Patent ID: 8005944

Claim:
A system for monitoring a space and its contents over a network, comprising: a microprocessor to provide processing and network connectivity capability; one or more sensors to detect one or more physical parameters and generate one or more sensor signals representative of the detected physical parameters; an analog-to-digital converter for converting one or more of the sensor signals to a digital format and to provide one or more corresponding digital signals to the microprocessor; an alarm processing program configured to cause the microprocessor to: determine that an alarm signal has not occurred within a first preset time interval; compare, responsive to determining that the alarm signal has not occurred within the first preset time interval, the digital signals to one or more corresponding threshold values according to a second preset time interval; and generate the alarm signal when any of the digital signals exceeds a corresponding threshold value of the one or more corresponding threshold values; at least one input/output port for communicating with the network; one or more memory modules for storing system data; a network based interface configured to control an external load in response to the alarm signal; and a power source to power the system.