Fire Alarm Panel

  • -

Fire Alarm Panel

Category : Uncategorized

Integrating fire alarms As the interest in integrated building systems gains momentum, the fire alarm industry is starting to define ground rules for maintaining the dependability of the detection and alarm components when they are integrated with other building systems. Safeguards need to be defined to assure that a person on a terminal in the human resources department, for example, does not mistakenly access the fire alarm system via a LAN and leave portions of it disconnected. There needs to be assurance that such LANs will be monitored for integrity, making sure faults that might impair the detection and alarm function are promptly reported to the fire alarm system. If there is heavy, nonfire related traffic on the LAN, fire alarm signals must take priority.

The involvement of a nationally recognized testing laboratory (NRTL), such as Underwriters Laboratories, is also needed to assure the integrity of these integrated systems. Members of the fire alarm industry must adopt a standard communication protocol such as BACnet before these systems achieve integration. The industry is presently working toward that end.