Texecom Connect – still waiting…

It’s been a little whilst since the last post, but I have been waiting for there to be some devleopments with Texecom to write about. My system is working pretty well now and so I’m looking forward to more developments.

However looking back I’ve realised that it’s nearly a year since Texecom made their big announcement of ‘Texecom Connect’ with promise of integration with home automation and various other goodies. However since then things have largely gone quiet and there hasn’t been a firmware update for almost a year as well.

There is some evidence of stuff going on behind the scenes including the wireless firmware upgrade, and I’ve just heard of another one which is intended to support a wireless keypad. This sounds like an interesting development as there hasn’t been a new keypad for quite some time.

So I’m keeping fingers crossed that we will hear something soon. In the meantime I am working on my home automation gear with quite a few interesting things to talk about so will post about these soon.

Ricochet Firmware Update

I’ve just had a product bulletin from Texecom which has left me scratching my head a bit:

This is obviously something to do with the forthcoming v4.0 firmware version for the Elite panels, and Texecom have already announced that they are releasing a range of other home automation devices which will form part of the Ricochet network. However this suggests that you won’t be able to use at least some of them unless you have the latest version of the Ricochet firmware.

The bulletin then says ominously “wireless expanders are not field-programmable” and so this would suggest that you will need a new expander if you are going to use the new gear. This is a pain, as they are quite expensive and presumably the hardware is exactly the same.

What isn’t clear is what happens if you have the panels which have the built in Ricochet (Premier Elite 48-W etc) – perhaps the wireless upgrade will be rolled in to the panel firmware?

It’s a pain for me as I have the 8XP-W expander and I don’t really fancy buying a new one. However I am hoping that this announcement means that we will see the v4 panel firmware released soon.

UPDATE

I’ve now got clarity on this – the expander firmware is not upgradeable and the -W panels with the integrated expander are the same. So unfortunately this will mean replacing either the expander or the whole panel if you want the new version. It appears that some of the new devices may still work with the older expanders but that remains to be seen.

Rounding up a few updates

There have been loads of interesting comments and I’m grateful to everyone who has contributed. A couple of things to highlight:

You can get cheap and compatible tags on ebay which are much cheaper than the genuine proximity ones.

I’m reliably informed that these ones and I imagine others like them work fine with the panel. They are pretty cheap too so well worth a look. I’ve not tried them before but I’ll get some in to play with. I’ve always been a little unsure about them though, someone said to me once “well you wouldn’t write your alarm code on your keys” and this is a similar idea. However I think there is value for example if you want to give a tradesmen access for a few days and don’t want to have to set up a new code etc.

You can get much better voltage regulators than the one I bought. There’s been a lot of discussion in the comments but this one has been popular:

It is very hard to argue with the price, and it’s much smaller and neater than the one I  used. I still find it incredible that you can get anything delivered direct from China for less than a dollar all in.

Thanks again for all your contributions, please keep them coming!

Texecom ComWifi – DIY

As outlined in previous posts I’m very interested in coming up with DIY or low-cost alternatives to the various Texecom communicators and accessories. I’ve been quite happy with my ComIP solution and my panel is connected to the wired network in the house. Since I bought mine Texecom have brought out a Wifi module, unsurprisingly named ‘ComWifi’:

This is sold significantly cheaper than the ComIP for some reason (about £50) even though it looks rather more complicated. Also, I do wonder slightly about the wisdom of mountinga Wifi module inside a metal box. Some enterprising ebayers have picked up on this as well and are selling custom enclosures:

I have heard from someone who has succeeded in building their own version of this, taking a big hint from the labelling on the official product – ‘USR-WIFI232-G2 UART to WiFi’. Sure enough this part can be obtained from the usual sources (Chinese sellers via eBay or other places) for little cost (about £7 although there do seem to be different versions out there).

The schematic above shows the G2 variant although there are others (including S and T) but I’m not quite sure what the differences are.

My correspondent has made this up into a board and installed it in the housing:

There is a certain amount of work needed to configure the module, which is done via a web interface:

Overall a very nice job!

There are similar such interfaces for wired ethernet as well, so you could do the ComIP DIY interface using one of these if you didn’t have a computer to hand to run ser2net on.

I’d be interested to hear of any other experiences.

Premier Elite Firmware v3.02

As noted by ComTexeStarter there has recently been a new firmware release of v3.02

Consulting the release notes shows no major changes other than a carbon monoxide sensor is now supported, plus some unspecified changes to resolve COM port malfunctions.

All sounds good… but hopefully v4 won’t be far off. I’m not quite sure whether to go to the effort of upgrading but probably will in due course.

More details on the Texecom site here:

http://www.texe.com/uk/news/#premier-elite-v302-firmware-release

Texecom Connect

So the big announcement has been made – and it is called ‘Texecom Connect’

This looks like quite an interesting attempt by Texecom to position themselves more towards a provider of home automation products rather than simply alarm systems. This does make sense to me as I’ve always thought there is a natural connection between the array of sensors and outputs  which an alarm provides and the control of lights, heating etc.

The details are on the Texecom website:

http://www.texe.com/uk/technology/connect/

However, there isn’t yet a lot of detail on how this will all work. To summarise what is known so far there will be several components:

New firmware upgrade to v4 – this is to support ‘Texecom Connect’ but there may be other features too

New Texecom Connect App – this seems to be the main control point for the home automation stuff. It looks quite nice, although it will likely be fairly limited and probably won’t be much chance for hacking it about

API – now this is really interesting as it should allow integration with all manner of other existing systems. Texecom themselves will probably only be interested in doing this for established commercial systems (CBus etc) but let’s hope that they make it available to other people as well. I do know that they have been quite helpful with a number of people before who want to develop 3rd party plugins so I am hoping that this will continue.

Other Ricochet devices – it appears that Texecom are planning to use the Ricochet mesh network in a similar manner to Z-Wave and produce outlet switches, possibly even replacement sockets and things. They will need to come up with quite a range of these if they are going to be useful but I’m not sure that yet another standard is a particularly good idea. They even mention radiator valves, IO devices etc.

Connect cameras – as above, cameras based around Ricochet which link in with the app and the other devices.

The Texecom Connect Hub – the purpose of this is a little mysterious but it does look like it will provide a Z-Wave interface. This is very interesting as I already have a modest Z-wave setup and it would be good to combine it all together. I’ve already experimented with this a bit (a subject for another post) but having a single control system would simplify things significantly.

There is a lack of detail and none of this stuff is available yet. However it does appear quite an ambitious move and one in which I am very interested. The other really good news is that they state clearly that this is for all Premier Elite systems so we can expect to be able to flash upgrade to it.

So I may be dusting off the 1000-HDC again soon!

IFSEC 2016

Now that I’ve signed up with Texecom as an installer they are sending me various emails although not being a professional most aren’t of interest. However this week I got this with some tantalising suggestions:

I wonder what this ‘brand new user  / reimagined experience’ is going to be? I have heard a few rumours about the firmware v4 but nothing solid. It’s difficult to see what exactly they could do given that control keypads are pretty much the same as they have always been.

Unfortunately I am not going to go to IFSEC (if it were closer to home I might… but really I would be going under false pretences). However if anyone does happen to go or hears about what Texecom are proposing then please let me know!