with a lot of older systems, they had much louder signals, so not many were needed (an example would be a modernist six story office building from 1969; there's only two bells on each floor)
The middle school I used to go to had an est voice evac system (with genesis speaker strobes) and an original est panel. Around Covid time, the panel was replaced and the voice evac was adjusted. Prior to the change, each speaker in the cafeteria was set to 1/2 watt with a few exceptions. I remember the system being loud and clear every time. After the panel replacement, every speaker was set to 2 watts regardless of where it was. I’m guessing that this overloaded the new amplifier, because on top of the sound being distorted, it was somehow significantly quieter everywhere that voice evac was used in comparison to how it was prior to the change. I’m not sure if it is still like this, but I remember easily being able to hear the horn strobes from the classrooms upstairs over the voice evac in the cafeteria that was downstairs. The old voice evac subpanels that were recessed in the wall were also replaced by large red ones that were surface mounted. The new subpanels were potter branded if I remember right.
4:23 My college has alleviated this issue by just having one giant unified system throughout the whole campus. This does, of course, present the problem that completely unaffected and separate buildings get evacuated every time the alarm is activated anywhere on campus (which has _neeeeever_ caused problems.) The system even extends to the athletic building, which is the better part of 1000ft away from all the other buildings, and across the street
Interesting. My elementary school had a similar fire alarm system. The school had a main building, a smaller building with a preschool, and a separate building with a gym, cafeteria, and combination stage/music room. When one went off, they all went off, but that was probably because of the fact that being an elementary school, they need to get everyone out in a fire drill. Pretty sure it was an EST system with the Integrity horns/strobes. My middle school had a similar setup for drills, where their portables were wired into the main fire alarm, but really, that system deserves a mention for having a super overkill system too in terms of the alarms being close together. The reason I say overkill is because they were horns!! Imagine horn strobes every 20 feet in the hallway, one in the dead center of each classroom, and even horn strobes in the bathrooms. To top it all off, they had a ton of weatherproof horn strobes on the outside of the building, set to high volume, which could be clearly heard over a quarter mile away! That building had a Notifier NFS320 panel, with the infamously harsh sounding SpectrAlert Advance horns and strobes.
Kind of similar to the two buildings example is a building expansion. There is a mall that has a Simplex system in the original part and an EST system in the new expanded part, there is some weird crossover from the two systems on the second floor as there are stores with the Simplex system then the EST next to each other.
In my high school - the system is a 4100+ voice evac. There are speaker strobes in the halls and strobes in the classroom. Also in the halls, there are occasional strobes, no speakers or anything. The entire system isn't loud. For the VoTech I go to - the systen is a Siemens and Cerberus Pyrotronics mix. The hallways have horn strobes and HORNS. Only *two* strobes are in the hallways. Other than that, it's horn strobes and horns. (Slow whoop and code 3.)
3:56 there’s something like that at Charlotte Douglas International Airport. It used to be a horn strobe only system but the airport is trying to phase that out as it’s becoming such a large airport, and is installing a voice evac system and you can see that there are horn strobes and speaker strobes placed in very close proximity in some areas of the airport
This makes sense. My local Walmart, before the 2014 Remodel, Had Wheelock As Devices. On a some of the columns down some Aisles, they had 4 Wheelock As devices on one column. In 2013, there were still Wheelock As Devices, while the Spectralert Advance Celing Mounts got installed. They Removed all the As,s a few months later.The system currently has Celing Mount Spectralert Advance horn and remote strobes, with even a few L- Series Celing Mounts that replaced some of the Advances.
Very informative video! I've seen a bunch of Simplex 4903 15CD and 110CD Speaker Strobes installed really close to one another in the Boston Prudential Center as well as a Bunch of Simplex 4903-9357 75CD Speaker Strobes installed really close to one another. In my college we have a bunch of Simplex 4903-9148 30CD Speaker strobes installed kind of close to one another in one building and a bunch of Simplex 4903-9357 75CD Speaker Strobes installed close to one another in a different building with the exception of the gymnasium; Simplex 4903-9358 110CD Speaker Strobes.
Building B at my school just got a new system. On the third floor, there used to be 4 horns and 6 strobes, now there are at least two speaker strobes per classroom (bigger ones have 4), at least one speaker between every corridor speaker strobe (sometimes 2), and there’s a speaker strobe at every floor and landing in the stairwell.
I've seen a couple of T stations where the devices are really close to each other. All around the Alewife station parking garage in Arlington, there are two identical Wheelock ET70WPs with an MT above. I'm guessing the MT is to signal that the alarm has activated in the station, one of the speaker strobes is for the garage, and I'm not sure what the other is for as none have signs. Also, at South Station heading up to the silver line, there's a Spectralert Classic horn strobe above a Wheelock AS. Maybe one is for the main south station concourse, and one is for the red/silver line?
