Here is a copy of the article. (Article submitted to IFE /FPA journal on 29-12-07)
__________________TITLE: MONITORING FIRE ALARM SYSTEMS OVER TCP/IP NETWORK_________________
Author: M C Benzerari
Software developer
Elec. Eng. TMIET
Service and Commissioning
Engineer
Drax UK Ltd
1 Keywords:
TCP/IP Network, protocol of communication, fire alarm systems, fire and safety, open protocol, closed protocol, maintenance and fault finding on line, internet.
2 Abstract:
This article exposes an approach to future concept of monitoring fire alarm systems over TCP/IP network. The Internet with its broadband capacity of network and embedded web server provides an alternative and efficient method, for integrating fire alarm systems into a much broader range of information technology facilities in order to enable Alarm Service Companies to monitor on line and in real time, the customer’s fire alarm system’s operation, also carry on an important part of the servicing, commissioning and faults findings. The TCP/IP network facility may offer Alarm Service Company higher quality of service and better security and safety for its customers.
3 Introduction
Fire industry is still strongly backed by the law and legislation in UK and world wide, its market has seen considerable growth in the last few decades, the total UK fire protection industry is now worth just under £3 billion, representing an annual growth rate of around 4% a year over the last five years, according to new market research conducted by the Fire Industry Association. The report comes with a commentary on product, market structure and future development, also forecasts for market size and growth for the period 2007-2009. Fire industry market will see further substantial growth in the future .
Although, economic growth story of fire and safety industry abroad more particular in India and China is booming. They are both aiming to attract the best of fire engineering products, latest machinery in fire appliances, new technologies for prevention, detection and fire suppression .
Back to Europe, Russia is certainly the most lucrative emerging markets of nowadays, Mr Kevin Denis the director of Vision Systems Europe said: This is a destination any growth-oriented company needs to consider as part of its European strategy , Russia with its increased stability, rapid economic growth and greater wealth makes it, one of the very attractive European markets nowadays.
In my knowledge I have not heard up till now, Alarm Service Company closed down because of lack of customers or market saturation, I have heard of unification of giant alarm companies to make considerable advantage from the synergy of unification, I have heard of brilliant engineers left their positions to setup their own businesses with completely new look and way of work in management and marketing, even employment agencies still eagerly seeking new fire alarm engineers.
However, fire industry can prosper and grow only if it relies deeply on technological news and engineering innovations, and today’s most popular modern way of communication currently and widely used is without doubt the internet, to transmit audio and visual data signals using TCP/IP protocol, not only between computers PCs, but also when monitoring electronic’s machinery and laboratory instruments, moreover today’s electronics instruments come not only with the classic serial or parallel ports such as RS232, but also with networking adaptors to facilitate the monitoring process through TCP/IP network. So why not taking advantage of TCP/IP network to monitoring the customer’s fire alarm systems located in the outskirt of the cities?
4 What is already available in the marketplace?
Actually there are already some initiatives in the marketplace towards this route, i.e. ‘Advanced Electronics Ltd’ company has already achieved some of this aspect, through their compatible modem UP-005 to monitor their MX4000 series analogue addressable system, using the software version PC-NET-004
Fire alarm engineers can dial in from any where, and access in real time to the remote fire alarm panel, check its status, take control of most of its functions, download event log for fault finding, also download or upload device log for commissioning purposes. They can even deal on line with complex network of MX4000 series.
The hardware connections of this existing technology is basically no more than connecting the fire alarm panel to the phone line, through a compatible modem that can interpret the protocol of communication of the analogue addressable system. Although, every analogues addressable panel of nowadays comes with the serial port RS232, and designing a compatible modem for each make is still practically achievable. The basic hardware connection is shown in figure 4-1.
Although, a correct setting and configuration of the modem has to take place, i.e. the transmission baud rate, the right COM port, the modem type. Then to establish a connection, the user needs just to enter the right phone number and press the Connect button, from then he should be able to display the virtual fire alarm panel status in real time,… it looks like the user has arrived on site in front of the fire alarm panel, and if he needs access to other levels, an access code will be required just like in a normal world.
However, there are number of troublesome aspect behind the need to upgrading this classic remote monitoring process to more sophisticated level using the latest of the technology, some of these reasons are:
1. The remote monitoring through a simple compatible modem, needs unfortunately a permanent phone line, to monitor the fire alarm panel. which can be used by one user at the time to dial in, thus as long as the line is in use, none of the rest of the alarm company staff can access to the fire alarm system remotely, till the first connected engineer freed the line.
