Fire alarm remote output

Thread Starter

Xheff

Joined May 8, 2019
9
hi,
As a fire alarm engineer life would be so much easier if I could see what the fire alarm is saying on the screen when I’m not in front of it.

Always wondered how I would go about maybe using an Arduino to accept the data and be able to remotely view it on my phone / device

How would I go about this?
 

Reloadron

Joined Jan 15, 2015
7,501
Part of what will work best involves the distance. As mentioned above there are several ways to go about it, including sending a text when there is an alarm, there is also sending the data to a web page so it can be viewed about anytime anywhere. The better you define what you need or want as well as like to have will make it easier to choose a medium to send the data.

Ron
 

Dodgydave

Joined Jun 22, 2012
11,284
Unless it's an Addressable type, there wont be any data comms only which Zone is activated, whereas an Addressable type has a data comms output usually RS485.
 

Thread Starter

Xheff

Joined May 8, 2019
9
Of course its going to have to be an addressable panel with 485 output
maybe somehow connectiong it maybe through an arduino or something along those lines over wifi/4G
 

MisterBill2

Joined Jan 23, 2018
18,167
An arduino is horribly incapable of doing what you are seeking, which is to take a video message and convert it to speech and then send it to some device as a digital audio file.
If an alarm system is involved then one set of interface circuits could help, but there needs to be a whole lot more description of what is between some device sensing a fire and a message appearing on a computer screen. Without a description of that the very best you will get is guesses, or smarty remarks attempting to be funny, like post #3, which was not funny.
 

dendad

Joined Feb 20, 2016
4,451
If you just want a picture of the screen, try the ESP32-CAM. Point the camera at the screen and the picture will be available on your home network via the ESP32 WiFi connection. These cameras are very cheap and quite good quality. I use one to watch my 3D printer.
https://randomnerdtutorials.com/esp32-cam-video-streaming-web-server-camera-home-assistant/ has a good introduction.
Setting up a VPN will allow access to the video from anywhere via the internet.

These cameras are less that $20 each. Worth a look!
 

Wolframore

Joined Jan 21, 2019
2,609
An arduino is horribly incapable of doing what you are seeking, which is to take a video message and convert it to speech and then send it to some device as a digital audio file.
How did we determine that there is video involved?

I read it as view an alert on your phone. My alarm system does this using a SIM card which also interfaces with a website and phone app.
 

Thread Starter

Xheff

Joined May 8, 2019
9
what panel i use will be a big factor but i know morley and advanced panels have a printer output for a thermal printer.
could i somehow read the data from that output
 

Thread Starter

Xheff

Joined May 8, 2019
9
its switches to trigger something on a remote output but would have no data sent through it.
on the panel is either a rs 232 rs485 or a printer output for a receipt printer, i want to extract the data from any of these outputs to a live log/terminal e.g when address 4 device detects a fire the panel displays the name and zone number of the alarm.
then once i can successfully exctract that data i may use some form of wifi module for arduino to transmit to a live terminal feed on tablet/phone
 

Wolframore

Joined Jan 21, 2019
2,609
I see... to get exact zone information you would need the serial output... for a general alarm you could tap into the fire/fault... depends on how indepth you want to get. I'm surprised that a major alarm company does not have an option to use GSM or similar. I like the GSM system because it does not rely on WiFi or power with battery backup.
 
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