ProtoStar Alarm Monitoring is a group of alarm enthusiasts and collectors working to provide an experimental central station to the security and fire alarm community free of charge. Our system allows other alarm enthusiasts to learn about how the monitoring and central station side of the alarm industry works, without needing to have the experience or purchase the expensive equipment needed to do so. Alarm panels can report to us just like they would to a real alarm monitoring center, our system will format the messages to readable text and forward them over Discord or email messages. Our goal is to let people learn how monitoring centers work, and provide the means for experimenting with the communication formats that the panels use to relay messages.
What is needed to connect a panel, and which are supported?
To connect your panel here, you will need either an analog telephone line (landline) that your panel can use, or a device called an ATA. An ATA connects to your home network over ethernet, and will provide a phone line that your panel can be connected to. Registering an ATA to our system is completely free and provides a direct line to our system that is higher quality than most landlines now. We highly recommend the Cisco SPA112 or Cisco SPA122 ATAs as we have tested them extensively and proven that they will work reliably with alarm panels, however other ATAs can be used as well if they can support standard SIP.
If you have a Bosch B series panel, or an older Radionics 7000/9000 series panel with a network module, we can also support them directly over IP.
We can support any panel that supports standard reporting protocols, with few exceptions, every system that is capable of reporting to a standard central station over a phone line will be compatible with our system. We support a very large range of communication formats, listed below are a few of the most common ones:
Contact ID (4-digit or 10-digit)
SIA (All variants)
Modem II
Modem IIIa2
BFSK
Pulse 4+2
Pulse 3+1
Even if your panel does not support one of the above formats, it is very likely still compatible. There are a lot of other formats we can accept that are not listed here. We will be happy to help you program and set up your panel to communicate, and any ATA configurations if needed.
We try to support as many protocols as we can, however below is a list of protocols or communicators that we do NOT accept at this time:
Honeywell/Resideo AlarmNet
Alarm.com
Telguard
Napco Starlink
Proprietary Vivint phone or IP communications
Any other cellular or IP communicator that requires an external provider, service fees, or special equipment
Key features of our system
We are adding new features on a regular basis and are open to requests, however here is a list of the significant features that we currently have:
One user can have multiple account numbers for separate panels
Ability to name your accounts to tell them apart
Ability to name any zone/point, user, area, module, or any other number that your panel reports, so that they can also have a description included
Ability to place an account "on test" with an optional expiry time/date, this prevents excessive notifications when testing or working on the system
Users can select which specific event types should notify them over Discord or any email address individually
Email addresses (and any future forms of notification) can be individually disabled/enabled, have a schedule assigned, or have a tally limit set to avoid excessive notifications
Inactivity supervision can notify a user if their panel stops communicating for any reason, a custom threshold can be set for this
Data error monitoring will notify a user if their panel is having trouble attempting to communicate with our system, due to bad network/line quality or a programming issue
Runaway supervision will automatically suppress signals from a panel if it sends a large number of signals in a short period of time, preventing a large number of notifications from a repeating signal
Account number verification prevents another user from reporting as someone else's account number, and will notify if a panel is sending the wrong account number
Account details or notification paths can be changed, and report history can be viewed from a convenient web interface
Inconsistent formatting or extra leading zeros sent by a panel will be cleaned up automatically
Full support for SIA modifiers, zone text transmission, and special Brinks panel formatting
Software implementation of Bosch Conettix/Radionics NetCom formats allow more details to be reported than standard central stations
Provisioning server allows Cisco SPA112 and SPA122 ATAs to be set up easily with little configuration
How do I get started?
Before you join, please note that we are not a real UL listed monitoring center intended for the protection of property or life safety. Our services are meant for experimentation and educational purposes by alarm enthusiasts only, and should not be used on a real installation meant for protection. We will not contact the authorities upon an alarm activation, we cannot be responsible for any loss related to the use of our system. With that out of the way, go ahead and join our Discord server below, we will set up your account and help you get started. Thank you for helping our community grow!
