Ip Alarm Signalling

[james.wilson]

well a voice dialler has no way of the other end knowing its tried or cant send a signal. So that is the lowest of the low.

But a high end ats6 dual path polled and managed system would be a higher cost.

People think that using dual path (ie pstn and gsm) that is not managed is not the same as pstn gsm managed.

Once the signal is into the arc then yes things are pretty constant apart from the premium rate calls the police use to pass alarms to them etc

[jimcarter]

James is right in that there is no "average" priced system and unless you pick the supply chain apart you wont get to see what costs what..and people will get nervous as that begins to reveal margins!

So the ATS market goes from Digi to high end solutions, and at present IP/GPRS is one of the high end solutions as you can do some really clever stuff with it, poll very rapidly and get to some tight reporting times.

Trouble is, whoever you are, when joining the ATS market you strap a target to your back. Anything that goes wrong with the comms is going to come your way. You need the diagnostic tools to be able to do this and that means you have to "own" both ends of the comms, so you have to have a receiver. There's plenty of talk about an "IP Protocol" but I cant see that coming. It brings the Panel Manufacturers and the ARCs into the ATS provider space, and they really don't want or need the hassle.

Whatever the comms solution, you must have good support. I have a team of 3 front line and 3 second line who are comms experts and they know the panels we integrate with so they can support them to. We have the tools at hand that allow this small team to manage over 25K sites in the field. They don't come for nothing, and that, including the GPRS (roaming SIM) and the support of the ARCs is where the recurring comes from.

Low end IP transmission is coming, but it will still need supporting.

[Steve Howard]

I can see panel integration is a specialist and presumably dark art - but signalling over IP, with a GPRS backup is hardly rocket science - and roaming SIMs are pretty much standard for all M2M work. Is this perhaps one area of the market where the 'baffle factor' for traditional installers has kept prices high - maybe like where IP cameras where 5 years ago (or perhaps still are!)?

[james.wilson]

Steve are you looking for info or do you have an 'angle'?

[Steve Howard]

Both I guess - I'm coming at this from a comms / CCTV side and being asked to to more 'security' bits - mostly for specific equipment cabins rather than punting for business at corner shops / offices, but it does seem an area that is massively massively overpriced for what it is. I realise its not 100% comparable, but on the one hand you have low end system relying on a revenue share on an 0898 to make a few pence, and IP stuff that seems to be (from the guy who kindly replied above) to cost £2k over three years, when the true 'cost' (as a premium over that 0898 dialler) is zero.

I guess I sense an opportunity- either for an honestly priced product, or for the installers to have a little more control over what they are doing (having seen the revenue models of the ADTs of this world where they install it for 'nothing' and make a killing on the monitoring). It's nothing more that thoughts for now......

[james.wilson]

Steve im sure those that don't understand fully monitored transmission paths will be interested in your thoughts.

[Steve Howard]

Steve im sure those that don't understand fully monitored transmission paths will be interested in your thoughts.

James, would you care to expand on that a little, if indeed you insinuating something? Surely monitoring the transmissions paths is trivial once both ends of the link are in place?

[jimcarter]

Steve..if you want to play in the ATS market then welcome. But I can tell you now, Intruder signalling via any medium is not trivial.

IP is just another transport medium, but in all cases you need Substitution, Sequencing and a graceful recovery of communication when the network goes belly up.

You've also got standards compliance and certification, and whilst a lot of people think this is confined to the UK, it is not.

I've given you some pointers in respect of the support requirements and the like during these posts, but if you stepped into our development department and declared that IP/GPRS signalling is trivial, then you would not walk out of there alive.

[MrHappy]

In theory a Rasberry Pi built on the kitchen table could do the signalling to an Arc in the spare Rm...

There is few out there doing stuff like this in the wild, however I find it much more profitable to buy a product & use an ARC

[jimcarter]

Dead right...some think it's best to allow the client to provide their own SIM card for GPRS. Absolute disaster.

Many years ago we had a big client insist on buying their own SIMs..guess what...12 months down the line the bean counters looked at all their mobile contracts..saw hundreds of SIMs with low usage and cancelled them all overnight.

Next day, we get the call..your systems ****, all these units have gone off line...etc etc etc....and then...well there was no apology, put it that way.

You can buy an un-managed service for two shades of f-all, but this is security...not e-mail or texting your mates.