Envisalink 4 spotted at ISC West

Information and support for EnvisaLink modules.

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Poolman
Posts: 7
Joined: Sun Apr 14, 2013 3:47 pm

Envisalink 4 spotted at ISC West

Post by Poolman »

They were showing off the new 4. Less confusing LED indicators, same size, 10/100 Ethernet and more panel compatibility (Vista 128).

Coming soon ish.
GrandWizard
Posts: 2321
Joined: Tue Nov 16, 2010 4:08 pm

Re: Envisalink 4 spotted at ISC West

Post by GrandWizard »

Mad rumours :-)
hokie21
Posts: 53
Joined: Tue Oct 22, 2013 10:17 pm

Re: Envisalink 4 spotted at ISC West

Post by hokie21 »

The hardware is great. I'd just like to see them fix some of the long term portal bugs and implement some of the most popular feature requests. We've seen no action on this front in a long time.
GrandWizard
Posts: 2321
Joined: Tue Nov 16, 2010 4:08 pm

Re: Envisalink 4 spotted at ISC West

Post by GrandWizard »

There are no current bug reports and all level 1 and 2 feature requests have been implemented or addressed.

Maybe you could explain yourself before posting such a broad criticism on the forum. Better yet, if you have an issue specific to yourself, you should contact us directly at support.
hokie21
Posts: 53
Joined: Tue Oct 22, 2013 10:17 pm

Re: Envisalink 4 spotted at ISC West

Post by hokie21 »

I'd be glad to provide information on why I think little has been accomplished in terms of improvements and bug fixes during the last year I've been a customer. I see lots of very good potential improvements mentioned in the forums, and I see very few that have actually been implemented. I went through some old forum posts and pulled some examples. I haven't gone and retested any of this stuff recently so please let me know if any of these have been addressed. I'm certainly not expecting 100% of suggestions to be implemented, but the percentage of accepted suggestions seems to be so very low. Going back to the earliest forum postings, this didn't seem to be the case. Users would suggest things and a few days later someone from Eyez-on would post and say that it had been done. That's the kind of responsiveness I'd like to see again. It's looks like this was a one-shot contract development job and now there's no budget for follow-on maintenance and enhancement of the system.

Anyway, here is my short list of bugs/suggestions that appear to have fallen on deaf ears.

1. UI is not intuitive because there are clickable areas that give no visual clue that you can click n them. -- No change to address this users comment.

2. Enter test mode via web portal for 30 min, 1 hours, 2 hours, 4 hours, etc. -- 5 months later, No change to address this input.

3. “No action” display on SMS/email alerts so that while the system is in test mode, other folks with SMS or email monitoring wouldn’t think the alarm was actual. -- 5 months later, No change to address this input.

4. A zone bypass and zone bypass restored are both reported as "Security Event: <zone name> Bypassed." You said you would email the developers on this ~6 months ago, but I retested just now and nothing changed.

5, Why not call a "closing" an "authorized arm" and an "opening" an "authorized disarm?" There seems to be general agreement on the forum that this is confusing, but yet Eyez-on insists on “not dumbing down’ and using “industry standard terms” despite multiple disagreeing users on the user forum.

6. It is impossible to set some users to SMS and some users to Email. This is claimed to be
“working as designed.” This is covered in a FAQ and if you have one contact selected as Full Style and another as SMS, the alert will go to both as Full Style. --- What’s the point of allowing both selections and assigning each type to a user, if one setting overrides the other and prevents its use on a different user?

7. Why not suppress additional recipients in the "to" field by using BCC? Your current way of doing things causes multiple address message threads in a smartphone when some messages are sent to multiple recipients and others are sent to a single recipient or to a different "to" list. Eyez on reponse was “Out of my hands my friend. This is just the way the back-end gurus do things.”

