Centra-Larm: A Central Station Ready for the Future

Many people don’t give alarms and their monitoring much thought in their day-to-day lives. But alarms systems continually monitor our homes, workplaces and communities in order to identify a problem as soon as something happens. From the carbon monoxide detector in our apartment building to the intrusion panel at the office to the alarm system that protects a town’s public drinking water, alarm monitoring has become part of our everyday lives, whether we realize it or not.

Alarm monitoring technology has evolved to go beyond intrusion and fire alarm monitoring to also include water pressure change, carbon monoxide, fire, openings and closings, temperature changes, gas leaks alarms and medical alerts (PERS). In addition, market demand continues to increase for video monitoring, GPS monitoring and two-way voice services.

Offering these types of services is important, that’s why Centra-Larm has grown its business over the years from its primary focus on fire alarms to now include a broad array of third party alarm monitoring services. Today the company monitors more than 90,000 alarms from its three central stations in New Hampshire and California.

To meet the current and changing needs of its customers, Centra-Larm has been a longtime customer of Tyco Security Products’ Sur-Gard receivers to provide its central stations with the broad functionality and high-speed transmissions needed for such a wide and varied customer base.

With such a large number of and many types of alarms monitored, Centra-Larm’s central stations need to be fast, versatile and highly automated. That means supporting more than 100 communication formats and the capability to monitor IP transmitters. 

At many central stations, it might not be uncommon for an operator to handle a signal for a burglar alarm at a residential property one minute, then have to respond to an alarm indicating a change in temperature in a refrigerator at a grocery store the next. Thanks to technology, the role of the central station and the types of systems that central station operators monitor has changed considerably. It’s a boon to the growth and the development of the central station industry.

As a force in the alarm market for the last 27 years, Centra-Larm understands that the ability to change is often crucial to survival and prosperity. That includes being able to handle multiple forms of simultaneous alarm signal communication and being able to adapt to the ever-changing customer expectations as technology continues to offer new benefits to dealers and end users.

How has central station receiver technology developed in recent years? Learn more about Sur-Gard SG-Systems, and its newly released Sur-Gard System 5 IP-based receiver, which supports visual alarm verification and is recognized as a powerful, yet space saving system.

Read more about how Centra-Larm is using Sur-Gard to serve its 90,000 commercial and residential customers.