Dual Monitoring involves monitoring a site (generally high security sites) using more than one form of communication. One example of a common Dual Monitoring scenario is a site with a standard dialler panel and a GPRS communicator. This setup provides a dual path back to the monitoring station for improved system avaliability. Another common example is monitoring a DVR alongside an alarm panel. The recommended approach for dual monitoring a DVR is client partitioning which does not involve the techniques described in this document. Refer to DVR Monitoring for more infomation.
In a Dual Monitoring scenario it is quite common to have one path reporting in one format and the other path(s) reporting in an unrelated format. To monitor a dual path account of this type successfully you will typically need to choose between the two methodologies detailed in the Client Alias and Merged Template sections of this document. Using these methods you can define the Event Types of a dual path site reporting in multiple alarm protocols. The final section of this document describes how to resolve any possible Zone conflicts between the dual monitoring paths.
The client alias feature is generally the preferred method of supporting dual path monitoring, which allows signals from many Patriot clients to be redirected (merged) in one client. First you setup a client which has all the information for the entire dual monitored site loaded. On the Event Types tab you setup the details for the primary form of communication.
Then you create a client for each alternate form of communication that reports using a different format than the primary client. If the alternate communicator is using the same format but must report to a different client no, you can also use the client alias feature to redirect the signal back to the primary client.
This system works equally well if you are dealing with base-linked partitioned clients. In this situation you simply use the client alias feature to redirect signals from each alterate base-linked area back to the corresponding base-linked area of the primary client.
On each alternate client you create, set the Client Alias account (selected from the Signal Interpretation Area of the Event Types Tab) to the Client Number of the primary client. All signals received by this account will be redirected to the primary account. If the secondary client has an Event Types Template selected and Use Template checked, signals will be interpreted using this template, not the alias client’s (primary client's) template. This allows the secondary clients to support a different format to the primary account. Only the template of the secondary account is used, and event types loaded into the secondary account directly are ignored.
Note that there are some limitations to using this scheme. Only the event type template from the secondary client is used, while all other information such as zone and user lists are ignored. When using different formats it is quite common that zone and or user numbers from one format will not match those for another format. You may need to duplicate some zone / user information to get correct signal interpretation from the secondary accounts. For example:
Primary account is setup on client number 0003-01. The event type template is set to Contact ID. The primary account has this zone list:
1 - Foyer
2 - Reception
3 - Main Office
This site also reports using a GPRS communicator. This communicator is programmed with a client number of 1003. So a client 1003-01 is created in Patriot, with its client alias set to client 0003-01. The GPRS communicator reports in SIA, so client 1003-01 has its event type template set to the SIA template. When signals come from the GPRS communicator the zone list is:
10 - Foyer
11 - Reception
12 - Main Office
As this zone list doesn't match up exactly with the primary clients Contact ID zone list, these zones will need to be added to the primary client's zone list. So the final zone list in the primary account is now:
1 - Foyer
2 - Reception
3 - Main Office
10 - Foyer
11 - Reception
12 - Main Office
As an alternative to using the Client Alias as a way of supporting dual monitoring it is sometimes possible to merge several event type templates together. This allows just one client to be setup and multiple receiver tasks report to a single client number. This system is only possible if there are no conflicting event types between the two formats. Lets use the same example as in the Client Alias setup section.
The primary communicator reports in Contact ID. In Patriot the Contact ID event types range from 100 to 2000 (generally). The system event types (65000 and above) can be ignored when calculating conflicting event types. The GPRS communicator reports in SIA. In Patriot SIA event types range from 8398 to 11605. Because the two ranges don't overlap, these 2 templates can be merged together. This combined template will then support signals from either format correctly. This procedure still has the same limitations as the client alias feature regarding conflicting zone/ user lists, but only requires one client to be used, which uses the merges event type template.
To create a merged template: Maintenance -> Clients -> Templates, copy one of the templates into a new template called, for example, CID + SIA.
Selecting an existing template for merging into a new template.
Open up the new combined template, and on the Event Types tab, use the Copy Types button to copy in the event types from the other template.
Merging events from a second template into the new merged template.
If there is a conflict between the zone listings of the two monitoring paths, you may be able to resolve this by redirecting the two zone listings onto unique module numbers - one module no. for each path. You can achieve this by modifying the Module No. field of each event type in your Client Alias or Merged event type template. Each zone record on the Client Zones tab can then be updated with the correct Module No. set for the path that it belongs to - conflicting Zone No. are allowed provided that the Zone/Module No. combination is unique. Patriot groups records on the Client Zones tab by Module No. This makes it easy to visually distinguish between the zone or camera listings belonging to each monitoring path.
In the case where one of your Dual Monitoring paths is a set of video cameras or DVR, it is important that each camera zone is given a unique Zone No. Ie. Patriot will not support setups where one camera is listed as Zone 1, Module 0 and a second camera is listed as Zone 1, Module 1.
Note: although less common a similiar conflict problem can apply to dual user listings where user numbers from both the primary and secondary paths need to be merged together. Conflicting user numbers may force you to create separate clients for each path.