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Help understanding CID protocol

My goal is to equip the new house with alarm system which is monitored by the central station. I am new to security systems, but once I started learning about them, my DIY personality started leaning towards building a system myself. By doing some research in this discussion group I learned that alarm systems communicate with the monitoring station by sending CID signals. If CID is a DTMF sequence, can I generate it using any DTMF encoder? If I know the CID format that is expected by the monitoring station, does this mean that I can have a computer to control a DTMF encoder in order to send code sequences to the monitoring station? Is there any response from the monitoring station that I need to listen to, or I can be in "transmit only" mode? Is there any spec to CID tone length, pause between tones, or any other restrictions? Thank you.

Reply to
ymg200
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No central station in their right mind would monitor a system like you describe. Shit man, just buy an off-the-shelf panel and then let your creative juices flow.

Reply to
G. Morgan

Yes, Contact ID is an industry-specific method of communication, requiring interactivity between data transceivers. The only "transmit only" mode would be a "pager format", not Contact ID. Good luck.

Reply to
Steven Vaughan

The answers to all your questions would be yes, yes, yes and yes.

If you're half a computer hardware and software buff you can send CID signals and even construct a receiver to do so.

The question is would you really want to implement such a concoction in a real life situation? The liability you'd incur by sending signals to a CS with such an unreliable homemade setup would hardly be worth any price saving or knowledge learned.

On the other hand if your only intention is for the learning experience, everything that you've asked can be achieved on a very low budget.

Reply to
Randy Mass

Trying to re-invent the wheel .......... are you?

For about $60.00 you can buy a panel that has been engineered tried and tested and is a proven reliable UL listed device that will do what you want with a 99.9999% chance of it working when needed. Anything that you "invent" ...... however ..............

As mentioned, if I were a Central Station I wouldn't touch such a system with a 10 foot pole. Something that's been hatched in someones garage trying to communicate with a million dollars worth of my central station equipment is NOT something I'd be willing to risk. Central stations usually monitor thousands of alarm panels and bear the liability of doing so. There's no way I'd want someones "invention" screwing up my ability to respond.

Reply to
Jim

Gentlemen, you are all right. Thank you for your comments. After some more thoughts and research on available panels I decided not to reinvent the wheel. I will try to improve the tire thought :)

Reply to
ymg200

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