The demand for systems that use a variety of devices at a location to monitor a variety of conditions, such as monitoring homes and businesses for alarm conditions, allowing users to centrally control various devices (such as thermostats, switches, cameras, appliances, etc.), monitor medical conditions, and the like has continued to grow as more home and business owners seek better control over their premises and to protect it from various hazards and threats. Such hazards and threats include intrusion, fire, carbon monoxide and flooding, among others dangers that may be monitored and reported to a monitoring station.
Conventional systems typically employ a control panel and/or gateway that receive “event” (such as triggering alarms) and other information from various sensors and devices, and is used to operate them. This may be done locally by the user, or remotely via a monitoring center. In the case of alarm events, the monitoring center can also take appropriate action, such as notifying emergency responders. Installation and servicing complexity associated with these systems tends to be high, as an installer has to physically position, mount, and configure the control panel and all of the various sensors, while taking into account a variety of performance characteristics and requirements for each device to ensure proper operation of the system. These systems also typically incorporate a manufacturer's specific technology designed for the manufacturer's security application, and only certain devices may only appropriately interoperate with other devices in certain ways. This is true as well for more recent all-in-one (AIO) security systems, in which the control panel and a user interface (such as a keypad) are combined in a single unit, even portable AIO systems where the control panel may be relocated around the premises and not permanently installed. For example, such units may sit on top of a table or on the floor, but nevertheless communicates with life safety sensors in a similar manner as a wall-mounted security panel.
However, these existing security systems suffer from the same problem, namely, a lack of health monitoring of the security system. In particular, these existing security systems only generate a system alert when the health levels of sensors or components fall below predefined minimum thresholds. For example, a battery alert for a sensor will only trigger an alert when the battery is falls below an operational threshold, but this operational threshold typically corresponds to a battery level of where the sensor or component is forced to turn off or will turn off shortly. In other words, health level thresholds in existing systems are only triggered when the levels are so bad such that at least one sensor or component of the system stops functioning properly.
Further, customers have no way of knowing when the heath levels of their security systems are going to degrade to the point that functionality, i.e., monitoring capabilities, of the security system are affected. Such a failure may come at an inopportune time such as when the customer is on vacation or otherwise away from the premise. Therefore, the user is not able to fix the problem, e.g., change batteries, or call for a service technician because the customer may not even know a problem exist until the customer returns to the premise. Such a sudden failure in monitoring capabilities of these existing security systems may inadvertently provide thieves the window of opportunity they have been waiting for.