How to Eliminate Fragmentation with Data Gathering Modules

Step onto a typical university campus, walk through a military base, or visit any city's municipal complex, and you'll find a patchwork of fire alarm control panels (FACPs) tucked behind service doors and in maintenance rooms. Some are decades old, while some were just installed last year.

Nearly all of these panels come from different manufacturers. They use different protocols, run on different wiring schemes, and none of them natively talk to each other.

You may not even recognize that you have a looming problem - until the alarms go off.

During an emergency, fragmented fire alarm systems like these create delays, confusion, and missed signals. Those minutes can cost you lives, property, and your code compliance.

Fragmentation Is the Enemy of Fast Response

The real problem isn't just one panel that isn't working. The real issue lies in a lack of system-wide coordination across your buildings, zones, and teams.

Here's a scenario we've seen too often: A heat sensor trips in Building A. That building's local FACP chirps and flashes. Maintenance personnel call security - provided that someone happens to be nearby.

Meanwhile, Buildings B and C - connected by public walkways - remain blissfully unaware. Their systems don't register anything because they run on different hardware and protocols. Minutes go by before responders realize the scope of the event. Precious time is lost.

This isn't just a theoretical problem. It's very much a known risk across many public sector environments, including:

• Universities with legacy panels spread across dorms, labs, and classrooms.
• Military bases where a mix of decades-old secure facilities coexist with modern construction.
• Cities managing town halls, police precincts, fire stations, and libraries - all equipped over time with whatever panel met that year's procurement specs.

Each building may be "compliant" in isolation, but in practice, their disjointed communication creates one big blind spot.

Workarounds Don't Cut It If There's No Integration

For years, facilities managers have tried to fix this problem with manual workarounds:

• Posting a dispatcher near each building's panel.
• Using two-way radios to relay alerts.
• Manually transferring alarm logs into Excel sheets.
• Maintaining a notebook of which panel controls what.

Unfortunately, none of this scales. And none of it delivers what's actually needed: a clear, real-time picture of every alarm condition across every building - without relying on human relay chains.

A full rip-and-replace might seem like a fix, but it's rarely realistic. Most facilities can't shut down operations, rip out perfectly functional panels, and budget six figures for new hardware. You also can't afford to be locked into one vendor's ecosystem when so many buildings are tied to legacy infrastructure.

So what's the real solution?

You Need One System That Speaks the Language of All Your Panels

What if you could install a small device that lets your existing fire panels - no matter their brand, age, or protocol - report into one centralized, code-compliant monitoring system?

There'd be no forced upgrades and no throwing out good panels, just real-time integration across the board.

That's exactly what the DGM-16LS from Digitize does.

DGM-16LS is the Mediation Engine for Legacy Panels

The DGM-16LS is a compact, powerful Data Gathering Module (DGM) designed to integrate legacy or isolated fire alarm panels into a centralized monitoring system - without replacing your existing hardware (which costs both money and wiring/install time).

Each DGM-16LS supervises up to 16 zones of dry contact inputs - alarm, trouble, and supervisory - and converts them into standardized messages. These are then transmitted to the System 3505 Prism LX, Digitize's flagship alarm receiver.

From there, the Prism LX acts as the central hub, displaying, logging, and forwarding all activity in real-time - no matter how diverse your input sources are.

The DGM-16LS delivers:

• Zone-Level Supervision: Each module monitors 16 fully supervised zones with end-of-line resistor validation, ensuring that open circuits or tampering are immediately detected.
• Event Translation: Converts panel outputs into a format readable by the Prism LX, enabling effortless integration.
• Scalable Architecture: Need more zones? Just add more DGM units. The system scales to thousands of inputs across a campus, base, or city infrastructure.
• Protocol Flexibility: Works with dry contact outputs from virtually any FACP, meaning you can integrate Honeywell, Siemens, Notifier, Fire-Lite, Simplex, or most other common panel brands into one dashboard.
• NFPA-72 Compliance Support: Maintain compliance with fire code requirements for supervised alarm systems.

