[ILUG] voip & alarm systems

[Philip Trickett]

On Fri, 2005-03-11 at 12:28 +0000, John P. Looney wrote:
>  I'm at home, struggling with ISDN. If I threw it out, I'd get NTL
> broadband at about half the cost. However, I need to have a PSTN
> connection for my monitored alarm.


Why don't you go down the 'self monitored' route?

Once you have NTL broadband, get yourself a Linksys NSLU-2, have alook
here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nslu2-linux/

Then get yourself a couple of webcams, or 3, and download zoneminder:
http://www.zoneminder.com/

Use one of the NSLU-2's GPIOs to sense when your alarm has been
activated, start monitoring on the webcams, and use zoneminder to send a
message to your mobile via SMS that your alarm has been triggered.
You can then connect using WAP on your phone to your NSLU-2 and view
images from the webcam to see if it is a false alarm, and maybe hack up
a bit of perl to use one of the other GPIO's on your NSLU-2 to turn your
alarm off using a WAP page if you find it is a false alarm.

I'd trust that alot more than Eircom! :) 

Phil