by Bob Dolph, Al Colombo, and Robin Gray
These are a few of my favorite things… Although the holidays were more than three months away when the American Society for Industrial Security’s (ASIS) 49th annual convention took place Sept. 15-17 in New Orleans, that line from a popular holiday tune was dancing in the heads of SSI’s contributing technical writers Al Colombo (of “Fireside Chat”) and Bob Dolph (of “Tech Talk”). Their mission: Find the products and services at ASIS that security systems contractors want now.
It was no easy task, considering the sheer number of exhibitors at this event — 812 to be exact. Much like the Sears catalog that used to arrive in your mailbox just in time for the holidays, the volume of offerings at ASIS was overwhelming. To get through it all would have taken weeks, yet the exhibit hall was only open for three days. If you attended, you probably were enticed by all the bells and whistles, yet confounded when trying to decide which products you should choose.
SSI’s technical gurus, however, were up for the challenge and eager to uncover the goodies that just might become your favorites. Bob and Al made their lists, checked them twice and narrowed them down to 15 each of what they believe were the convention’s most notable offerings. Their selections run the gamut from software to fingerprint readers; voice evacuation systems to solar-powered telephones; PDAs to color strobes and more.
If you weren’t able to attend ASIS or did attend but couldn’t get to every booth, the special products that follow make up SSI’s 2003 ASIS Top 30.
I can remember in years past when a large number of alarms were directly monitored by police departments.
Keltron was (and still is) a leading manufacturer of municipal alarm monitoring products. Keltron has applied its years of experience and introduced its latest life safety management system.
The LS 7000 is an impressive package with a compact 8.4-inch TFT color display, powerful processing, ODBC database and printer configuration. The new UL-Listed life safety management system is suited for municipalities, multiple building institutions and commercial industrial complexes. It is network capable and can interface with Keltron’s popular UL-Listed Active Network Signaling Systems networks using digital data packet radio transmission.
