Senior living
Falls, help buttons pressed in a room, a resident who did not make a check-in they scheduled. Nothing arms or disarms, because pendants and smoke detectors have no doors to lock, so the screen never asks about it.
The app
Install it and run a demo.
Alarm Station is a free download on Google Play. Connecting it to a real community takes a setup code from your alarm company, and until you have one the app will run two demos instead. No account, nothing to arrange.
Android 8.0 or later. A 10-inch tablet or larger for a desk, and a phone is fine for trying a demo.
Scan to install on a tablet
Running the demos
The first screen asks for a setup code. Underneath it are two buttons, one for each kind of site. Press either one and you are looking at a community that does not exist, with alarms arriving on their own while you watch.
You take them the way staff would. Press I’m on it, walk through what happened, resolve it. The instructions, the history down the side, the dealer’s name in the header: all of it behaves the way it does on a real screen, because it is the same software running against invented communities.
Gated community
Break-ins, a camera that has seen somebody on a driveway, fire and carbon monoxide, water where there should not be any. Homes arm at night and disarm in the morning, so there is a count of what is secured.
Both communities are invented, and so is every name, alarm and phone number in them. There is no real community behind either one.
Which screen to put it on
How to check in ten seconds
Install it, open either demo, and look at where the tabs for faults and arming are. If they have their own space next to the alarms, or above them on an upright screen, the device is big enough. If the alarms have the screen to themselves, it is running the compact layout.
Faster than any spec sheet, and it answers the question for the device in your hand.
Use a 10-inch tablet or larger
At that size the alarms get the main pane and a standing list of what is faulty and what is armed sits alongside, visible without anybody going looking for it. That is the layout to put at a desk.
Smaller screens get a single column instead. Everything works there, and it is what you will see trying a demo on your phone. For a screen somebody watches all shift, the larger one earns its place.
Orientation makes no difference. The app measures the long edge, so a tablet mounted upright gets both panes stacked rather than side by side. Nothing needs mounting sideways.
Seeing one column on a big tablet?
Android’s display size setting scales everything up, and the app is handed less room than the screen really has. A 10-inch tablet turned up far enough will show the compact layout.
Open Settings, then Display, then Display size, and step it back down. The layout changes as soon as you return to the app.
Picking the device
There is no proprietary hardware here, so the screen is an ordinary Android tablet or panel bought wherever you buy the rest. Which screens it runs on covers sizes, mounting, and why a cellular connection is worth having.
Connecting a real community
That part goes through the alarm company that monitors the property. If you run a community and want this at your desk, tell us where you are and we will take it from there. If you sell alarm systems, the dealer page is the one you want.
Run it, then talk to us.
The demos are the fastest way to see whether this belongs at your desk. When you have had a look, we would like to hear what you thought.