Audio Alert, LLC

Charles S Ashworth, Jr

A positional display system for visually indicating given geographical locations such as the position of motor vehicles such as police cars and/or the location of the occurrence of an incident warranting police attention. The system includes a display board having a row and column matrix of individual lights and a map of the local geographic area of concern overlaying the matrix so that each light represents a unique map section. Whenever a patrol car transmits its position to a central station or a remote alarm indicates the occurrence of a robbery or the like, information indicative of the row and column address of the given location and at least one instructional command for determining the light status are entered. The entered information is converted into binary numbers indicative of the row and column addresses and the converted binary numbers are temporarily stored. The stored numbers are compared with the output of a scanning counter. The comparator outputs are gated to enable the instructional command for determining the status of the lights to be entered into a memory whenever the entered row and column address is scanned by the counter. The scanning counter is also coupled to a row decoder which sequentially generates the series of individual row scan signals and to a column decoder which sequentially generates a series of column scan signals. These signals are gated with the output of the memory and used to address corresponding rows and columns of the matrix so that when each row and column light is addressed, its illumination status will be determined by the memory output in accordance with the instructional command. If the location of the police cars are entered with an instructional command specifying a steady light condition and the location of an incident is entered with an instructional command specifying a blinking light, the person observing a display board will observe the locations of all patrol cars as steady lights and the location of the incident as a blinking light and will be able to determine which car is closest to the location of the incident for facilitating command and control dispatching decisions and the like.

Vehicle locator system

A security alarm with audio monitoring capability including a remote location to be protected, a central monitoring station and transmission lines coupled therebetween. The remote location includes a circuit for generating a DC transmission signal of a first normal polarity. Sensors are provided for detecting various alarm conditions and a switching apparatus responsive to the detection of an alarm condition by the sensors reverses the polarity of the DC signal to indicate the existence of an alarm condition. A plurality of microphones each having its own amplifier and sensitivity control are strategicaly placed about the remote location to pick up audio sounds originating therein. The AC audio signals from the microphones are superimposed onto the DC transmission signal and transmitted to the central monitoring station. The central monitoring station includes a first circuit isolated from the transmission lines by a first photo-optical coupler which monitors for open circuit or short circuit line faults; a second circuit isolated from the transmission lines by a second photo-optical coupler which monitors for a polarity reversal and generates an alarm signal indicative thereof; and a third circuit is isolated from the transmission lines by a transformer and which receives the superimposed AC audio signals. The third circuit renders all signals above a predetermined level audible to the operator at the central station. Additionally, the remote location may include a closed security loop having a plurality of serially connected normally-closed switches through the doors and windows which trigger a polarity reversal if the integrity of the loop is broken; a circuit for testing loop integrity; a signal injector for generating different and distinct audio tones for each different type of alarm condition possible and for superimposing the generated audio tones onto the DC transmission signal; and photo-optical line supervision circuitry. Furthermore, either or both of the remote location and the central station may be provided with manually operable coding keys for sending coded signals over the transmission lines.

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Warren, MI, United States of America

Charles S Ashworth, Jr