I ordered the EnvisaLink 3 and should arrive in the next few days. I was reading the DIY Forum and there was a feedback on the EnvisaLink 3 from a poster by who goes by the Nick, RisingStar. His comments are quoted below. My main concern is why does it take 10-minutes to send out an email/text from EnvisaLink Server? What would cause the user to not receive an email/text?
Also, I will be adding an IP Camera (Interior) to my System, one Interior and one Exterior (Front Door). The Exterior Location has a Coax Cable and Power (two Conductor) Cable to that location and it is NOT possible to run any new Wiring to that location. I would prefer to use the Coax and Power cables if possible. What Camera would be recommended for the Interior and Exterior locations that will be able to be accessed via the EnvisaLink 3?
I have it installed. I wouldn't say it's awesome but it does what it's designed for: You can arm/disarm and get e-mail/MSM text message for events from your panel.
There's a delay for events reporting. I opened and closed a door and several minutes later got an e-mail saying door opened. Then minutes later, got another e-mail saying door closed. This delay is not just in e-mails but on their website too. Also, sometimes, I failed to get some e-mails.
Also, I unplugged and turned off the alarm panel. I got an e-mail about 10 minutes later saying network supervision lost. However, the panel status on their website still shows panel ready. If you don't pay attention to the events, you'd think your alarm is ready for arming or disarming.
You can add network cameras to your alarm page. But they don't support real-time streaming. It' takes a snapshot every time you refresh the status.
Overall, it works and it's one of the few options for people who don't have a landline and don't want to pay extra for the AlarmNet web monitoring service that Ademco offers if.
Opening and closing a door is not a real security event. We created this feature ourselves and call it "Zone Followers". Zone Followers are throttled as they are the lowest priority signals. This is all explained in the FAQ.
As for the 10 minute network supervision window, that is how long your Internet connection has to be out before we send you an alert.
Envisalerts are sent within milliseconds of the actual event and typically arrive within 5 seconds in the case of SMS alerting. Any delays beyond that are due to your mail server or the email-to-SMS gateway of your mobile phone carrier.
Lost emails? Check your spam folder or spam filter.
As for cameras, you can use almost any IP camera but we recommend the Foscam line of IP cameras as we have a little more integration with them on the portal.
Is the supervision lost considered a follower and throttled or is it supposed to be instant (I realize there is some window to determine the supervision was lost in the first place) ?
Does the module simply try to contact the servers on a schedule if there is no event pending and if it can't it just waits till the next interval or is there some backoff algorithm that retries more frequently when contact first fails and then eases off as time goes by.
I am asking for 2 reasons :
- first if internet is cut what is the detection window for that and is it really short enough to get that sms page while a potential break in is happening ?
- if there are redundant network connections how would failover and retry interact ? if a failure is detected and backup connection comes into use, will the module be aggressively retrying to connect or will it simply wait till the next scheduled heartbeat event ?
DaveSin wrote:
Also, I will be adding an IP Camera (Interior) to my System, one Interior and one Exterior (Front Door). The Exterior Location has a Coax Cable and Power (two Conductor) Cable to that location and it is NOT possible to run any new Wiring to that location. I would prefer to use the Coax and Power cables if possible. What Camera would be recommended for the Interior and Exterior locations that will be able to be accessed via the EnvisaLink 3?
If you only have a coax cable and power for outside, then you only have 2 options.
a) A wifi enabled webcam
b) A coax (can be used as composite video) to web type of device. Essentially a way to capture composite video and them put it on the web.
There may be ethernet via coax devices, but I would think they are expensive. So your best bet is A.
As GrandWizard suggested, the Foscam line is pretty good.
I suggest you get official Foscam product and not one of the many clones.
They have PTZ and they come in outside (water proof) versions too.
