Introduction

My alarm installer recommended a Texecom Premier Elite alarm panel for ease of integration with home automation systems. When I initially looked into the options it offered they seemed pretty good but when I came to actually implement the integration it proved more problematic than I had expected, so it dropped down the priority list.

Other people have achieved good results so it seemed worth trying again. In doing some reading to understand whether the new Texecom Connect ecosystem (in particular the Texecom Connect SmartCom unit) offered any advantages it became clear that I could achieve what I wanted with a simpler solution that takes advantage of the “Crestron System” integration already built into the Premier Elite panels.

In summary: if the Texecom panel is told it has a Crestron System attached to one of its serial ports, it sends simple status messages to that port whenever one of its sensors changes state (whether the system is armed or not) and it also reports on the arming and disarming of the system.

My main use cases are quite simple:

• To use the intruder alarm being set as an indicator of “unoccupied” status, turning down the ventilation fans etc.
• To provide more information than I currently get about any alarm activations.

Com Port Settings

One thing I didn’t see referenced in other posts was the need to set the Baud Rate for Com 2 on the panel. I couldn’t see any way to do this from the keypad but it’s easily done with Texecom.

Resources

• https://cybergibbons.com/alarms-2/programming-a-texecom-premier-elite-12-w-using-a-ftdi-cable/
• https://gw0udm.wordpress.com/2015/04/07/com-usb-alternative-diy-and-cheap/
• https://community.openhab.org/t/how-to-integrate-oh-with-a-texecom-alarm-system/38703

Texecom Alarm Integration with a Home Automation System by Marsh Flatts Farm Self Build Diary is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.