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Perimeter convergence

Convergence is not only restricted to the alarm and surveillance space.

As a species, we are always looking for ways of making whatever we do easier and quicker and less of an inconvenience. We demand (and get) more from our products than ever before. We expect that a phone is not to be just a phone. It must be a camera, a computer and a music player – with an FM tuner too.

It needs to wake us up in the morning, integrate with our cars, carry all of our personal information and connect us with our world and other phone-toting contacts. Oh yes, our homes can adjust the air conditioners and dim the lights, close the curtains and play some sweet music when it senses you at the entrance, all this while your fridge orders your groceries using your personal shopping profile. What has happened?

We have, through demand of our consumers, developed technologies that are becoming more intertwined and connected with one another. We have taken previously unrelated, or at least disconnected products and technologies, and invented ways of getting them to talk to each other. We have built devices that have quite literally taken the fiction out of science fiction. We have entered into an age of convergence.

At Centurion Systems, a South African manufacturer of access automation and control products, we too evolved our products to become far more than the simple workhorses they once were.

A classic example is the new D5-Evo sliding gate operator. Now your gate motor does not have to just be a gate motor that simply opens and closes your gate. It can now, through an easy to use built-in controller, switch on your garden lights or the sprinkler system – automatically and for user-preconfigured periods of time. It can allow access 24/7, 365, but automatically deny access to other remote control holders such as staff, who you may wish to not have access to the property after hours or on weekends.

The D5-Evo also turns your gate safety beams into intruder detection beams while your gate is standing idle and then, through integration with your alarm system, can call your armed response company should someone try and breach your perimeter security at your entrance. It can even integrate with a GSM cellular device that can alert you should your electric fence be compromised, or you can talk back to it and instruct it to open your gate from anywhere in the GSM world should you wish to grant access to someone when you are not home – like the armed response company that your gate motor just summoned.

In fact, your gate motor can now SMS you, or simply turn on a light, and even in the case of a high-security facility a siren, even if the gate is being opened.

The ‘magic’ lies in harnessing modern technologies and integrating them into our controllers and ensuring that other devices can seamlessly integrate. We have also made the controllers easy to set up through a wizard and LCD displays that walk you through the steps.

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