No problems with the transmitter overnight. Joe Barker and I discussed the switch from exciter A to exciter B at start up yesterday. We reprogrammed the Gentner controller to switch the carrier control unit on five minutes before switching the transmitter on to see if that takes care of the glitch.

I discussed with Joe what needs to be done now that the transmitter building security system is ready to fully arm. This can not take place until all authorized persons are assigned codes and given instructions on the ‘arming’ and ‘disarming’ of the system. We also decided to use the system’s phone notification feature which allows programming of two numbers [in case the first is not available]. We also plan to connect it to the Gentner to provide alarm capability via an alternative route.

Virginia and I came home from the office for lunch — toasted cheese sandwiches. Dutch gouda cheese is fairly reasonably priced here when purchased in ‘wheels’.

Virginia accompanied me to the site, where I began to trace the specific phone line (out of many) that we wanted to use for security. I then had to identify which was the incoming termination, then which was the ‘tip’ and ‘ring’ wire of the pair. Now I was ready to connect it to the security system in such a way that it would take over the line should it be ‘in use’. I then had to program it via the keypad with two phone numbers. We decided it should call my cell phone first.

Before testing it, the ‘siren’ was disconnected. We wanted to keep our sanity and not have the electric company people from next door running to check the alarm. I then proceeded to simulate a fire alarm. The keypad beeper went off, but no call to my cell phone. The phone line was ‘tied up’ so I knew it was trying and I could hear that a voice mail box was responding. After a bit of head scratching, I determined, to my embarrassment, that one digit of the number entered for my cell phone was incorrect.

After correcting the number, it now worked, but I could not hear a message when it called. It also kept calling over and over. Finally, I found a place in the manual where it states that the primary number is tried eight times and, if it gets no response, the secondary number is tried eight times. It also appears that this system is set up to call a security monitoring service computer, not regular phones. Since I don’t speak ‘computer’, it thinks I am not responding and kept redialing me EIGHT times. I suspect the secondary cell phone was shut off. When I listened in on the system phone line, I heard the voice mail box of that cell phone answering. No wonder the phone line, used by the security system was tied up for so long. It had to go through this process a total of 16 times!

Even though the security system is set up for calling a security company computer, it is still usable. When the security system ‘calls’, we know which line it is calling from and we’ll see this on the cell phone’s display. We should change the cell phone display to read ‘Tx site or alarm’. If there is no response to our answer, we will know the security alarm has been triggered. This will be verified when it keeps calling back persistently — eight times! This can be tolerated in the, hopefully rare, event of a real alarm.

Tomorrow, I will check to see that the secondary cell phone had 8 ‘missed calls’ [how about 16!], which will verify that everything is working correctly. Then I can look at what is required to connect the security system to the Gentner. It will probably require an interface to be designed and implemented as well as programming of the Gentner to ‘tell’ it what to do when there is an alarm. It will probably call my cell phone, but on a different phone line. It can also ‘flash’ up a message on the remote transmitter monitoring/controlling computers.

Virginia went to town to do some shopping then returned to take me home. We stayed around for the transmitter to come up and noted that there was no ‘glitch’, like there had been yesterday at start up.

In the past 24 hours, we have had about 3 inches of rain. The site is mostly underwater again. The air is cooler, but more humid. It is amazing how cool 80F feels after the last three weeks!

We went for a walk along the seaside again tonight. The waves were not as high as last night, so we will probably begin swimming again tomorrow.