Fucking Alarms

Years ago, I installed a nice Honeywell alarm panel. I've got smart dogs, a pair of small humans that like to adventure, and a well conditioned inside that I would much rather keep inside.

The alarm works great, programming it SUCKS.

If you're the kind of person that likes to sit in front of a keypad and push buttons in precise order for hours on end, you could have a bright future in alarm system installation.

Fortunately, there's a way around that. Software.

Specifically, Honeywell Compass 2.0.

This software is... obtuse, poorly documented, and more elusive than the green flash itself.

I'm not joking about that last part. Honeywell requires a login to access the software, except when you DO get logged in and navigate their labyrinthean website, the link is broken. No amount of diving into the HTML, prodding their javascript, nothing will return the base installer executable.

The internet has SOME links, but they're all long dead. When the number of google (and I use "google" as a stand in for all normal search engines") turns up less than a dozen results, its gonna be a bad time.

The piracy sites have nothing. The sketchy shareware sites have nothing. FINALLY I manage to find an executable. I have no idea if its real, if it works, or if its about to completely thrash this VM I'm installing it on.

What I can tell you is, thank god for Mexican alarm system suppliers with poorly secured FTP servers. That should be enough for all you savvy enough to attempt this yourself.

Honeywell, you make good hardware, but fuck you. Your website is trash. And by the number of forum posts asking where the software actually is, its been trash for a decade now.

Please hire a software developer. Or an intern. Hell, make ChatGPT write it for you. Get the knockoff version, ChimpGPT. Let your cat lay on the keyboard for an hour or two.

Literally anything would be better than what you have now.

P.S. The base file's md5sum is 2b075d87d919d245a8e64efcf62d4f57