DaveC said:
Water district in remote location requires that the sewage system on
commercial property (resort) have alarm for equipment failure and be able to
dial a phone number (the property's manager) so to alert him. If this person
cannot be reached (ie, respond with a touchtone keypress, or such), a second
number must be dialed.
Commercial concerns are estimating $5000 for this setup. The sensor and such
should be straightforward (float level sensor and/or current flow failure
sensor). What is involved in getting an automated telephone dialing alert
system set up?
Are there such turnkey systems available?
$5K? Someone's trying to take you for a ride. See
http://www.sensaphone.com . Nice units. I suspect X10 systems would allow
you to do this as well.
ObAnecdote: We had one of these in a data center years ago (Radio Shack used
to sell them). It would usually go off because the A/C had failed, the
power was out, or -- most often -- because someone left the cover open on
the impact printer (kids, an "impact printer" is what we USED to use for
making marks on paper...). In the last case, the robot (as we called it)
would start making calls, and would usually reach me at home (I worked the
late shift). I'd pick up and it would say, "This is telephone number 7 0 3
n n x x x x x, the noise level is high, listen to the noise level for 15
seconds" and switch on its external mic. By that point, the folks in the
room had usually noticed the machine dialing, and so what you'd hear is
someone saying, "What's that?" "****, we set the robot off again..." and
suchlike. But that's not the real anecdote.
The robot was on the only analog phone in the place (for obvious reasons).
But that phone -- unlisted, or at least unpublished -- would ring several
times a day, far too often for random wrong numbers. Since it was stuck on
a wall behind the mainframe, we never managed to pick it up in time, but
always wondered.
Then one night, be 3AM, I was driving home and heard an ad for a suicide
hotline. I almost drove off the road when the ad said the number: 301
nnx-xxxx: the same number in the adjacent metro area code! So here's some
poor bastard at the end of his rope, manages to dial the number but in the
wrong area code, and gets a robot saying, "This is telephone number 7 0 3 n
n x x x x x. The temperature is OK. The power is OK. The noise level is
OK ..."
As one wag put it, "At least it wasn't Nike headquarters, saying 'Just do
it!'"
....phsiii