Communications: electrical – Condition responsive indicating system – Specified indicator structure
Reexamination Certificate
2000-05-13
2001-03-27
Lee, Benjamin C. (Department: 2632)
Communications: electrical
Condition responsive indicating system
Specified indicator structure
C340S693500, C340S691500, C340S541000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06208261
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Most public buildings require a fire alarm annunciator or visual alarm display (VAD) to be provided in an easily accessible location. The display is used for information purposes by a fireman, called to the building due to the detection of a possible fire alarm condition. The visual alarm display (hereinafter VAD) indicates critical systems information such as for example, the location of a possible fire, the failure of an HVAC (heating, ventilation, air-conditioning) component and its location, or a break in and its location, due to a burglar, the latter systems information being used by the police rather than the fire department. Heat sensors, smoke or other detectors scattered throughout large buildings are typically connected to a control panel, which can be located in a control room or security office. Some control panels are electrically coupled to a CRT video display screen which functions as the aforesaid visual alarm display VAD mentioned above, for advantageously visually indicating the geographical area layout and location and the type of alarm sensor generating the alarm condition. These types of public building alarm systems are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,189,394, issued to Walter et al., incorporated by reference herein.
The VAD, although generally required in a large public building to aid the fire or police department personal, summoned to the building during an emergency, is usually not noticed by the public visitors to the building. Although the VAD must be readily accessible to such fire and police department personnel, it is often wall mounted and off to the side, rather than being positioned in a prominent place in the lobby or entrance area.
SUMMARY OF PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS OF THE INVENTION
Accordingly, the aforesaid VAD is rarely in use, since the generation of alarm conditions only occurs during a small percentage of the time. In accordance with the present invention, I use the VAD, during normal or idle time when no alarm condition exists, to display general information of interest to visitors to the public building, such as corporate information provided by tenants in an office building, public service messages, stock market and weather reports, ball game scores, the building directory of a large shopping mall having constantly changing tenants and special sales by mall tenants, or any other general information of interest to the public. The operator of the office building or shopping mall could also display other general information such as advertising, to obtain income which could help pay for the cost and maintenance of the alarm system, which could facilitate distributor sales of the alarm systems.
Upon the generation of an actual alarm condition, the alarm condition visual display is immediately enabled, over riding the display of general information of interest to the public, and is used in the usual manner as explained above, by the fire or police department to locate and proceed to the area where the alarm condition is occurring. In view of the required reliability of the VAD, a test/over-ride button actuated relay or bypass gate is provided so that the system would be tested from time to time, to manually over-ride the public general information display and display the various alarm stations being monitored. A fireman responding to an alarm call could also over ride the public information display with this same test button, should a relay become stuck or a switching circuit fail to operate.
REFERENCES:
patent: 4212003 (1980-07-01), Mishoe et al.
patent: 4381505 (1983-04-01), Dion
patent: 5539393 (1996-07-01), Barfod
patent: 5966069 (1999-10-01), Zmurk et al.
Lee Benjamin C.
Nathans Robert
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