Signal Interpretation Overview

Signal arrives into Patriot by a number of different means, but the most common scenario is an alarm panel communicates to an alarm receiver, which then forwards the signal onto Patriot. A Task is setup and run in the Patriot Task service to communicate with the alarm receiver. Once the task receives a signal it performs the following actions,

• Step 1. Verify the signal meets our valid signal criteria. If this is an incorrectly formatted message, or a format we don't currently support, a bad data signal (65032) is logged.
• Step 2. If the signal is valid, the next step is to find the client in the database to log the signal against. All signals must be logged against a client. The client ID is extracted from the signal, this combined with the area number (also extracted from the signal, if supplied), and port id, make up the unique client no. The port id is used to allow reuse of client ID's. It is generally set in the receiver task. If a matching client can't be found, a Ghost Alarm is created. Client Alias Account, and Area Code also affect which client the signal is logged to, see Event Types Tab.
• Step 3. Once the client is found, the next step is to decide which action plan is assigned to this signal. Two of the most important settings the signal gets from the action plan is priority, and signal type. See How Patriot 6 decides which action plan to use, in Action Plans, and Formats.
• Step 4. The action plan used, decides what actions take place when the signal is received. See Action Plans for more. If a new alarm should is created, the action plan also decides what response plan is loaded.