Environmental condition detector transmitter interface

Claim 1

A method of detecting an operating condition of an environmental condition detector having a detector circuit and a battery and transmitting the operating condition information to a remote monitoring facility, said method comprising the steps of: (a) sensing current fluctuations being drawn from the battery by the detector circuit, the current fluctuations being representative of an alarm in response to a sensed environmental condition; (b) sending a predetermined number of alarm pulses indicative of the current fluctuations to a processor; (c) sensing voltage fluctuations in the battery, the voltage fluctuations being representative of a low battery condition; (d) sending a low battery message to the processor in response to the voltage fluctuations; (e) counting and storing the alarm pulses in the processor; (f) determining the operating condition of the condition detector in the processor based on the number of alarm pulses received; (g) packaging the low battery message and the operating condition as a sensor data packet; and (h) transmitting the sensor status data packet to the monitoring facility, wherein the sensor data packets includes a message selected from the group consisting of: power on, system OK, battery low, first threshold; second threshold, and threshold clear, where the power on message indicates that the detector is turned on; the system OK message indicates a low battery condition has not been detected within a predetermined time interval; the battery low message indicates that the low battery condition has been detected within the predetermined time interval; the first threshold message indicates that the alarm pulse count exceeds a first predetermined threshold; the second threshold message indicates that the alarm pulse count exceeds a second predetermined threshold; and threshold clear indicates that the alarm pulse count is below the first predetermined threshold.

Claim 2

A method of detecting an operating condition of an environmental condition detector having a detector circuit and a battery and transmitting the operating condition information to a remote monitoring facility, said method comprising the steps of: (a) sensing current fluctuations being drawn from the battery by the detector circuit, the current fluctuations being representative of an alarm in response to a sensed environmental condition; (b) sending a predetermined number of alarm pulses indicative of the current fluctuations to a processor; (c) sensing voltage fluctuations in the battery, the voltage fluctuations being representative of a low battery condition; (d) sending a low battery message to the processor in response to the voltage fluctuations; (e) counting and storing the alarm pulses in the processor; (f) determining the operating condition of the condition detector in the processor based on the number of alarm pulses received; (g) packaging the low battery message and the operating condition as a sensor data packet; and (h) transmitting the sensor status data packet to the monitoring facility, wherein the sensor data packets includes a message selected from the group consisting of: power on, system OK, battery low, first threshold; second threshold, and threshold clear, where the power on message indicates that the detector is turned on; the system OK message indicates a low battery condition has not been detected within a predetermined time interval; the battery low message indicates that the low battery condition has been detected within the predetermined time interval; the first threshold message indicates that the alarm pulse count exceeds a first predetermined threshold; the second threshold message indicates that the alarm pulse count exceeds a second predetermined threshold; and threshold clear indicates that the alarm pulse count is below the first predetermined threshold.