In short, the DGM-16LS makes it possible to bring all your building systems into a single, cohesive interface - without replacing the parts that still work.

Digitize Built These Devices Intentionally

Unlike generic third-party collectors or bolt-on software patches, Digitize developed the DGM-16LS as part of a complete alarm management architecture. This is significant.

Digitize specializes in systems where failure isn't an option - military bases, airports, subways, large-scale educational institutions, and secure government sites. These environments don't tolerate uncertainty, and they certainly don't tolerate placing blame between vendors during a fire inspection or post-incident review.

That's why the DGM is designed with:

• Supervised communication paths
• Fail-safe relays
• Built-in diagnostic tools
• Ruggedized enclosures for harsh environments

You're not getting a gadget. You're getting field-tested gear designed for real-world reliability.

Prevent Legacy Problems on Campus

One city from the Eastern US came to Digitize with a tangled alarm network spanning city hall, the courthouse, a central library, and a new public safety complex. Over 20 different alarm panels were installed across 30 years. None of these panels could talk to each other, and several were no longer supported.

There were a few different concerns for this system. The city's IT department wanted visibility. Fire marshals needed NFPA-72 compliance. Finance wanted to avoid ripping out still-functional gear.

The answer was a network of DGMs connected via supervised RS-485 links to a central System 3505 Prism LX receiver.

With this new setup:

• All events were monitored in real-time from a central screen.
• Alarm histories could be exported to Excel for incident reporting.
• Trouble conditions triggered alerts to maintenance.
• The city remained compliant - and avoided a six-figure overhaul.

This solution meant there was no need for new panels or training staff on 5+ different UIs. Instead, the team gained clarity, coordination, and control.

This Matters for Your Facility, Too

DGMs can benefit your network, too, if your operation is any of the following:

• A military base with secure and non-secure zones running on mismatched alarm hardware.
• A university campus with buildings from the 1960s to today, each with its own FACP.
• A transit system needing to monitor tunnels, stations, and depots from one location.
• A municipal government that's modernizing its infrastructure without throwing everything away.

Digitize DGMs are the easiest way to unify your fire alarm network and modernize your alarm-response strategy.

The Prism LX is Your Central Command Post

The DGM doesn't work in isolation. It's built to report into the System 3505 Prism LX, Digitize's powerful alarm monitoring receiver. This is where all data converges.

With a Prism LX installed, you get:

• Real-time alert dashboards across hundreds of zones
• Custom alarm filtering by event type, severity, or building
• Alarm history logs for compliance, audits, and analysis
• Integration with email, text, and third-party dispatch tools
• Expandable I/O for custom alerting and control

Together, the DGM-16LS and Prism LX allow you to see - and respond to - every alert across your entire site with confidence.

Don't Let Incompatibility Put You at Risk

You don't need to wait until a failed alarm becomes a failed emergency.

If you're managing a facility with fragmented monitoring, you already know how stressful it is to track down trouble conditions or verify signals. With added compliance pressure, the stakes get even higher.

With a DGM-based setup, you can:

• Bring legacy panels into a central system
• Monitor every input zone in real-time
• Avoid vendor lock-in
• Scale affordably as your needs grow

Most importantly, you can do all this without replacing every panel you've installed over the last 30 years. That would be a purchasing and logistical nightmare.

Ready to Eliminate Fragmentation?

Digitize has helped city fire departments, DoD installations, transit networks, and public universities solve this exact problem. We'll walk you through your current setup, help you identify where DGMs can connect the dots, and show you what a centralized alarm strategy looks like - with your gear, your budget, and your staff.

Call us at 1-800-523-7232
Or email info@digitize-inc.com

Let's consolidate your visibility, eliminate confusion, and make sure your next alarm gets the attention it deserves - every time.