[rs691919]

I've had an HAI panel for 8 years and love it -- slowly added more light switches and worked a lot on the automation programming to the point where I think I have an excellent handle. I used to control it with iRule, which had a module for HAI. It worked well but did not allow for individual zone feeback. Well, since iRule was on the way out, my HAI installer suggest an RTI system, which would be able to control an OmniPro II panel and control all my home theater elements (plus Sonos and all my Directv receivers and televisons). This seemed ideal, so we installed an RTI XP-8V in March 2019 and an OmniPro II.

RTI has controlled all my electronics components fabulously, and I really like the interface and flexbiility that the installer has built in. However, we have had a lot of trouble controlling the HAI panel. Initially, simple on/off commands for lights were not reliable. They figured out that the driver was disconnecting from the panel every few minutes for no apparent reason. He solved that by adding a recurrent command from RTI to the panel which keeps the driver "awake". The problem is that there is no feedback available from the panel on RTI. Thus, I can't see what the setpoint or temp is on the thermostats, can't see what the status is of a particular security zone, can't see whether a light switch is on or off. I can't set the alarm, because the driver relies on feedback to work the security system. We have tried so many different things, but ultimately nothing has worked. RTI hasn't been a ton of help to be honest. Curiously, iRule is still working and still controls the panel (including setting the alarm). I also found an app called My:Ro which controls HAI panels and receives feeback -- gets great reviewes in the Apple App Store. So it seems that this shouldn't be a terribly difficult problem to fix. Anyone have any ideas which direction I could go in? Any help is appreciated!!!

 

[smoothtlk]

Hmm, HAI...this post brings back memories. The integration with the HAI panel was a complete PITA bear. Really funky device. I suspect that's what RTI is running into as well. The other thought is HAI is gone. Dead. OOB.
You might think about replacing the HAI panel with an ELK that is a much better panel than the HAI. And it's still supported and provides great integration. I would be surprised if RTI didn't also support it. You can very likely reuse all of the sensors and contact switches from your existing system so it should only be a few hours to swap panels. Hopefully yours is documented of what wire goes where.

 

[rs691919]

Yeah -- I think ELK may happen eventually. But I love the HAI system. I have so much automation, and from what my installer said, he didn't think the Elk was as powerful on that front. I don't actually do that much direct control of the lighting -- mainly the thermostat and alarm. So it hasn't killed me, but more of an annoyance.

 

[smoothtlk]

Yeah -- I think ELK may happen eventually. But I love the HAI system. I have so much automation, and from what my installer said, he didn't think the Elk was as powerful on that front. I don't actually do that much direct control of the lighting -- mainly the thermostat and alarm. So it hasn't killed me, but more of an annoyance.

Keep in mind with myServer, the ELK doesn't need to do much (if any) "automation" as myServer takes care of all that. So, maybe that's the difference in our thoughts of HAI vs. ELK. When a good automation system is taking care of that, we just need timely and consistent status updates from the panel and the ability to put the panel into it's different modes and know who logged in last (via the myServer user interface - not necessarily the panels keypad which can get buried in a closet). This consistent messaging was my recollection of the bear it was to integrate with HAI. Lots of technical use cases of issues that had to be bandaided to get the messaging consistent. When we integrate ELK (or in the past also with HAI), the security panel was relegated to the tasks of security. Not lighting, climate control etc that is better served in a good automation controller.

 

[rs691919]

I guess I don't know that much about ELK. What is myServer? In my setup (for example), when I go into the kitchen between 430 am - 630 am, the motion sensor is triggered and a set of lights go on. Or, I have a flag set such that if I turn on the porch light between certain hours, my son cannot turn off the light even if he presses the switch. I have a huge number of flags and time-sensitive control of thermostats, alarm, and lights based on our schedules -- all programmed through the HAI panel. Can myServer and ELK do this as well and integrate through RTI?

It doesn't seem to be a messaging issue with HAI and RTI, but rather a connection issue. For instance, if my installer changes something in the RTI program and uploads it to the XP-8v, the very first time I open up the app on my iPhone, the feedback works and is correct -- thus, the correct thermostat set point is displayed and the correct status of any unit or flag is displayed. However, subsequent changes in the setpoint or the unit do not register feedback on my device. If another change in the RTI program and then sent to the XP-8v, again the correct feedback is displayed. The HAI panel and the XP-8v just can't seem to maintain the connection.

Yet, with my iRule app, I get perfect feedback with regards to the thermostats and alarm status (not individual zones, which was never a feature of the iRule app). Light status is a little more iffy, but usually correct. So it confuses me that another app such as iRule (and apparently Myro Control) can maintain the connection but RTI cannot.

Anyway, I know this is an esoteric quandary, thank you for answering!

 

[smoothtlk]

I guess I don't know that much about ELK. What is myServer? In my setup (for example), when I go into the kitchen between 430 am - 630 am, the motion sensor is triggered and a set of lights go on. Or, I have a flag set such that if I turn on the porch light between certain hours, my son cannot turn off the light even if he presses the switch. I have a huge number of flags and time-sensitive control of thermostats, alarm, and lights based on our schedules -- all programmed through the HAI panel. Can myServer and ELK do this as well and integrate through RTI?