2. The Alarm Service Company has to have so far hundreds of different modems and softwares, to suit all different makes, in order to implement all customer’s fire alarm systems remote monitoring process.
3. Most of the existing makes offer only one-way communication from the fire alarm panel, either checking its status, or downloading event log…, the means of a “Reporting” feature only.
4. The customer’s fire alarm system is considered as standalone system, at all time till you dial in, and once you free the line it would not, so what is the point?
5. By experience, the fire alarm system may lose its configuration including its devices log due to a number of causes: earth fault which can corrupt the data, loop card may have gone faulty, a qualified engineer misused the internal reset option and/or flashed the memory, or auto learned the system off load… and many others depending upon the makes. I have already seen such incident happened once, and I believe every single engineer has seen such incident at least once in his entire work experience, the system was showing healthy and a genuine fire occurred, the system did not trigger. As a result both Alarm Service Company’s reputation and customer’s safety were put at risk…
For these above reasons and many others, an internet-monitored fire alarm system is unavoidable future, to allow a true and permanent remote monitoring process, based on an always-on connection and in real time.
5 The hardware’s solution requirement:
The popular network protocol used by internet is called TCP/IP; it is an industry standard protocol of communication. It can be used to communicate with fire alarm systems, but to establish this connection, the fire alarm panel must speak TCP/IP, as very few fire alarm control panels of nowadays are internet-enabled such as the latest released fire alarm panel of TeleFire Company, which is equipped with their own compatible Net-3000 module , also the latest release Noti.Fire.Net fire alarm panel of Notifire Company which may be monitored through either Ethernet or Internet.
For instance, the ideal cost effective way to monitor all customer’s fire alarm system with their different protocols of communications through internet, is the use of a well configured local computer server and a website based application, the remote monitoring process of each customer’s fire alarm system is in fact initiated locally, and the remaining task is left to TCP/IP communication to establish data transmission over internet at all time.
Therefore, each fire alarm panel has to be linked through RS232 to a local server, this later has to be kept ON 24/7. The basic synoptic diagram of the hardware connections is shown in figure 5-1.
The future fire alarm company’s technical department should look then like a control room that have a wide LCD flat screen, displaying the map of the city with the customer’s sites well located with three virtual LEDs, Green Red and Yellow, the healthy fire alarm systems should show a steady green LEDs illuminated, the Faulty fire alarm systems Should show a yellow LEDs flashing with a bleeping, and the fire alarm system in fire conditions should show a red LED flashing with a continuous alarm, then a well trained staff should be in charge of supervising the mimic screen for any incoming emergency events.
The software should have the facility to left clicking on the right virtual LED control, to display in real time the relevant fire alarm virtual panel, from then investigation should be started online and in real time.
6 How and What can TCP/IP technology brings to the fire alarm systems monitoring process?
TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) is a connection-oriented protocol, both computers must be activated and agree to take part in the communication before data can be exchanged. Establishing a connection-oriented protocol is like making a phone call, the connection request is sent by dialling the phone, and accepted by answering from the other computer before a data transmission can begin, it is a reliable, full duplex communication .
Once the connection is established, the two computers can simultaneously and reliably exchange information. But that would not prevent any third computer to talk to either ones, because the remote monitoring process should be built on a multi-client server base, the multi-client server can support multiple simultaneous connections. It is certainly obvious to any internet user that, most internet network services such as E-mail and web server are actually multi-client server programs, which can broadcast data to all connected client, also collect data from any connected client…
The TCP/IP network can offer the following advanced advantages:
1. Taking a better control of the fire alarm systems, when continually remaining connected and monitored over a TCP/IP network, using an intelegent application software, I would call it VISONAIRE, this later should be able to continually and periodically scan the customer’s fire alarm systems status and save records in the Alarm Service Company’s server database, among these records: detector’s analogue values, device log, event log…etc, and each period of time the VISIONAIRE compares the previous recorded configuration of each fire alarm system against the new received one, and display warning messages if there is any serious differencies i.e. device log lost, low output, no reply or detector contaminated...etc
2. Getting more employment opportunities, by chasing more jobs, instead of waiting passively for any eventual callouts to come up.
3. The permanent availability of TCP/IP monitoring will have dramatic and positive impacts on the relationships between Alarm Service Company and end users. This may lead to a better reputation and much business growth. As internet technology enables us to receive an urgent E-mail stating a new event has just happened on certain customer’s fire alarm system, therefore an engineering investigation can be started remotely, from the technical department, and a contact with the customer can be established straight forward, the discussion may lead straight forward to get a job purchase, and as a result an engineer can be sent to site with the right tools, kits, spare parts… and the right details about the job spec.
