MQTT Interface

PAI requires an external MQTT broker to be configured in pai.conf

At a minimum, you will need to configure the following MQTT settings (set MQTT_HOST to something applicable to your setup).

MQTT_ENABLE = True # Enable MQTT Interface MQTT_HOST = localhost # Hostname or address for your MQTT server MQTT_PORT = 1883 # TCP Port

The MQTT Interface allows accessing all relevant states and setting some. The list of states will increase as the knowledge of the alarm internal memory and its states is improved.

All interactions are made through a MQTT_BASE_TOPIC, which defaults to paradox. States are exposed by name with a boolean payload (True or False) and are mainly update by the alarm status messages, updated every KEEP_ALIVE_INTERFACE seconds.

States

• paradox/states/partitions/name/property: Exposes Partition properties where name identifies the Partition name (e.g. Interior) and property identifies the property (e.g. arm).
• paradox/states/zones/name/property: Exposes Partition properties where name identifies the Zone name (e.g. Kitchen) and property identifies the property (e.g. open).
• paradox/states/outputs/name/property: Exposes Partition properties where name identifies the PGM name (e.g. Gate) and property identifies the property. (EVO does not have this yet)

The following states are supported:

• buses : supervision_trouble, tamper, trouble
• keypads: ac_loss_trouble, battery_failure_trouble, signal_strength, supervision_failure_trouble, trouble
• outputs: signal_strength, supervision_trouble, tamper, trouble
• partitions: alarm, alarms_in_memory, arm, arm_with_remote, audible_alarm, auto_arming_engaged, bell_activated, bell_delay_finished, entry_delay,entry_delay_finished, exit_delay, exit_delay_finished, force_arm, in_remote_delay, intellizone_delay, intellizone_delay_finished, paramedic_alarm, pulse_fire_alarm, ready_status, recent_closing_delay, silent_alarm, sleep_arm, stay_arm, stayd_mode_active, strobe_alarm, transmission_delay_finished, wait_window, zone_bypassed
• repeaters: ac_loss_trouble, battery_failure_trouble, signal_strength, supervision_trouble, trouble
• system: battery, dc, rf_noise_floor, vdc
• zones: alarm, bypassed, entry_delay, exit_delay, fire, fire_delay, intellizone_delay, in_tx_delay, no_delay, open, rf_low_battery_trouble, rf_supervision_trouble, shutdown, signal_strength, tamper, trouble, was_bypassed, was_in_alarm

Events

• paradox/states/raw: Exposes raw event information, composed by a minor and major codes, as well as descriptive text. The payload is a JSON object with the following structure:

    {
        'major': (major_code, 'major_text'),
        'type': 'event_type',
        'minor': (minor_code, 'minor_text')
    }

• major_code and major_text represent the major code and corresponding text description as provided by the alarm. This will mostly identify the event.
• minor_code and minor_text represent the minor code and corresponding text description as provided by the alarm. This will mostly identify a detail of the event, such as the zone number/name, the user name, partition name, and so on.
• type identifies the event category, and can take the following values: Partition, Bell, NonReportable, User, Remote, Special, Trouble, Software, Output, Wireless, Bus Module, Zone, System.

Control

The MQTT Interface allows setting some properties for individual objects by specifying the correct name. In alternative, the all keyword can be used to apply the same setting to all objects. This is useful to activate all PGMs or to Arm/Disarm all partitions. name in the topic needs to be replaced by a name with spaces replaced with underscores.

• paradox/control/partitions/name allow setting some partition properties where name identifies the partition. If the name is all, all partitions will be updated. The payload can have the values arm, arm_stay, arm_sleep, arm_stay_stayd, arm_sleep_stay or disarm and disarm_all.
• paradox/control/zones/name allow setting some zone properties where name identifies the zone. If the name is all, all zones will be updated. The payload can have the values bypass and clear_bypass.
• paradox/control/outputs/name allow setting some PGM properties where name identifies the PGM. If the name is all, all PGMs will be updated. The payload can have the values pulse (Not on EVO), on, on_override, off or off_override, release (Only on EVO).

Check command execution result in logs.

name sanitising function to put in the topic:

python -c 'name="my partition name"; import re; print(re.sub(r"\W", "_", name).strip("_"))'

Notifications

You can ask PAI to send a notification to other text interfaces (Pushover, Pushbullet, Signal, GSM)

paradox/notifications/info

• info is message level. For Pushover it will convert to priority. Supported are: NOTSET, DEBUG, INFO, WARN, ERROR, CRITICAL.

Message content should be put into MQTT payload

Code Toggle

Sometimes it is useful to toggle the ARM state through a remote device, such as a NFC reader. Therefore, Partitions arm state can be toggled by issuing a special command with the format code_toggle-code_number (e.g., code_toggle-123456755). The code_toggle- keyword is constant, while the code_number is provided by the card (e.g., Card ID). If the code is present in the MQTT_TOGGLE_CODES, the partition state will be toggled.

The MQTT_TOGGLE_CODES should be composed by a dictionary where the key contains the code, and the value contains a description. This allows for easily sending notifications in the form: "Alarm unlocked by USERNAME".

This was throughly tested with ESPEasy running on a ESP8266 board (e.g. NodeMCU or Wemos D1 Mini) connected to a PN532 NFC reader. Besides the typical ESPEasy configuration, the only "code" required is a simple rule. The following example will publish any ID to the correct topic and will flash a LED for 2 seconds.

on reader#tag do
   Publish paradox/control/partitions/all,code_toggle-[reader#tag]
   Pulse,2,0,2000
endon

reader#tag identifies the ESPEasy PN532 device name (reader) and the property holding the RFID ID (tag).