Anyone out there using an AAP (Arrowhead) ECi Alarm module, who would be interested in assisting with the design/development or testing of a binding for this Alarm?
Courtesy of ‘Winter’ which seems to have started 6 months early this year 
I have started building a prototype (with the help of some vibe coding), and at this stage I am just focusing on status of items (i.e. Read only).
So far, I have the following working:
-
Connectivity:
- TCP connection
- Handling of user/password, where set in the alarm
- Reconnection handling
- Keep-Alive
- NO Serial connection (Not sure I will bother, given this unit comes with Ethernet/TCP Control Port onboard base unit)
-
Base Panel ‘Bridge’ Thing:
- Alarm Panel Health Thing
With a few channels for starters:
- Zone Thing
Also with a few channels for starters:
Note I have 3 switch channels for various states, but also a combined Zone Status String, which reflects the last zone status from the Alarm. Not sure how useful this is, but I figure why not give people the choice.
- Area Thing
And just one basic channel in there for testing for now.
All of the above actually works just fine in basic integration testing both using the ncat (to emulate the alarm panel) for more extensive test scenarios, than my neighbours would appreciate with the action alarm going off !!, and then used the actual alarm panel to test more basic scenarios.
Connection, Authentication, Re-connection, Thing Status propagation, Item updates etc seems to work ok so far.
Where to from here?
I might not have a lot of time to significantly progress this much in the next few months, but what I am keen on is to find a few people who are interested in pursuing this, and may be able to help with design, peer-review, testing etc.
Right now, before I commit a lot of time to elaborating it into a more feature-rich prototype, I am keen to get some input on the design/layout/naming of things & channels.
I had considered providing all Alarm zones as channels on a base-thing, but with up to 248 zones, and various switches for each channel, I thought it would be messy, so went for a thing for each zone instead.
For now, I have not worried about Output & Zone expanders, as the alarm abstracts that complexity for us, but maybe in future could add a thing just to pick up the tamper channels etc available on each expander.
Staying away from discovery, as there is no real command available to show you all configured zones etc, but perhaps in future, a real basic version which ‘discovers’ a zone (or output) when an ID comes though from the alarm, which is not yet configured as a thing.
And then maybe mid this year we can get a ‘Alpha’ version out there for testing into Marketplace (few things I need to figure before I can publish it!!)
Any input welcome.