pyg90alarm 2.7.3

G90 Alarm system protocol

Description

Python package to control G90-based alarm systems.

Many manufacturers sell such systems under different brands - Golden Security, PST, Kerui and others. Those are cheap low-end systems, typically equipped with WiFi and possible GSM interfaces for connectivity, and support different range of peripherals:

• Wired and wireless sensors

• Relays (switches)

… and probably others

The package implements asynchronous I/O over most of code paths using asyncio.

Disclaimer

The author has no affiliation or any relationship to any of the hardware vendors in question. The code has been created upon many trial and error iterations.

Motivation

The primary motivation creating the code is the comfort of using the security system - the mobile applications provided by the vendor, called “Carener”, is slow and crashes sometimes. Instead, it would be awesome to have the system integrated into larger ecosystems, like Home Assistant, HomeKit and such. Hence, the code has been created to interact with the security system using Python, and it opens up a way for further integrations.

Supported hardware

It might not be possible to list every system supported by the package due to manufacturers naming the products differently. Here is the list of hardware known to work with the package:

• PST G90B Plus

And the list of sensors, actual set of device should be notable larger as many of other manufacturers produce similar items. The names in parenthesis are taken from the alarm system documentation, for example, Home Alarm GB90-Plus.

• Wired PIR sensors

• Wireless PIR sensors (WPD01, WMS08)

• Door/window sensors (WDS07, WRDS01)

• Water leak sensors (LSTC01)

• Smoke sensors (WSD02)

• Gas sensors (WGD01)

• Switches/relays (JDQ)

Basically, the alarm system uses 433 MHz communications for the wireless devices using EV1527, PT2262 protocols. The mobile application also mentions some devices using 2.4GHz, although details of the protocols haven’t been identified as no such hardware has been available for experimentation.

Known caveats

• Wireless shutter sensor (WRDS01) doesn’t send anything on sensor closed, only when opened. In contrast, WDS07 wireless door sensor does both.

• Wireless relays (at least JDQ) use same RF code for switching on and off, when configured in toggle mode. That means a RF signal repeater will make controlling such relays unpredictable, since the code will be sent more than once.

• Low battery notifications for wireless sensors (at least for WDS07 and WSD02) are often missing, either due to the sensors not sending them or the device doesn’t receive those.

• Wired sensors toggle on line state change, i.e. those aren’t limited to have normal closed (NC) or normal open (NO) contacts only. Best used with NC contact sensors though, since an intruder cutting the line will trigger the alarm.

Device notifications

Local notifications

There is a hidden device capability to send protocol notifications over the WiFi interface, thus called local. The notifications are done using broadcast UDP packets with source/destination ports being 45000:12901 (non-configurable), and sent when the device has IP address of its WiFi interface set to 10.10.10.250. That is the same IP the device will allocate to the WiFi interface when AP (access point is enabled). Please note enabling the AP is not required for the notifications to be sent, only the IP address matters. Likely the firmware does a check internally and enables those when corresponding IP address is found on the WiFi interface.

Depending on your network setup, ensuring the 10.10.10.250 IP address is allocated to the WiFi interface of the device might be as simple as DHCP reservation. Please check the documentation of your networking gear on how to set the IP address allocation up.

Note

Since the IP address trick above isn’t something the device exposes to the user, the functionality might change or even cease functioning upon a firmware upgrade!

Note

The device notifications in question are fully local with no dependency on the cloud or Internet connection on the device.

Note

If IP address trick doesn’t work for you by a reason, the package will still be able to perform the key functions - for example, arming or disarming the panel, or reading the list of sensors. However, the sensor status will not be reflected and those will always be reported as inactive, since there is no way to read their state in a polled manner.

To work that limitation around the package now supports simulating device notifications from periodically polling the history it records - the simulation works only for the alerts, not notifications (e.g. notifications include low battery events and alike). This also requires the particular alert to be enabled in the mobile application, otherwise it won’t be recorded in the history.

For the local notifications to be enabled the G90Alarm.use_local_notifications() needs to be called upon constructing an instance of G90Alarm class, then G90Alarm.listen_notifications() to start processing those coming from the panel - the code fragment below demonstrates that though being incomplete since callbacks (e.g. G90Alarm.on_armdisarm()) should be set for the actual processing of the notifications.

from pyg90alarm import G90Alarm

# Create an instance of the alarm panel
alarm = G90Alarm(host='10.10.10.250')
# Enable local notifications
await alarm.use_local_notifications()
# Start listening for notifications
await alarm.listen_notifications()

Cloud notifications

The cloud protocol is native to the panel and is used to interact with mobile application. The package can mimic the cloud server and interpret the messages the panel sends to the cloud, allowing to receive the notifications and alerts. While the protocol also allows to send commands to the panel, it is not implemented and local protocol is used for that - i.e. when cloud notifications are in use the local protocol still utilized for sending commands to the panel.

The cloud protocol is TCP based and typically interacts with cloud service at known IP address and port, which could be customized. To process the cloud notifications all the traffic from panel towards the configured IP address service needs to be received by the node where the package is running.

Please see the section for further details on the protocol.

The benefit of the cloud notifications is that the panel no longer required to have 10.10.10.250 IP address.

The package could act as:

• Standalone cloud server with no Internet connectivity or cloud service required at all - good if you’d like to avoid having a vendor service involved. Please note the mobile application will show panel as offline in this mode

• Chained cloud server, where in addition to interpreting the notifications it will also forward all packets received from the panel to the cloud server, and pass its responses back to the panel. This allows to have notifications processed by the package and the mobile application working as well.

The code fragments below demonstrate how to utilize both modes - please note those are incomplete, since no callbacks are set to process the notifications.

Standalone mode

from pyg90alarm import G90Alarm

# Create an instance of the alarm panel
alarm = G90Alarm(host='<panel IP address>')

# Configure cloud server address the panel should use - the host running the
# package.
await alarm.set_cloud_server_address(
   cloud_ip='<host IP address running the package>', cloud_port=5678
)

# Enable cloud notifications
await alarm.use_cloud_notifications(
   # The host/port the package will listen on for the cloud notifications,
   # should match ones above.
   cloud_ip='<host IP address running the package>',
   cloud_port=5678,
   cloud_local_port=5678,
   upstream_host=None
)
# Start listening for notifications
await alarm.listen_notifications()

Chained mode

from pyg90alarm import G90Alarm

# Create an instance of the alarm panel
alarm = G90Alarm(host='<panel IP address>')

# Configure cloud server address the panel should use - the host running the
# package.
await alarm.set_cloud_server_address(
   cloud_ip='<host IP address running the package>', cloud_port=5678
)

# Enable cloud notifications
await alarm.use_cloud_notifications(
   # The host/port the package will listen on for the cloud notifications,
   # should match ones above.
   cloud_ip='<host IP address running the package>',
   cloud_port=5678,
   cloud_local_port=5678,
   # Upstream cloud server address the package should forward the
   # notifications to.
   upstream_host='47.88.7.61',
   upstream_port=5678
)
# Start listening for notifications
await alarm.listen_notifications()

Quick start

pip install pyg90alarm

Documentation

Please see online documentation for details on the protocol, its security, supported commands and the API package provides.