Gaston County Monitors Vaccine Refrigerators and Other Critical Equipment with AlphaMax and DPM Alarm Remotes

Gaston County Monitors Vaccine Refrigerators and Other Critical Equipment with AlphaMax and DPM Alarm Remotes The municipal county government of Gaston County operates on behalf of the nearly 200,000 residents in Southwest North Carolina. Barry Styers is a maintenance technician for the Gaston County Public Works department, helping maintain the county's municipal facilities, supporting the public and the staff that work there. He uses remote monitoring equipment to ensure that multiple pieces of equipment are working in the county's jail, courthouse, and medical clinics.

"We couldn't get those batteries anymore, so we decided it was time to get a better system."

In years past, Styers used an alarm remote that it suffered from several hardware limitations. First, it could only send alphanumeric pages to two different pagers. Gaston County had to work around this limit using a county paging system that would forward the incoming page to multiple technicians. The older alarm remote also required a battery that had to be replaced yearly. "We couldn't get those batteries anymore, so we decided it was time to get a better system," Styers says. "Now, I have 2 DPMs and an AlphaMax."

"We've gotten some late-night chiller failures, and those can't wait until morning. The DPMs send me an email or text, and I can run out there and start them up - before anything gets too hot."

"The AlphaMax monitors vaccine refrigerators," he says, proving that telemetry monitoring devices are useful for more than just keeping track of telecom equipment. Vaccines are fragile, and are easily damaged by temperature fluctuations or prolonged exposure to room temperatures. Monitoring temperature with an AlphaMax allows Styers and other technicians to respond early, at the first sign of a temperature out of the standard vaccination storage range. "I haven't had any trouble with the AlphaMax. It's working really well," Styers adds.

Styers uses his DPM units to monitor facilities in the county jail and courthouse. "With the DPMs, I'm monitoring boiler and chiller failures, pump failures, some telephone equipment rooms - high temperature alarms," he says. By monitoring building facilities, he can make sure he, or another technician for Gaston County, responds early to failures that could potentially affect employees and any citizens in the county jail or courthouse. "We've gotten some late-night chiller failures, and those can't wait until morning," Styers says. "On an automatic schedule, the systems should start up at 2 or 3 in the morning. If they don't start, the DPMs send me an email or text, and I can run out there and start them up - before anything gets too hot."

Now, with his DPM units and AlphaMax, Styers has more flexible alarm notification options. "I get email on most alarms," he says. With email, Styers doesn't have to carry around a separate pager or decipher alphanumeric messages. When he receives an alarm, the email alert contains all the necessary detail. Even so, having the ability to send a page remains valuable. "Some of the people at the Health Department still have pagers, and for a few of the alarms, we just send them an alphanumeric page." The DPM and AlphaMax units give Barry Styers and Gaston County the versatility to automatically send the right alarm messages to the right people at the right time.