Texecom Premier Event Log Printing

[steeple]

Greetings everyone

I’m responsible for M&E services at a community centre attached to our local church and need some advice about upgrading our alarm equipment.

My questions are right at the end of this message, after the explanation of why I need the advice!

At present we have a Gardtec 840 with 30 zones, linked (together with the fire alarm and PA buttons) by a Redcare fixed line to an ARC. It was installed 10 years ago by a local SSAIB alarm company and has been under maintenance contract with them ever since.

The ARC passes ‘intruder signals’ to our keyholding security guard company (no automatic police response) and ‘fire signals’ to firstly the Fire Brigade and then the keyholding company

We use the alarm panel event log as a record of the time the building is opened each day by the cleaners and of the time it is closed. Ideally we would like to be able to get either a hard copy or computer screen print out of the event log each week, but cannot justify spending the £600 ‘additional panel equipment’ quoted to us for modems etc to get an output to feed into one of our printers or PCs, so we have to manually step back through the event log on the keypad and copy the entries into a notebook.

The Gardtec 840 however has developed an internal clock fault causing the event log time to progressively gain about 30 minutes per day – not ideal, but we cope with this by resetting the system date/time every Monday morning – and both our alarm company and Risco technical department say the only solution to the clock fault is to replace the panel.

We have now asked for an additional ‘plant monitoring’ signal (generated if the heating boiler goes into a fault condition when the building is empty/alarm is set) to be passed via the ARC to the keyholders. The alarm company recently attended to connect the appropriate volt free contact to the panel/STU but the exercise failed as apparently an alarm panel chip was not correctly programmed and could not now be programmed or replaced (to allow a ‘pin 5 signal’ ?).

We were told the preferable solution was both a new panel and we were offered an alternative (cheaper) DualCom GSM link to the ARC in place of the Redcare link.

We have been quoted for a Texecom Premier 48 with new keypad and necessary expander units but we cannot get a straight answer to whether this set-up can provide us with an ‘event log print out’ facility to connect to a PC and, if so, at what additional cost.

Does anyone have experience of using a Texecom Premier 48 to provide such an event log output, at the same time as having the necessary add-ons for a DualCom GSM link which will cater with intruder/PA/fire and plant monitoring signal inputs?

As an end-user customer of a system under contract maintenance we would not need (and possibly wouldn’t be allowed to have) PC software for programming and remotely accessing the alarm panel, so is there a simple way of getting just an event log print out/display ?

Thanks for reading to this point.

[MrHappy]

printer interface & datac printer left connected should printer every event as it happens ?

[Rulland]

Seems to be lots of requirements for an institution such as yours!. Almost seems like you don't trust the staff!.

[MrHappy]

the only place I've seen printers for alarms is the gate house of very large sites, if the OP want it & is prepaired to pay for I'd be happy to do it

[alterEGO]

Get a decent alarm company !! We would just set you up with weekly open/close reports from the ARC for a small fee.

[fozzies]

Personally, i'd be amazed if an int alarm would stand up in court as a time and attendance system, when i consider that even access control manufacturures offer specific equipment for this, and specifically exclude the rest of their ranges from this use. I would be wary of using the data you can get from this print out as more than information

As to the rest, as previous, get a new co involved, google either ssaib or nsi, both .org s

[james.wilson]

As above you can get that report from your arc if set up. Be carefull changing your red are link as there are various versions and most are not as good as your current redcare link. Its cheaper for a reason