So I just hooked up my Envisalink. I have all alerts enabled. I have received alerts for Entry Alarms as well as normal alarms. The transmission speeds have been sporadic regarding email/text alerts as well as arming/disarming, some lightning fast to my amazement others a slight lag behind but nonetheless was impressed. However my heart sunk when I had 1 alarm that totally went undetected, this was rather dissapointing as I eagerly waited by the phone heart broken. I will most likely keep the Envisalink, but I will DEFINITELY have to in addition run a separate phone wire and to my panel since I don't feel 100% comfortable solely trusting the Envisalink servers to send me a notification should an alarm go down one day. The phone line has worked 100%, just sucks because in the case this should happen in real life I will just know something is going on at my house, but thats it. This is because no further zone activity gets sent to the envisalink once during an alarm state from the Vista untill the alarm has been disabled and than re-disarmed again (Cleared from alarm memory). I believe this is a fault with the Vista tho and not the Envisalink. Not sure tho. So when I log into the EyezOn in this case I will just see the state before the alarm condition. Hopefully, this missed alarm was just a once in a lifetime.
There has NEVER been a missed event from our servers. We have not had an outage lasting more than 1 minute in the last 2 years and even then, each Enivsalink buffers 128 alarms in its own non-volatile memory and will continue, forever, to transmit an alarm until it is acknowleged. No events are allowed to go unserviced.
If you did not receive an alarm on your "Recent Events" listing, it is because your panel didn't send it. Period.
For Ademco panels this could be due to programming, or not waiting long enough after an alarm before disarming. For DSC systems, ALL events are transmitted as there is no programming required.
Gwizard thanks again for always answering questions so thoroughly and quickly. That is very interesting that the Elink keeps a buffer of up to 128 alarms in it, and keeps trying till it is acknowleged on your side. I like that. I am not sure maybe I cancelled the alarm to quickly, but the Vista did phone my cell via the onboard Pager dial feature. I would think that if the vista sends out a pager dial that it would also send a signal to the Envisalink? Is there any chance that these 2 signals could trip each other? I remember in the elink setup tho we did give priority to signals to the envisalink so not sure.
Just wanted to add...I checked my event log and the alarm that was missed by the Envisalink had an alarm code of 134 (Entry/Exit Alarm) and was disarmed 2 minutes after the alarm initially went off. I would also add that after i disarmed (pretty sure I did this initial disarm at the keypad) I sent a Custom sequence of events (12341) from my Eyez web page to the Envisalink to clear the stupid Alarm In memory which was never picked up as well by the E'link. I did it a 2nd time a few minutes later and then it finally recorded. Not sure what happened, because even if I had an intermittent internet issue during these few minutes, from your description the Envisalnk should have tried to re-attempt the transmissions once it could. I dont know man. I have set my pager dial delay from 0 (no delay) to 1 minute in case this transmission screwed with the transmission signal to the Envisalink? Other than that I dont know what happened.
The Ademco VISTA panels are typically setup to transmit an alarm event after a certain delay. I think the default is 30 seconds. Our system had the default and when another Alarm Tech came out to add another door sensor, I ask him to reduce the delay time from 30 seconds to 0!! If you disarm the system (cancel the alarm event) before the 30 seconds, no alarm event will be sent via the EnvisaLink 3. I'm not sure why your Cell was sent the alarm event and not the EnvisaLink 3. Could it be that the breakdown occur during your Text and/or email alert leg? Do you know what the delay timer is set at before the alarm event is sent out? Personally, I do not want any delay, although it helps cut down on false alarms.
We had one Alarm event two weeks ago and we did get the EnvisaLink 3 text and the police sent to the residence by the Monitoring Company. Turns out that one of the Motion Sensors tripped for some unknown reason.
Contact ID Event 143 is part of a general class of "Burg" alarms and would be reported in a generic sense. Something like "Zone Alarm XX" and "Zone Alarm XX Restoral".
If it does not appear in your event log (portal log), then the panel never sent it to the secondary receiver (Envisalink).