HKC Securecomm can't connect phone

Irish Steve

OK, so, 10270 panel, with a GSM WiFi card, 2 RKP's, a wired zone expander and a new SABB, so I've spent too much to just walk away from this panel, it has to be made to work despite HKC's stange attitudes towards support, and in theory, the panel is happy, it's telling me that both GSM and WiFi are connected OK, albeit I had to use a guest WiFi on the router, as HKC only support a limited graphics character set on their panel, which means the underscore "_" can't be used in a password, and changing the WiFi password is not something I really want to do, given the number of users that have it.

So, in theory, the panel is happy, it says it's connected to both GSM and WiFi, and on the basis of some comments in the FAQ's, I've opened port 50001 on the router, and I used a web validation site on the laptop to prove that the port is open, which supposedly it is, and all the routers have been rebooted to make sure that the changes have been accepted.

I have a new installation ID, and the panel gave me a password, which I've captured using the phone to make sure I got the thing right, and I've checked it with the 0*9 check subsequently.

Software downloaded from Play store, Samsung Galaxy S7, app is HKC secure comm 2, which is supposedly installed OK, but then the trouble starts, it's telling me that the password is wrong, and I know it's not, and I know from the confirmation mail I got that the HKC got the details, so clearly, either I've missed something, or done something wrong.

So, what else should i be checking, I'm presuming that it's not just a case of HKC taking their time activating the details.

The panel is basically working, I've checked out the basics, and it's setting and unsetting correctly, I've one outdoor wired zone giving me grief, so for testing purposes, it's been bypassed, which solved the issues there. All the other zones on doors and windows are working correctly.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

Thanks

Jnealon

The keyboard on some phones interpret symbols etc differently to a standard qwerty keyboard.

I would remove any special characters from the password and just use a simple text one. Also try it on another phone

Irish Steve

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120328368#Comment_120328368

Thanks, the password generated by the panel for the securecomm app is only alpha, upper and lower case, so not an issue as such, the underscore is in the WiFI password, and it is not supported by HKC, so I've had to get round that by using a guest WiFI network on one of the routers, which can have a password that HKC can cope with, but the issue I'm struggling with is that the phone is telling me the password is wrong, but as that password was generated by the panel, and is correct, I'm at a loss to work out why the phone app is not connecting.

altor

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120330170#Comment_120330170

If you enter 0*9 and your user code on the keypad, it should give you the ID for the app and the password that is setup in the control panel.

These need to match with what you enter on the phone app when setting up.

Irish Steve

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120330796#Comment_120330796

Well, that's been interesting, but strange, so I'll post it here in case anyone else has the same issue in future.

I'd done all the set up stuff, in terms of getting an installation ID from HKC, and then gone through the process as outlined in the relevant manual, but I could not persuade the phone to link to the panel, it kept telling me that the password was wrong, and I had checked it as outlined above, and it was supposedly correct, I'd used the suggested password that it put on screen on the first time though that part of the panel application, the suggested password seemed sufficiently random to be safe enough.

I then went on to try and set up the Android App, which supposedly installed without issues. The problem then was it could not connect to the panel, despite the information being supposedly correct.

So, in desperation, I checked with HKC to make sure I'd not made a mistake with writing down the installation ID, as it's not as such printed anywhere in the letter that's sent out, and I had got it right.

I'd already made sure that port 50001 was able to communicate with the ISP servers as per the FAQ page, so at that stage, I decided to change things a bit, and see what happened.

Went into the relevant section of the panel, and checked the installation ID, and then changed the password to a new 10 character alpha only password, then tried setting up the app again, at which point, the app started working, and the only conclusion I can come to is that when the device generated the password on the initial install, it left or stored a null character, or another non printable character in the password storage area, with the result that when it tried to compare the two, they didn't match, so it was rejected, despite the display of 0*9 showing the password I was expecting and entering.

The other issue that HKC really needs to address is that recommended secure passwords for WiFi should contain a mix of upper and lower case letters, numbers and special characters, but the issue that I hit last night was that the HKC character set only has a very limited number of special characters, and a favourite for passwords, the Underscore (_) is not included in their character set, and to get the device to work without changing the password on the system I had to set up a guest network connection that didn't have special characters in it, so that the HKC could work with it. I was lucky, I have a TP-Link device being used as a repeater that has that option, but the basic Sky router doesn't have that option, which would have meant changing the password, and having to make sure that all users knew what it had changed to.

The main thing is that the panel is now working for me, and both wifi and GSM seem to be doing what they're supposed to, I've still a number of settings to check and explore, to make sure I'm getting the results I expected to get, but the main issue, getting the app to work with the panel, it's now resolved, and hopefully, these notes might be a help to others who run into problems with what seems a very strange issue.

altor

These are the characters available to use, underscore is the 1 pressed 3 times

Irish Steve

That's interesting, and raises a relevant question.

What revision number is the manual that's taken from please, as the manual I have here, SW-10270 Installation Manual for V4.0 Software 010321_1 has the 1 with different characters, as per the following image.

I had to look at another issue so was in the relevant settings area, the software version I have on the panel is 4.3.2, and it seem that this version does have the underscore in the options on the 1 key, so in theory, I can change my wifi to use the base SSID rather than the guest setting, which will make life easier.

Life would be so much easier if HKC actually allowed people to have access to the latest versions of things.

altor

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120342656#Comment_120342656

I think that's a typo as its in the older and newer version of the panel.

Latest manual has a dot but the panel has the underscore.

Irish Steve

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120354803#Comment_120354803

The plot thickens, I sent HKC an e-mail to see if they had any comment, and their reply was no real help, it just served to confuse the issue even more, my panel here has the underscore in the character set for the 1, so I can change back to using my original settings if I want to.

Good morning Steve,

Unfortunately the _ (underscore) character is programmed into the panel character list so the system will not be able to connect to router containing one in its password.

Kind regards,
HKC Security Ltd,

As you can imagine, when I got that, I found another way round the issue, and that's working, reasonably well as such, so to now find that there's a better answer for now is good, but I do wonder which is right, are they planning to change the character map, or have they already changed it, and I suspect if I call them to try and find out, I'm not going to get very far.

Cheers

altor

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120356797#Comment_120356797

Strange reply considering the underscore is in the menu 🤣

Ill ask next time I'm on to them