It doesn't seem to be a messaging issue with HAI and RTI, but rather a connection issue. For instance, if my installer changes something in the RTI program and uploads it to the XP-8v, the very first time I open up the app on my iPhone, the feedback works and is correct -- thus, the correct thermostat set point is displayed and the correct status of any unit or flag is displayed. However, subsequent changes in the setpoint or the unit do not register feedback on my device. If another change in the RTI program and then sent to the XP-8v, again the correct feedback is displayed. The HAI panel and the XP-8v just can't seem to maintain the connection.

Yet, with my iRule app, I get perfect feedback with regards to the thermostats and alarm status (not individual zones, which was never a feature of the iRule app). Light status is a little more iffy, but usually correct. So it confuses me that another app such as iRule (and apparently Myro Control) can maintain the connection but RTI cannot.

Anyway, I know this is an esoteric quandary, thank you for answering!

myServer is an advanced automation control system. It would replace RTI. It very likely could also integrate with RTI but we haven't done that work as no one has asked us to do that and has made an RTI system available to test the integration.

Yes, those scheduled events are trivial to do in myServer. Much more capable than what you can do within the HAI. And easier to program.
Event triggered events (like the HAI telling myServer that a motion sensor got triggered) is also easy to have a myServer rule "If security device 32 changes state, then turn on the bathroom light ID 48 for 10 minutes" This isn't literally what one does but it's close. You can keep your existing HAI rules or move them into myServer when you want to. Or just add any new ones in myServer (like to take advantage of things myServer can do that the HAI can't. Typical would be to integrate all things media into the HAI based triggers like "Mute the music if the doorbell gets pushed".

That messaging issue is my recollection of the issues with integrating with HAI. They used a difficult messaging process. Sounds like RTI hasn't matured out the bugs in their driver. It took Allonis quite a while to do so and we worked with a couple of die hard HAI customers to test and provide system log files.

myServer also replaces iRule. Sounds like you have a few things interconnected that require multiples of care and feeding to keep working well.

myServer is an automation controller that is completely customizable by you are us for you. It has a built in web server that the phone / tablet / PC just uses a browser to access the user interface. So no "App" that needs to be installed / maintained on the device (like iRule requires). So, you can text our systems URL to a guest so they can use your system on their own device.

 

[eatenbacktolife]

I've never used and don't know anything about the Omnipro and how it works, if RTI has to query it or RTI subscribes etc.

It looks like there's a couple of variables to monitor the connection, did your installer put any of these on the interface? Sometimes things like these will be tied to a status light or similar.

Connection State: This tracks the progress of the driver from start up through establishing a secure connection, gathering all the current info on the HAI system and going onlin. If the connection is lost it will return to 'Startup' until it can re-establish the connection.
TCP Connection: This just monitors the low level network connection between the units, regardless of whether an encrypted connection has been established, Windows CE tries to keep this connection open so it can take up to 30 seconds for this to go away when the network connection is gone.
Object Message: Shows the object type of the last object to send a message to the driver. Changing lights, setpoints and zones should show up here.

If you open a web browser and go to the IP of your RTI processor does it pull up the diagnostics page? You should be able to go to the log page and any driver events or errors will show in there. For example if the subscription status of RTI to HAI is throwing an error it might show in there. You can also see the status of the above connection variables under the "sysvars" tab to see if the TCP connection for example drops out for several minutes.

 

[rs691919]

I've never used and don't know anything about the Omnipro and how it works, if RTI has to query it or RTI subscribes etc.

It looks like there's a couple of variables to monitor the connection, did your installer put any of these on the interface? Sometimes things like these will be tied to a status light or similar.

Connection State: This tracks the progress of the driver from start up through establishing a secure connection, gathering all the current info on the HAI system and going onlin. If the connection is lost it will return to 'Startup' until it can re-establish the connection.
TCP Connection: This just monitors the low level network connection between the units, regardless of whether an encrypted connection has been established, Windows CE tries to keep this connection open so it can take up to 30 seconds for this to go away when the network connection is gone.
Object Message: Shows the object type of the last object to send a message to the driver. Changing lights, setpoints and zones should show up here.

If you open a web browser and go to the IP of your RTI processor does it pull up the diagnostics page? You should be able to go to the log page and any driver events or errors will show in there. For example if the subscription status of RTI to HAI is throwing an error it might show in there. You can also see the status of the above connection variables under the "sysvars" tab to see if the TCP connection for example drops out for several minutes.

I don't believe the connection variables are on the interface. So RTI had my installer set up a program by which they could monitor the connection status. They found that the connection was dropped every few minutes, but they can't figure out why. We watched the logs, and you can see that the driver reboots every few minutes to re-establish connection. So this was leading to an inability to send commands to the HAI panel. We worked around this by sending a recurrent command from RTI to the panel every minute. This keeps the connection "awake", and now I can send any command to the panel and it works every time. However, the feedback still doesn't work.

I'll try opening the IP of the processor in a webpage this evening and see what happens.