Cytech Comfort Alarm / Home Automation Panel

[mattb]

Hi All

First post, but have been running homebrew Home Automation based on Gumstiks and more recently a bunch of Pi's and MQTT for a while.

I have an eclectic mix of devices and as a result management, reliability and (and wife acceptance) of the system is becoming troublesome and I think Domoticz may be the perfect solution to manage the front end and logic.

Having had a quick look round the forums, much of the more common tech I am using has already been addressed, but I was wondering whether anyone has built support for the Cytech Comfort range of home automation / alarm panels (which would make my life easier) - if not am more than happy to go ahead and modify my code to support the Domoticz MQTT implementation and publish it back to the community,

Thanks,

Matt

[adec]

Hi Matt et al,

First post here too. I know this is an old thread but I'm interested to find out whether anyone has made any headway with integrating Cytech Comfort system with Domoticz. I thought I'd better check before I embark on my own baptism of fire. If there is nothing in the works, I'm happy to have a go at adding the hardware support.

In particular, the sorts of features I'm interested in implementing are:
- Representing Comfort zone status as switches in Domoticz to allow them to be used to trigger events.
- Representing Comfort security status (security off, away, night, day mode, etc) within Domoticz - not sure how these should be surfaced though. Switches (read-only) or Variables? For security reasons, I don't want to allow the Comfort security system to be armed or disarmed from Domoticz (although I suspect others may disagree with my nervousness).
- Implementing switches for X10 devices. Comfort would relay any X10 updates that it receives on the powerline to Domoticz. When switch status changes in Domoticz, Comfort would transmit the relevant X10 commands on the power line.
- Allow virtual switches to be created for each Comfort user. These would temporarily turn ON when that user code initially signs in to comfort. This would allow events to be triggered when the kids get home (e.g. to notify the parents).

Has anyone got anything else to add to the wish list?

Now a couple of public health warnings:
- I should warn you that I have an old Comfort system with an early Serial UCM, so I may not be able to implement and test any new Comfort features.
- I'm not a developer by trade and my C++ experience is going to need dusting off - so the development may take a while. However, I'm up for the challenge.

Regards,

Ade

[adec]

A quick status update on the Comfort Integration. The following functionality is now working:

- Basic communication with Comfort Home Automation & Security System using a Serial UCM.
- Representing Comfort zone status as switches in Domoticz to allow them to be used to trigger events.
- Relaying of X10 messages bi-directionally between Comfort and Domoticz. Switch status is updated based on X10 messages received by Comfort on the power line. Turning switches on and off in Domoticz causes Comfort to send the corresponding X10 commands on the power line.

If anyone is interested in trying it, please let me know. I've not pushed the code to my git repository on github yet so I can keep rebasing the commits against the latest Domoticz master.

Regards,

Ade.

[mattb]

Hi Ade.

Thanks for your PM - bizarrely the forum doesn't allow me to reply as I haven't posted enough. I have had a change of tack with Comfort and am now working on an IFTTT and Samsung SmartThings integration using node.js on a RPi. It sounds like you have made good progress with your Domoticz work and would be interested to see how this develops.

One of the challenges I had previously when developing actions based on events from Comfort was the delay on receiving outputs from PIR's in Comfort - there are two main causes as far as I can tell. 1. The UCM output bus speed, whether using UCM/Serial or UCM/Ethernet (in any of its flavours) is limited to 9600 baud - which in and by itself isn't too bad aside from when there are multiple messages flowing over the bus resulting in the event of interest being queued behind others. The second delay is the 'debounce' delay on the inputs which can add by default (I think) 500ms to any trigger event.

In the scenario I had, I wanted to trigger the hall lights in the house to illuminate when I entered it. Adding the Comfort delays to X10 delays resulted in me stumbling around for a second or 2 until the lights came on. As a result of this I have been tweaking the debounce delay and moved to a faster lighting solution whereby some lights are directly controlled by relays on the outputs whilst others are using zigbee / z-wave as this seems to be far faster and more reliable that X10.