4. Recording years of fire alarm system’s event log, and saving it in the local server, as it has enormous enough space memory comparing to the embedded memory of the fire alarm panel. These sources of data would be the basis of any future innovations of more reliable fire alarm equipments towards reducing false alarms…etc
5. It may significantly reduced unnecessary costs and activities for the Alarm Service Companies, and allowing them to concentrate more on real emergencies.
7 The software’s solution requirement?
The application monitoring the fire alarm system over TCP/IP Network, has to be then opened through a website hosted locally, it has to have then its unique URL internet address. To implement this process, the application has to be then developed with .Net platform; ASP.Net would be among the ideal programming languages for this purpose. How ever, once the main webpage of the remote website is opened, the user has to be prompted to enter the right security site password to access the remote GUI.Net (Graphical User Interface) application to read and write data through the serial port RS232.
On troublesome when using the earliest version of VS2002.Net till VS2005.Net is that; their previous .NET framework versions, offer no native support for serial port communications, thus in order to use ‘Win32 API’ or ‘MSComm32.ocx’ controls of VB6. This later has to be fully installed in the same hard drive, in addition to Visual Studio.Net. The code might be different when using Visual Studio.Net2005 . See figure 7-1
One of the solutions available in the market at the moment facilitating this issue, is the use of a PortControler.Net of Scientific Component Company, the products are (Visual Studio 2005 / .NET CLR 2.0) and (Visual Studio 2003 / .NET CLR 1.1) .
The PortControler.Net is a powerful and easy to use .NET component that makes RS232 serial port communications simple and gives a full serial port control in Visual Basic, C#, or C++ or other .NET project with just a few lines of code, and it takes only seconds to set up according to PortController.NET documentation.
However, it is potentially much more rewarding and cost effective to use Visual Studio 2008, the latest ideal .Net platform version released together with the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 on November 19, 2007, this version has a lots of updated features, that may allow monitoring each customer’s fire alarm systems on line and in real time using a true dynamic SQL server database.
Drax UK Ltd has already achieved some of this aspect; it has developed AMX Alarm Management Software, to monitor fire alarm systems of different protocols of communication in local Ethernet network, this series of alarm management softwares just need to be upgraded with .Net platform to achieve this goal.
8 Possible solution for conventional fire alarm systems:
Conventional fire alarm panel is a zoned system, it is based on an old and well proven limited technology, its sophistication reaches to indicate only the concerned zone by fire or fault conditions, no extra details of which devices has caused the emergency situation. Conventional fire alarm system use what is usually known by one way communication, if there is and incident of fire, the fire alarm system would detect it and trigger an output alarm signal, otherwise it would sit passively, it has no data communication to be transferred between the main fire alarm panel and its devices, Actually very few conventional panels in the market comes with a built in serial port RS232, therefore the alternative solution is to interface it with the server through an external IP device that have enough input relays to monitor the zones, and an output port to link it to the server. One of such IP device available in the marketplace is IPDACT of FireLite Company . Also in some big sites, much IP devices are needed to monitor the required number of zones. The synoptic diagram of connection through an IP device is shown in figure 8-1.
9 Conclusion:
As a result, a market survey about the relevance of this project has to be launched, and opinions of experts in the field have to be consulted and well considered, although, the British Standard or other alternative Standards, have to be involved into the matter, to set out the relevant updated code of practice. I believe it is potentially much more rewarding and cost effective to integrate TCP/IP technology into the future’s fire alarm panels, to avoid interfacing the panel with the local server; the hardware connections will be considerably simplified. Also it is much more beneficial to unify the protocols of communications into one standard basic protocol, from which manufacturers may be able to extend it to suit their own makes.
Also I would imagine the future fire alarm panel with an LCD flat screen fitted in the back of the lid, to be used by fire alarm engineers only, a normal keyboard could be just slide out of the panel to be used when required, in addition to a built in hard drive…etc, the fire alarm panel will behave just like a normal server, with the latest Microsoft Windows Operating System installed, and just ready to be connected and take advantages of the TCP/IP network. See figure: 9-1.
Although, this project can be generalised to monitor other BMS (building management systems) where required, the following control systems are some of the BMS:
1. Building security/intrusion detection and door access
2. Building CCTV camera network
3. Lighting and power management systems
4. Building environmental factors, temperature, humidity and air conditioning
5. Plant machinery
The full article with referencies and imagies is available on request.
____________________________ Author: M C Benzerari_____________________________________________
