The demand for security systems that monitor homes and businesses for alarm conditions has continued to grow as more home and business owners seek to protect their premises 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 security systems typically employ a wall-mounted control panel (typically mounted in a less accessible area of a home) that receives information from various sensors, and may trigger alarms based on the received information. These triggered alarms are then reported by the control panel to a monitoring center via a plain old telephone service (POTS) line, digital subscriber line (DSL), or cellular radio, such that the monitoring center can take appropriate action. However, installation and servicing complexity associated with these systems tends to be high as an installer has to physically mount the control panel onto the wall and configure the various sensors. These systems also typically incorporate a manufacturer's specific technology designed for the manufacturer's security application, and are thus limited for use only with certain life safety type devices such as door and window contacts, smoke detectors, motion detectors, etc. 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. To reduce some of the cost associated with installation of such systems, portable AIO systems have been implemented so that the unit that may be relocated around the premise and not permanently installed. For example, the unit may sit on top of a table or on the floor, but communicates with life safety sensors in a similar manner as a wall-mounted security panel.
While the complexity of portable AIO systems is less than more conventional security panels installations, portable AIO systems may be more vulnerable to damage and tampering. For example, portable AIO systems are often located near an entrance or exit, and even chirp when a sensor is activated or to remind a homeowner to disarm the system—announcing its location. A thief may break into a residence protected by a portable AIO in which the thief may be able to destroy/disable the portable AIO system and prevent the AIO system from triggering an alarm. The phenomenon of a thief breaking in and disabling the portable AIO system control panel is referred to as “crash and smash” and is a growing problem.
While a homeowner may take measures to prevent “crash and smash” by hiding the portable AIO system in a remote closet or back room, such a location is often not practical because the home or business owner still needs access to the portable AIO system in order to arm/disarm or otherwise control the system via the built-in keypad. For example, the business owner may be forced to initiate arming of the portable AIO system located in a backroom and then run to exit the premises before the system is armed. In other words, while portable AIO systems may be less complex than more conventional wall-mounted security panels, they are also more vulnerable to tampering and disablement.
Another issue associated with some portable AIO systems is that these systems are designed to operate using only the built-in user interface. If the control panel becomes damaged, due to weather or tampering by a thief, the system may be rendered inoperable. Also, a single point of control on the premise makes configuration of the system more difficult as an installer often has to go back and forth between the control panel and various sensors during installation to configure the sensors.
Moreover, both portable AIO security systems and conventional security panels are typically limited to controlling and monitoring life safety, such as intrusion and fire detection. But today, home or business owners want to utilize additional life style features (such as lighting control, temperature control and remote viewing of video). Such life style systems operate in a manner that has developed largely independent of life safety systems. For example, the life style devices provide different types of event information and are typically operated and managed through a different provider and/or remote system than those used for monitoring life safety. Consequently, in order to add this lifestyle capability, users have to have completely separate hardware/software/service directed to controlling and monitoring these additional features, with a separate user interface dedicated solely to controlling the separate system.