Digital Addressable Fire Alarm Systems

[Big_Fella]

Are their any 'open protocol' digital addressable systems available on the market?

I understand Apollo devices for example use Digital Transmission Protocol to the control panel, but the control panel itself is analogue addressable.

I believe there are digital addressable closed protocol systems available, but wondered the above?

Many thanks

[Wiz]

Big Fella, I'm not sure if I am understanding your question correctly, but the 'analogue' bit in the analogue addressable system description relates to the fact that the sensing of the environmental condition in a sensor is of an 'analogue' nature.

In addressable systems this analogue data is converted into a digital format for proper digital transmission to the control panel.

The signal sent to the control panel is not in analogue format it is digital and the control panel operates to a digital signal and not an analogue signal.

It is virtually impossible to send a reliable analogue signal any distance over wires due to slow speed of operation / interference etc.

[Big_Fella]

I've been asked this question by a consultant who has specified an 'open protocol digital addressable system'.

Was just looking at 'Protec's website, and they claim their systems are digital addressable, as opposed to analogue addressable.

Am I getting a little confused, or is it the consultant who's confused in this 'digital' age 

[Allen Higginson]

I've been asked this question by a consultant who has specified an 'open protocol digital addressable system'.

Was just looking at 'Protec's website, and they claim their systems are digital addressable, as opposed to analogue addressable.

Am I getting a little confused, or is it the consultant who's confused in this 'digital' age 

Consultant confused??Mixed terminology??Not really knowing what hey are talking about??
Surely not!!!

[Wiz]

I've been asked this question by a consultant who has specified an 'open protocol digital addressable system'.

Was just looking at 'Protec's website, and they claim their systems are digital addressable, as opposed to analogue addressable.

Am I getting a little confused, or is it the consultant who's confused in this 'digital' age  

Big Fella, I think the consultant is a bit confused. He's using all the 'buzz words' but making nothing clear. If you go with an analogue addressable system you can't get any better. And I assure you they all use digital data communication!

Apollo and Hochiki are recognised to be the major players in the 'open protocol' arena.

Remember the panel manufacturers may decide their configuration software to work with the 'open protocol' devices could be restricted or 'managed', so they might not be considered to be totally 'open'. Very few panel manufacturers allow their config. software to be completely open for use by anyone.

But the consultant said 'open protocol' so, anyway, that really means the data between the panel and the devices and not really the configuration software.

Protec are not many people's favourite. Try Kentec, Haes, Advanced, Morley or Ampac for your panel and either Apollo or Hochiki for the devices. You can't really go wrong with any of those.

[Benzerari]

In addition to what Buzz and Wiz said:

All existing 'analogue addressable' systems are 'digital addressable' too, the signal is in origin 'analogue' and then digitised in order to turn it to a binary code that the processor understand, this happen in all analogue addressable systems whether they are open or closed protocol systems, and even in some new conventional ones as they are microprocessor based systems...

[Allen Higginson]

I've been asked this question by a consultant who has specified an 'open protocol digital addressable system'.

Was just looking at 'Protec's website, and they claim their systems are digital addressable, as opposed to analogue addressable.

Am I getting a little confused, or is it the consultant who's confused in this 'digital' age 

Protecs' big claim is that they shift more info along the digital sigal so making the alarm decision more "tunable" (ours does that and I see they don't have a zero false alarm guarantee!).
I wouldn't even say that they were that open.

[Galeon]

Did not Cerberus in the early days went down the digital route , and then change as to the rest of the market ?

[Allen Higginson]

Did not Cerberus in the early days went down the digital route , and then change as to the rest of the market ?

The Algorex was all algorithms under Cerberus and the FDOOT Sinteso S-Line (which as far as I'm aware isn't available to the "valued partners") uses them as well.
It's all 1's & 0's after all on any adressable system,it's just how many bits you add on the "bus"!

[Wiz]

Did not Cerberus in the early days went down the digital route , and then change as to the rest of the market ?

All addressable fire alarm system protocols are 'digital'. All modern fast-speed communication systems digital.