Anyway, if you want to chat further on the Comfort stuff, feel free to ping me your email on a PM and we can chat without me being locked out of sending PM's.

Thanks,

Matt

[adec]

Hi Matt,

Thanks for getting back to me and for the warning about latency. I've not noticed any issues yet but only because I've not tried to do much with the new capability yet. I can see how the delays could have a significant impact on WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor) of the system though. I'm not particularly happy in general with X10 largely due to the lack of any status update from the devices that I have but it was just what I had available at the time.

I have a large number of LD11 dimmers which also have wall switches locally connected (so they're not dependent on the HA system being up) but the home automation system has no visibility of the real state of the dimmer. Over time I'll be looking to move away from X10 to something else and for things like hallway lighting I have been thinking about using a DIN relay too.

On a general note about my Comfort integration - I only have a UCM/Serial (RS232) but I suspect most people nowadays are more likely to have a UCM/USB or an UCM/Ethernet. The UCM/USB I suspect is broadly equivalent to the setup that I have except the Serial-USB adapter and UCM are in the same box. The Ethernet/UCM will be more problematic unless it really is just the same comfort protocol but over a TCP connection rather than serial (in which case I can probably use socat to simulate the Ethernet/UCM).

I'll PM you my email address so we can compare notes.

Regards,

Ade.

[mattb]

Hi Ade

Long time no speak.

So I have been working on an integration into SmartThings and have finally got round to publishing what I have.

It provides a 2 way link between SmartThings and Comfort allowing Zones, Outputs, Flags, Counters, Responses, Alarm State and Control to be viewed and changed (where appropriate) from SmartThings.

The current version bridges between Comfort and SmartThings via a RPi but I am currently in discussions with Cytech to produce a commercial version. We are also looking at adding native Philips Hue, Amazon Echo, Google Home, WeMo and Nest support.

Take a look here http://www.comfortforums.com/forum136/ and let me know what you think,

Thanks,

Matt

[adec]

Hi Matt,

Good to hear from you. I've had a quick look at the link and it's great to see the progress you've made.

I got most of the Comfort integration for Domoticz completed but needed to complete some love on the UI front before I published it back to the community. However, now that the Python plugin support has appeared in Domoticz it now doesn't seem appropriate to release it as a native hardware integration, so a rewrite in Python was on the cards.

If I do build a plugin for Domoticz I would be tempted to try to use upnp to integrate via your solution rather than doing it direct. I'm still using an old serial UCM unfortunately so can't use your bridge at the moment. However, I'm happy to work with you to try to get a Serial UCM interface working as I notice there are a few others that are after the same thing.

I'll have a longer look around later and post over in your thread on the comfort forum.

Regards,

Ade.

[carlford]

Hello and 1st time user. Ade or Matt or anyone in the community. I am in desperate need of a Comfort 1 UCM01. I ran across this board and saw that Matt and Ade had been doing some work with one and Comoticz. If anyone has an extra or unused UCM01 or if you know if Comfort 1 Pro will work with a later version of Comfort please let me know. I would be happy to compensate anyone that has a UCM01 or a UCM RS232 or UCM USB that will interface with Comfort just PM me or post here and let me know. Monitors if allowed I am leaving my PM in this post if not feel free to delete as you see fit. Thanks carlford at msn dot com

[ericeiralife]

Hi,

I was wondering whether there had been any more progress on either the original integration, or the Python integration? I'm looking to do similar, but it would be somewhat silly for me to reinvent the wheel!

I have Domoticz (only) at my house in the UK, and recently bought a house in Portugal with Comfort, which I'm starting to get to grips with, but would like to integrate with Domoticz. The house has been configured with it not only as an alarm, but with a number of add-on boards which control all the lighting, some sockets, and some unattended-home-safety-features.

Thanks in advance,

Adam

[carlford]

Adam, are you still using comfort in your other home ?? If not I am looking for some old comfort parts specifically a ucm01 and more so if you have any spares or old stuff please let me know and maybe we can work out a deal. Thanks in advance, Carl Ford carlford at msn dot com or here