I'd like to be wrong on this, but it's still looking to me that little is happening here in the portal development/maintenance area.
K-Man
Posts: 145
Joined: Fri Jun 01, 2012 1:08 pm

Re: Envisalink 4 spotted at ISC West

Post by K-Man »

Yes it is true. Envisacor will be releasing the Envisalink 4 sometime this summer. Some of the major highlights are:

- 100BaseT Ethernet
- 128 Zones for Honeywell Panels
- Downloading for DSC panels using either DLS2002 or DLS5
- Hooks for upcoming GSM backup module
- Faster everything (firmware downloads, command responses, webserver etc)
- It's blue
K-Man
Posts: 145
Joined: Fri Jun 01, 2012 1:08 pm

Re: Envisalink 4 spotted at ISC West

Post by K-Man »

Some of these items fall on our side of things so I'll comment on them.
hokie21 wrote:
4. A zone bypass and zone bypass restored are both reported as "Security Event: <zone name> Bypassed." You said you would email the developers on this ~6 months ago, but I retested just now and nothing changed.
I wish this was possible but on DSC systems the panel doesn't report the actual state of bypassed zones. I know we'd love to be able to show bypassed zones on the zone-grid but without knowing the initial state it would just end up being a guess in the end. Sorry.
5, Why not call a "closing" an "authorized arm" and an "opening" an "authorized disarm?" There seems to be general agreement on the forum that this is confusing, but yet Eyez-on insists on “not dumbing down’ and using “industry standard terms” despite multiple disagreeing users on the user forum.
With the change to multiple alerting languages there will be an opportunity to break-open the language file. I doubt something like "authorized arm" would ever be accepted by the pros but definitely something like "Opening/Disarming by User Ted" would be acceptable to professionals and DIY alike.
6. It is impossible to set some users to SMS and some users to Email. This is claimed to be
“working as designed.” This is covered in a FAQ and if you have one contact selected as Full Style and another as SMS, the alert will go to both as Full Style. --- What’s the point of allowing both selections and assigning each type to a user, if one setting overrides the other and prevents its use on a different user?

7. Why not suppress additional recipients in the "to" field by using BCC? Your current way of doing things causes multiple address message threads in a smartphone when some messages are sent to multiple recipients and others are sent to a single recipient or to a different "to" list. Eyez on reponse was “Out of my hands my friend. This is just the way the back-end gurus do things.”
These two are related. There is a limitation in our back-end messaging queue from IBM that makes it difficult to implement 6 and 7. We have commissioned a new reporting engine which will allow us greater control of event responses including what you have described, along with some even cooler options.

Thanks for using the Envisalink and providing some feedback

K
hokie21
Posts: 53
Joined: Tue Oct 22, 2013 10:17 pm

Re: Envisalink 4 spotted at ISC West

Post by hokie21 »

The cellular backup feature sounds interesting. However, I thought GSM was being decomissioned and new devices needed to be LTE.

I hear that IoT over LTE can be had for $3-4 per device per month. It would be excellent if the Eyez-on cellular solution could be both a great technology and be available at an attractive price.
ramias
Posts: 6
Joined: Tue Oct 29, 2013 12:52 pm

Re: Envisalink 4 spotted at ISC West

Post by ramias »

K-Man wrote:Yes it is true. Envisacor will be releasing the Envisalink 4 sometime this summer. Some of the major highlights are:

- 100BaseT Ethernet
- 128 Zones for Honeywell Panels
- Downloading for DSC panels using either DLS2002 or DLS5
- Hooks for upcoming GSM backup module
- Faster everything (firmware downloads, command responses, webserver etc)
- It's blue
Will it need to connect to the PCLink port as well as the Keybus for DLS5 downloads?

What is expected power consumption? Will it still be powered by the Keybus?

Any ETA on the cellular module, and can it be used with other monitoring companies (like alarm Relay)? I need to use a monitoring company licensed in my state... Thanks
brientim
Posts: 27
Joined: Sat Jan 21, 2012 5:38 am

Re: Envisalink 4 spotted at ISC West

Post by brientim »

K-man,

Looks likes some significant capabilities enhancement are coming...
What is the current scheduled release date?

Are you planning on releasing the specs and will the release impact on the current TPI, and if so what is anticipated?

Are you planning on EOL for 2DS when the 4 is released?

What is the planned to zone labels? Will it be able either receive broadcast label or reverse, from the portal broadcast to update keypads?
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