal serial port to generate a message stream, either in Direct mode or Printer mode?

I'm trying to generate a stream of events for reading by a home automation system (no control of panel needed - trying to keep the systems as independent of possible), but I can't persuade the panel to generate any output I can read.

Set up is:

• Genuine FTDI RS232 cable connected to the internal serial port (TXD/RXD/CTS/RTS/0V) all connected
• Serial port enabled in the panel; have tried both printer and direct mode
• Serial port configured as 9600/N/8/1 (defaults)
• Output using SIA Mode 3
• Currently looking at output using a terminal emulator on a Macbook

 

If I have the panel in printer mode it reports printer offline, and if in direct mode, nothing at all happens.

None of the manuals seem to provide useful troubleshooting info, so would appreciate any guidance from anyone who's got this working!

 

In printer mode I imagine it's looking for some sort of handshake / 'hello' from the printer which it won't get.

 

In direct mode, is it not like any other alarm comms device in that you need to configure in the panel which events are transmitted (or not)

 

Possibly also requires a cold restart if you change modes? Also have you got any other device you can either test the serial to USB cable with

or anything with a 'real' serial port?

 

All guesses as not a panel I use, but worth a try.

Edited March 21, 20179 yr by datadiffusion
xtra stuff yeah?

Might have to wait for a monkey or that engineer up north

Some success... the serial port requires a null modem connection; connecting TXD on the computer end to RXD on the panel end, and vice versa. So it's now spitting out a short sequence of 9 bytes every second.

It's looking for the SIA handshake. Look up the opengalaxy project.

13 minutes ago, GalaxyGuy said:

It's looking for the SIA handshake. Look up the opengalaxy project.

Yes, thanks - that's where I was heading next.

 

In the meantime, I set it up in 'printer mode', ran the 'system print' from the engineer menu and boom - lots of (mostly) sensible text.

Happy days :-)

you can also make it print events in real time. I have used that in the past on custom software. But as you say no reverse commands. I'm not good enough to use the mircotech over serial option

2 minutes ago, james.wilson said:

you can also make it print events in real time. I have used that in the past on custom software. But as you say no reverse commands. I'm not good enough to use the mircotech over serial option

That's exactly what I'm hoping to do.

Do you happen to know what config is required to see real time events? Ideally I'd be able to see all trigger events as they happen, even when the system is unset.

iirc log zones report all the time. There is a download called techmaster that can pull live events from the printer 232

Thanks - I saw Techmaster, but I have almost entirely purged Windows from my life :-)