Evacuation systems providing enhanced operational control
First Claim
1. An evacuation system comprising:
- a plurality of detectors, each of said plurality of detectors being designed to detect an undesirable situation at a corresponding location and to generate an alarm in response to detecting said undesirable situation;
a plurality of voice point modules, wherein each of said plurality of voice point modules is addressable by a corresponding address and is capable of playing voice messages; and
a station being designed to receive said alarm, and to cause a potentially different message to be played on one or more of said plurality of voice point modules, whereby an operator using said station has enhanced control over evacuation.
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Accused Products
Abstract
An evacuation system, which provides enhanced operational control to an operator. In an embodiment, each voice point module capable of playing evacuation messages is implemented as an addressable unit, and an operator can cause different messages to be played on different voice point modules using a central station. The central station enables the operator to play live messages by capturing the voice of the operator and forwarding the voice in the form of voice data. Protocols such as H.323 may be supported on both voice point modules and the central station such that control data can be sent from the central station to the voice point modules. The control data can be used as a basis to provide features such as changing the volume level, storing messages locally in the voice point modules, specifying specific stored message to be played, etc.
234 Citations
25 Claims
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1. An evacuation system comprising:
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a plurality of detectors, each of said plurality of detectors being designed to detect an undesirable situation at a corresponding location and to generate an alarm in response to detecting said undesirable situation; a plurality of voice point modules, wherein each of said plurality of voice point modules is addressable by a corresponding address and is capable of playing voice messages; and a station being designed to receive said alarm, and to cause a potentially different message to be played on one or more of said plurality of voice point modules, whereby an operator using said station has enhanced control over evacuation. - View Dependent Claims (24, 25)
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2. An evacuation system comprising:
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a plurality of detectors, each of said plurality of detectors being designed to detect an undesirable situation at a corresponding location and to generate an alarm in response to detecting said undesirable situation; a plurality of voice point modules, wherein each of said plurality of voice point modules is individually addressable and is capable of playing voice messages; a station being designed to receive said alarm, and to cause a potentially different message to be played on each of said plurality of voice point modules, whereby an operator using said station has enhanced control over evacuation; a fire alarm control panel (FACP) being positioned between said station and said plurality of detectors, said FACP receiving said alarm from each of said plurality of detectors, and forwarding said alarms to said station, wherein said station sends packets directly to said plurality of voice point modules without said FACP being in the path from said station to said plurality of detectors. - View Dependent Claims (3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12)
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13. A voice point module comprising:
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a network interface having an address such that said voice point module is addressable by said address; an audio block receiving a voice data; and a control block receiving a control data and causing said voice data to be processed according to said control data, wherein said network interface receives said voice data and said control data in one or more packets, and forwards said voice data to said audio block and said control data to said control block if said one or more packets have a destination address equaling said address. - View Dependent Claims (14, 15, 16, 17, 18)
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19. A computer readable medium carrying one or more sequences of instructions for causing a station to provide increased operational control over evacuation procedures when an undesirable situation is detected, said station being connected to a network, wherein execution of said one or more sequences of instructions by one or more processors causes said one or more processors to perform the actions of:
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receiving on said network a packet containing an alarm, said alarm indicating the detection of said undesirable situation; and sending a voice data and a control data in the form of a plurality of packets in response to said receiving, wherein each of said plurality of packets contains an address of a voice point module, wherein said voice point module is accessible by said address, wherein said voice point module processes said voice data according to said control data. - View Dependent Claims (20, 21, 22, 23)
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Specification