Patent ID: 7817029

Claim:
A method of alarm data communication, comprising the steps of: protecting a premise with a premise-sited automatic alarm controller; providing a remote central station with receiving equipment for receiving data communications from a plurality of alarm data communicators including said premise-sited automatic alarm controller; providing the premise-sited automatic alarm controller with a network of premise-sited alarm sensors which report premise-related exceptions not to the central station but to said premise-sited automatic alarm controller; providing one or more communications links between the premise-sited automatic alarm controller and the remote central station's receiving equipment; providing a user who is responsible for the premise with a cellular text-messaging device; providing the premise-sited automatic alarm controller with a cellular text-messaging module; when an exception occurs with any sensor, said sensor reporting the exception to the premise-sited automatic alarm controller; the premise-sited automatic alarm controller responding with preliminary steps followed by conditional steps; said preliminary steps comprising: refraining for a pre-programmed amount of time from a step of sending an exception message to the remote central station's receiving equipment, text messaging the responsible user's text-messaging device a text message indicative of such exception, and waiting a pre-programmed amount of time for the user to respond by text message; said conditional steps comprising: (A) if receiving (1) a responsive text message from the user (2) within the pre-programmed amount of time (3) that is indicative of a disarm instruction, then: (a) disarming, (B) but if not (1), (2) and (3), then: (b) sending an exception message to the remote central station's receiving equipment; wherein the step of disarming further comprises logging in an event log onboard the premise-sited automatic alarm controller the instruction from said user to disarm, including date, time, and user identification.