The challenge
My Alarm Guy is an alarm monitoring company in The Bahamas, and part of the same family of businesses as Formartiq. A review of its monitoring software found that existing checks could detect when alarm signals stopped arriving, but did not reliably alert a person. The monitoring PC also needed its alarm applications to come back on their own after a restart.
What we built
In October 2026, Formartiq deployed an independent monitoring service that runs off-site, away from the monitoring PC. Every minute it checks that the PC is reachable, that alarm signals are arriving and that the monitoring application is running.
If signals stop for longer than normal, or the PC or application goes down, the service alerts staff by SMS, phone call and team chat, repeats the alert until the problem is fixed and confirms when service is restored. Alert thresholds were set from the company's own signal history. A public health check lets an outside monitor confirm the service is running.
- Off-site checks of signal flow, PC reachability and the monitoring application
- SMS, phone-call and team-chat alerts, with reminders and recovery notices
- Automatic start of the alarm applications after the PC restarts
- Controlled update settings so the monitoring PC is not restarted unexpectedly
- Logging of incoming alarm traffic against an allowlist of expected sources
- A hosted 3CX phone system with staff extensions and a ring group
- A messaging channel that handles customer service with accounting lookups and payment links
How it works now
The monitoring service runs continuously. Alerts were tested end to end by text message and phone call when it went live. Staff work on the hosted phone system, and customer messages are handled through the connected messaging channel.
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