About This Journal

This journal will be used to keep a record of my decisions and progress as I work on my Third Year Project.

Since I’ve spent the last few weeks working, I’m going to write a couple of catch-up entries and then start writing weekly entries next Monday 19th October.

Weeks 1 & 2 – Mockup Mania

After much consideration, time, effort and a little bit of investment, I’ve completed a set of UI mockups for my system.

An impromptu equipment list for the physical device:

• GHI Electronics Embedded Master Development System (#GHI-00108) – USD 299.95 / GBP 182.91
• ZG2101 WiFi Expansion (#GHI-00126) – USD 99.95 / GBP 60.95
• Telit GE864-PY GSM Module – Unknown, Specialist Suppliers
• USB Pen – GBP 6.31 for 2GB from Novatech UK (User Data Storage and Firmware Backup?)
• SD Card (?) – GBP 8.72 for 4GB

Total – £258.89 not including GSM Modules/Sensors – wow.

Without further ado:

Catch Up: Summer Break

Over summer I spent my time doing preliminary research into the feature sets, design philosophies and user interfaces of modern home security systems.

I wanted to get concrete and complete examples of systems in use, so I started out by looking into ADT. From Wikipedia:

ADT Security Services, originally American District Telegraph now also known as ADT Fire and Security or simply ADT, is a division of Tyco International and a worldwide supplier of electronic security systems, fire alarm systems, communication systems, and integrated building management systems.

ADT in the UK

ADT first entered the UK in the late 1950s with the establishment of Electric Protection Services Limited based in London and introduced central monitoring in the mid-60s at the request of several leading banks, despite not opening a central monitoring station of their own. The 1970s and 80s brought steady growth.

In the mid 1990s, ADT Inc was acquired by Tyco International at the same time Tyco also bought up the UK firm Thorn Security. In 1997, ADT Fire and Security plc was formed from the merger of three of the UK’s largest security firms: ADT, Thorn Security and Modern Security Systems.

Today, ADT is the UK’s leading security company, helping to protect over 250,000 UK family homes and 160,000 businesses across the country.

From there I went to ADT’s UK website and began looking at how the company markets its systems to customers. The website seeks to create the impression of an easy to use, yet flexible system which provides peace of mind to the home or business owner.

I wanted to see beyond the marketing spin, so I began looking around for user manuals and engineer documentation. I found a website – www.tech-man.com – and downloaded a couple of manuals for a (2006?) system produced by a company named North Building Technologies Ltd. As far as I can remember, I chose that manufacturer because I was researching a system I had seen that day, but an eBay Auction seems to indicate that the system is related to/sold by ADT.

A search around their site seemed to indicate that the manuals I found were for a Honeywell Security Galaxy alarm/access control system. Honeywell is a major congomerate, producing a variety of products for consumers, business and government. I found a marketing brochure for the entire line of security products from Honeywell which had a suprising amount of technical detail.

The impression I got from reading these documents was that (at least in the case of the Galaxy line) the system was cumbersome to use. The users’ manual was definately not written to be easy to understand. For example:

Notice how the language uses terminology which is somewhat non-obvious to the user. The product itself doesn’t communicate meaning to the user in a partiularly easy to understand way either. The user must mentally organise rooms into groups and then activate or deactivate groups of sensors. From the manual:

To me this is a good example of how NOT to design a system. Meanings should be obvious, terms shouldn’t have to be explained. The user doesn’t care how the system works. They just want it to do its job and protect them with minimal work and hassle on their part.

The user should not need a sheet of indexes as long as their arm to correctly manage even a large scale installation – even being able to properly name the groups would be a start. If you need a manual like this to explain how to use the most obvious features of an alarm system, you need to fire some designers (thanks Ars!).

I think it was around this point that I decided my product would be easy to use above all else. I wanted to make the alarm that Apple would make. Sort of.

I spent most of the rest of summer break reading these two books:

I picked up a lot of great pointers from both books which began to give me an idea of what goals would and wouldn’t be reasonable to aim for in the time I have available. I’ll talk more about this later on. For now it’s enough to say I was about ready to return to University and kick things off. The books should prove themselves very useful over the coming weeks and months as I cut my teeth on the world of Micro Framework development.