Zone Follower Events now available to '2DS customers

[GrandWizard]

This feature has been on the request pile for a while and now it is here.

You can now opt to track an individual zone's changes in your event log. You can select any of your zones up to 64.

There is a new option on your ESP main page under the zone grid called "Manage Zone Followers". From this page you can select which zones you would like reported in your event log. Press Save to save the settings. There is a 30 second delay between saving your settings and event reporting as these events are generated on the '2DS, so standard reporting cycle delays apply.

WARNING: You can generate a huge amount of events if you enable zone following on active zones. If you enable a PIR zone (motion detector) that is in a active hallway for example, your enter log will be flooded with OPENS/CLOSES. Do not enable this feature if you have no specific need for it.

Also, in order to lower spurious traffic from PIRs, there is a 20 second dead-period between a zone opening (motion) and the report of closing (no motion). Any changes within 20 seconds are ignored.

We are going to evaluate network traffic to see how this feature impacts the servers. If we find it is too much we reserve the right to disable this feature on a per user basis. Please only use zone followers if you need them.

[tlee]

It would be helpful if there is an option for the zone following feature to be enabled only when the system is armed. In that case, an email/SMS would be sent immediately when a zone is triggered instead of only when an access code is entered or the alarm is triggered.

A feature for the local device to send an email directly (through smtp port 25) instead of going through your company portal would also seem to be a useful feature. Sending a few dozen bytes this way should not load the CPU significantly and would protect the product from future obsolescence.