[cisco-voip] Hardware question ----- possibly OT, but perhaps not..

[Robert Singleton]

On Tue, 2006-11-14 at 16:56 -0500, Tim Reimers wrote:
> 
> hi folks---
> 
> My school district wants me to find some sort of network-based 'panic
> button'  
> that the secretary can use to quietly alert people that there's a
> problem in the front lobby.
> 
> We don't have a sophisticated enough alarm system to tie into that--
> so the usual analog buttons wouldn't do much ---
> 
> I'd like to find some sort of IP-based button that would trigger some
> network events--
> 
> Here's the part where we get into the 'not OT' bit---
> 
> They want a push of this button to flash up a message on several
> people's phone displays
> 
> (does anyone have some simple and complete code they'd share for
> pushing a message to a phone?)
> 
> 
> Anyone got any ideas about where one can get a pushbutton triggerable
> network event device?

My first thought only gets it on the phones, but...

I use Viking entry phones for stuff like that... The E-40, for example
http://www.vikingelectronics.com/products/view_product.php?pid=401

Connect it to your favorite Cisco FXS device and program it to dial a
shared appearance or broadcast line group on the target phones, but with
the speaker volume turned to silent. This way, whoever answers the line
can also get some idea of *what* is happening by listening in and the
perpetrator is not necessarily aware that help has been summoned.

As for generating "only" an ethernet signal, there are a few ways that I
am aware of. Mostly, you can look for industrial automation products.

Advantech manufactures a line of products that are ethernet data
acquistion devices. Can be purchased from http://www.bb-elec.com and
possibly others. Best I can tell from the manual, however, they require
a host computer to poll them for data, so they don't appear to be ready
to generate an alarm event independently. You can even use a sensor
input on an ethernet camera like the D-Link DCS-5300 to generate an
e-mail alarm. Just depends on your imagination and Google :)

Robert