[ILUG] voip & alarm systems

[Niall O Broin]

On 11 Mar 2005, at 12:28, John P. Looney wrote:

>  I'm at home, struggling with ISDN. If I threw it out, I'd get NTL
> broadband at about half the cost. However, I need to have a PSTN
> connection for my monitored alarm.
>
>  If I got in NTL broadband, is there anyway that I could still have my
> eircom phonewatch alarm dial home ? I assume I'd end up having to have
> some sort of a linux router on all the time, acting as a VoIP gateway.

Wow - it's been a while since a technical post here generated so much 
noise and so little signal. In principle, the solution to your problem 
is to have asterisk or some such running at home, which will give you a 
POTS interface over VOIP (and VOIP systems of course can be used to 
gateway into the PSTN - they'd hardly be all that much use otherwise). 
However, that needs Phonewatch to be able to work over a POTS adapter 
in an asterisk box. I don't know that it can. There's lots of muttering 
about Phonewatch not working with a line with DSL so perhaps the 
Phonewatch box does odd things on a line.

But TBH the whole question is IMHO moot. When a burglar hits your 
house, he's in and out quickly, generally. See if you can get 
statistics from Eircom as to the average time from Phonewatch control 
calling the Gardai to a patrol car doing a flyby. If you can even get 
such statistics, I'll be surprised. I have even heard it said that the 
Gardai don't respond to house alarm calls as there are so many false 
alarms. The main value of an alarm (and hear I'm speaking as someone 
whose house was broken into when it WASN'T alarmed) is to act as a 
deterrent. As the detective who came to my house said - if some bastard 
decides to break into a house on your street, being one of the houses 
without a visible alarm box increases your chances of being elected.


Niall