WIRELESS CONTROL OF EMERGENCY NOTIFICATION DEVICES

• US 20130147599A1
• Filed: 12/12/2011
• Published: 06/13/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 12/12/2011
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: UTC Fire and Security Americas Corporation, Inc. (Raytheon Technologies Corporation d/b/a RTX)
• Original Assignee: UTC Fire & Security Americas Corporation, Inc. (Carrier Global Corporation)
• Inventors: Becker, Donald, Camins, Marty (Martin), Stoops, Morris, Wyman, Jeffrey
• Application Number:
  US13/323,412
• Publication Number:
  US 20130147599A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 340/5.61
• CPC Class Codes: G08B 3/10 using electric transmission; using electromagnetic transmission

Abstract

A system for controlling devices in an emergency system, the system having one or more emergency notification devices and a control device. The emergency notification devices have one or more outputs and are capable of using the one or more outputs for both emergency notification and non-emergency purposes. The control device is used for controlling the outputs of the emergency notification devices, and is wirelessly coupled to the emergency notification devices.

Claims

1. A system for controlling emergency notification devices in an emergency system, the system comprising:

one or more emergency notification devices each having an output peripheral;

a control device configured to communicate wirelessly with the one or more emergency notification devices;

wherein the output peripheral of each of the one or more emergency notification devices provides both emergency notification outputs and non-emergency outputs; and

wherein the control device is configured to control the non-emergency outputs of the output peripheral of each of the one or more emergency notification devices.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the control device includes a microprocessor, a memory and a radio-frequency transceiver.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein the memory includes a look-up table for storing identification of the one or more emergency notification devices with which the control device communicates.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the one or more emergency notification devices each further include a microprocessor, a memory, and a radio-frequency transceiver.

5. The system of claim 4, wherein the memory includes a device address, a system identifier, and a group identifier.

6. The system of claim 1, further comprising a system controller wired to the one or more emergency notification devices, the system controller configured to provide power to the one or more emergency notification devices.

7. A method for controlling a notification device in an emergency system, the method comprising:

wirelessly coupling a control device to a notification device, the notification device including an output peripheral, the output peripheral configured to provide both an emergency notification output and a non-emergency output;

validating that the control device has permission to communicate with the emergency notification device; and

controlling the non-emergency output of the output peripheral using the control device.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein the control device includes a radio-frequency transceiver, a microprocessor, and a memory device.

9. The method of claim 7, wherein the notification device further includes a radio-frequency transceiver, a microprocessor, and a memory device.

10. The method of claim 7, wherein wirelessly coupling the control device to the emergency notification device comprises:

comparing identifiers sent from the control device with identifiers stored in the memory device of the notification device; and

sending an acknowledgement to the control device if the identifiers from the control device matched the identifiers stored in the memory device of the notification device.

11. The method of claim 7, wherein validating that the control device has permission to communicate with the emergency notification device comprises:

sending a validation key from the control device to the notification device; and

comparing the validation key sent from the control device with a validation key stored in memory of the notification device.

12. An apparatus for controlling outputs of one or more emergency notification devices, the apparatus comprising:

a transceiver capable of communicating wireless sly with the one or more emergency notification devices;

a memory capable of storing identifiers of the one or more emergency notification devices; and

controls for controlling the outputs of the one or more emergency notification devices.

13. The apparatus of claim 12, the outputs of the one or more emergency notification devices include both emergency notification outputs and non-emergency outputs.

14. The apparatus of claim 13, wherein the controls for controlling the outputs of the one or more emergency notification devices only operate to control the non-emergency outputs.

15. The apparatus of claim 14, wherein controlling the non-emergency outputs includes adjusting volume of a speaker.