October 7, 2011

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acronyms

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I was sitting here thinking and then I LOL (laughed out loud) because our industry is full of these, We at MCS (mace central station) monitor tens of thousands of IDS (Intrusion detection systems) and FACP (fire alarm control panel) and PERS,s (personal emergency response systems) and MPERS,s (mobile personal emergency response systems), connected to these systems are millions of PIR's (passive infrared) and PEC (photo electric cells) along with a bevy of other services.

We dispatch the PD (police department) and FD (fire department) 1000s of times a day, we call 1000's of RP's (responsible parties) and send 1000’s of Emails (electronic mail) and 1000’s of SMS (short message systems) every day. We deal with UL (underwriters labs) and ETL (Edison testing labs) and local AHJ's (authority having jurisdiction)

We encourage the use of ECV (enhanced call verification) because when coupled with CPO1 (control panel standard #1) it significantly lowers the number of CFS (calls for service) that we request the PD's to respond to. For those that don't know CP01 is an ANSI (American National Standards Institute) standard that incorporates false alarm reduction features into the alarm control panels.

We also encourage every alarm company no matter how big or small to have a FART team (false alarm reduction team) to manage the number of false alarms and unnecessary CFS, while it may seem like it's not worth it now it will pay off in the long run.

One of the things I encourage our employees at all levels to do is spend at least 2 hours a month reading trade information, there is no way that anyone truly invested into the industry would not know what ECV is, it's in the trade journals and association material all the time and has been for almost 10 years.

Some of this is tongue and cheek so don't take it to seriously but our world is full of acronyms and everyone needs to know what they are because as you can see writing them all out all the time can be a real pain.

Have a good weekend and remember we are not here for a long time but here for a good time.

Morgan Hertel

Vice President and General Manager

Mace CS

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more on UL 827 Standards v An Act of God Storm mode policy

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Ken;

One thing that responsible alarm installing companies can do to help alleviate although maybe not measurably eliminate the sudden inrush of CS calls during a power outage is to take advantage of the RANDOM AC LOSS NOTIFICATION in the alarm program software. Simply put the alarm panel would randomly select a time to report AC LOSS after losing power. Usually 10-60 minutes offset. LOW BATTERY would be reported immediately and before battery power dropped below minimums. The healthy alarms with AMPLE back up power to meet code and MORE THAN AMPLE contingency backup will weather the storm adequately.

The above would reduce the sudden load on a Central Station from a given area that experiences a general power loss.

Joel Kent

FBN