Ademco/Honeywell Galaxy Panel protocols

if you think about it ........ it's a security panel, not a game. Why would someone put out that information just to enable someone to "play" with it?

Lots of people have used the info, there are lots of utilities and 'drivers' for various apps that interface with the galaxy range.

From rio emulators, pc-based control, keypad emulators etc - been done by a few different companies.

Plus its not going to make the system insecure if the info is out there, its not exactly 'high encryption' most of it is plain text, and the rest looks like a fairly straight forward algo that would just take some time to understand without docs.

The keypads are tampered, and also monitored for loss of comms, so you could not interject a false signal on a real system it would trigger an alarm. You would have to add your generated signal as a mod when leaving eng mode (as each device is addressable) and the protocol would cover the addressing of the devices and the handshaking.

Monitoring a signal would be impossible if the system is properly installed, the alarm would have gone off well before you got to the stage where it was possible.

The use for it would be to interface to the system, the galaxy classics etc are a very basic design (quite similar to the home computers of the

1980's - kindof stuck in a timewarp really) and the possibilities for extending it are large if the protocol is known.

It can be interface to a cctv system, I have a couple of cctv systems, I could link the alarm panel to the cctv system (I use a geovision SDK to get complete control of what I need on the CCTV) and could monitor the bus to see what sensors are triggered (saves buying a expensive ethernet card for the galaxy and using their ancient software that only does what they want it to do) and have my own remote alarm monitoring by sending the signals to a remote server, accessible anywhere in the world.

I could set or unset the alarm on my laptop, pop up the right camera depending on what sensor triggers (the galaxy has a chime facility but its rubbish, you cant have different chimes for different zones. I want to be able to see on my laptop what zone chimed without moving. I could wire the sensors back to the alarm AND the cctv, but thats just to much wiring.)

The galaxy does a lot, but it also does very little - its badly thought out and very,very old tech (not used the newer versions, only 16+, 18, 60, 500 and 512) A alarm system should not only be secure it should be usuable and fulfil a users needs.

There are so many problems with the galaxy that I could solve with the protocol.

The comms are just on rs485, so its not going to screw anything up having another device on the line. If it dont work, the alarm would go into tamper and trigger....

You, not being in the business of providing security ........ I can see your point of view.

But ....... You can bet it's not the point of view of any alarm installing company. The only "user needs" I'm willing to provide is a security panel including any peripherial control, without the ability of the end user being able to get into programing to muck up the system, so I get sued for not monitoring a crime or life threatening event. As you can imagine, .... even if I had the ability to do what you want to do, I wouldn't do it because of the liability I'd be exposing myself to from my clients insurance companys, by trying to make the panel do something the manufacturers did not design it to do. You ....... as an end user can do what ever you please with the equipment, but I'd not expect any alarm company, even if they could, would supply you with what you are looking for .

Ummmmm except for Robert Bass ...... that is. He does everything possible to undermine this trade, alarm installing companies and manufacturers. He sells equipment to end users and lies alot about how installing companies are bad so that people will buy from him instead. You might want to try him...... but you'd better make it pretty quick. He's about to die.

hallam had written this in response to

: What a very peculiar thread.

I am in the business of providing security, very serious security systems.

Relying on the secrecy of interface protocols for security is called security through obscurity. We have found that high strength cryptography is considerably more effective.

I found this thread because I have recently taken an interest in the security of SCADA systems, to put it bluntly, none of the systems out there come close to the level of security that should give people confidence. But we have to start somewhere.

In particular I am interested in home automation and find proposals based on an entirely new line of wireless protocols to be unrealistic. I know that rewiring a house is a pain, but honestly, home automation is going to have to be 100% reliable to be worth having and none of the wireless protocols are secure enough or reliable enough to be worth bothering with.

RS485 looks like a better bet, particularly since there is a wide range of industrial controllers that work off RS422/485.

Connecting the home burglar alarm so that it can talk to the net seems like a good place to start with home automation to me.

I want to be able to do things like turn the heating up or down depending on whether someone is in a room. I want to be able to turn on video cameras and take pictures of intruders. I want to be able to send alerts and realtime updates to iPhones.

You're trying to re-invent the wheel. There's already equipment out there that will do what you want, without trying to kluge up equipment that wasn't meant to do it in the first place.

Obviously, if it's just a fun project with you, that's fine, but I don't think you're going to find any of what you want here. Anyone here, wanting to do what you are describing would purchase equipment that would do the job. Try HAI, they have great home automation interfacing.