System Manual

EkoTek System Installation and Configuration Manual

9261-8173 issue: 8 Page 7

3. Alarms

A user may manually signal an alarm by pressing the red button on a pager or call

fob, or alarms may be triggered automatically for man down, dead man or location

alarms. When an alarm is triggered the user identification (name), location and alarm

type are included in the alarm message displayed on the hub and sent to pagers.

4. Location alarm

The location alarm feature allows pagers and call fobs to automatically raise an alarm

should the device wearer enter a location where the local repeater indicates an

unauthorised zone. Applications include ‘resident wander’, where an alarm would be

raised if a resident wandered into a zone where they were not expected or not

allowed, and ‘contractor/visitor’ location alarm where an alarm could be raised if a

person entered a part of the building that they were not authorised to access.

5. Beacons

Beacon signals are used to update a device with information of who its parent is.

The hub and all repeaters regularly transmit two types of beacon – system beacons

and location beacons. Location beacons generally have a shorter range than

System beacons. A repeater, pager or call fob can only ever have one parent at a

time. Every 1000ms the repeater transmits to the pager or call fob, which is then

updated with its location and will continue to receive subsequent beacons from the

repeater (its parent). If the pager stays within range of the location beacon the

location will be shown on the pager's display, ‘= [location name]’ (for example, ‘=

Conference Room 1’). If the pager goes out of range of the location beacon but can

still receive the system beacon, ‘- [location name]’ will be shown instead, where

[location name] is the name of the last location beacon received. When a pager or

call fob receives a new location beacon it picks up location information from the new

repeater and updates itself with the new location.

6. Two-way acknowledgement

Messages from external systems and maintenance messages are one-way

messages from the hub to the pager, whereas alarms generated by a user are two-

way. For peace of mind of the user, the acceptance of an alarm at the hub or a

pager by someone who will be coming to the aid of the user is signalled back to the

user by the call fob lamp and beeper changing their alert patterns, or by the pager

display indicating the status of the alarm.

7. Two-way radio

All EkoTek radio links are two-way, providing the ability to signal both to and from all

devices on the network.

Two-way radio provides the ability to quickly detect and correct any lost messages,

for example, when a message is relayed from one repeater to a second repeater, the

second repeater will acknowledge receipt of the message. If the first repeater does

not receive an acknowledgement it retransmits the message. This ability allows

EkoTek to function, even in environments where there is radio interference or poor

signal.