Pretty interesting. The fire alarms in my school went off today due to a faulty smoke detector. Its gone off multiple times. Since im also im Massachusetts I got the same EST 3 tones.
My school has two fire alarm devices next to each other at one of the entrances near the auditorium. A simplex 4903-…….9219 I believe, and a simplex 4904-91 something remote strobe.
Another reason they could be close together is if the building has a smoke control system implemented so if the smoke exhaust fans are activated the sound won't have to travel as far.
I've also seen a bunch of EST Genesis Speakers close to each other at my school with the occasional strobes. Now I know why there's a high amount of speakers next to each other! Even still, the audio quality is not that great and I can't even hear the voice message too clearly.
in my new school i am attending, there are 2 ummt horn strobes, one on the front wall, and one on the left wall (both by a door), and their only about 4-5 feet apart (keep in mind their both horn strobes), whats the reason for this? required ada strobe coverage or just bad installers?
yo its been a while, but do you have any idea of how those people make a bg-12 “addressable” with the fake LED light? i wanna try it out but im not sure how to do it, plus people dont make tutorials on this. thx
@@FireAlarmDude5967 Can U do a video on ways to prevent "false alarms no kidding my school has those covers over the pull boxes and somehow during the school year especially grade 6 it was pulled for no reason more then 5 times we have blue dye that comes out all over your hand that's REALLY HARD to wash off 2 identify who did it, but if U have a chance do a video on this thanks CREDIT WOULD BE APPRECIATED ID LIKE TO BE REFERRED TO AS JAY
L for not saving the apartment est3 also to note, the more speakers, the lower the quality, not better the quality. It has to do with the amount of amplifiers or booster amps the system has
L for commenting that. Nothing I can do to save a system in a building I don’t live in. Also, that’s not true. More speakers at lower wattage will be higher quality than less speakers with the same wattage distribution. If I had two speakers at 2 watts, the quality would be much worse between those speakers than if I had eight speakers tapped at 1/4 of a watt each
@@FireAlarmDude5967 I’ve saved the systems from like 4 buildings I don’t live in, nor do I even live near. I don’t see your point but respect your opinion About the speakers - that’s not what I said. The more speakers there is on a speaker circuit, the more distorted the quality will become, unless eventually, a booster amplifier is installed between the speaker circuits/audio loop. I’m not talking about wattage, I’m talking about the amount of speakers on a singular circuit. Regardless it’ll be low quality. I’ve seen this exhibited several times in systems I’ve maintained and inspected. The EST3 voice evacuation system at the school i inspected, had no booster amplifiers, so of course the quality was not good and the message was not greatly intelligible. Even the speakers tapped to 4 watts in the hallways were the same quality, it was not good quality, but it was the same, merely amplified. All together it depends on the type of system. Some amplifiers, like new notifier and simplex, are some of the best on the market and exhibit excellent audio quality regardless. The results won’t be the same on every single system, and every single manufacturer, they are not all alike and it would take experience from a few actual real voice evacuation systems in action to come to a more sound conclusions, which I have done. The higher the wattage on a speaker will amplify the audio, but overall the quality of a speaker relies on the stress of the amplifier. To note, If your point was that the more speakers, the more intelligible… Even if more speakers make it more intelligible per se, that does not mean the audio quality is better. Which, with more speakers, regardless the setting… it’s not going to be. And about your hypothetical speaker setup, there wouldn’t be much difference between 2 and 8 speakers, but the more speakers the lower quality, so on a lower end system like the potter evax, it’s possible that 8 speakers would further distort the audio quality as opposed to 2 on high wattage. The only way really to test this is on a voice evacuation panel, and have 15-20-30 speakers, (more variables along with the panel and amps, because there’s too many variables to come to one single conclusion here) on a single speaker circuit (on the amplifier) with no booster amp in between. No good way to really test it besides field work which I do and am able to back it up with that. Your points seem to be based off of variables that can’t all be applied to all installs, systems, or quality, but are good hypotheticals for some systems that may exist and it can apply to.
@@pLzza4150 Those federal signal Q2B sirens will hurt your ears when a fire engine passes you as a pedestrian but I love the sound of electromechanical fire engine sirens. A 12-volt 1000-watt DC motor turning a chopper at over 5000 rpms inside a 14-port stator does emit a pretty cool sound.
You know its a good day when FireAlarmDude posts
Yes it is
Yeah
with a lot of older systems, they had much louder signals, so not many were needed (an example would be a modernist six story office building from 1969; there's only two bells on each floor)
DC horns from the 70s and 80s are about the same loudness as modern piezo horn strobes.
Sometimes it's possible to see newer remote strobes next to older units, which for those who don't know is so it will follow ADA applications.
Yeah. A lot of hotels have a alarm with a remote strobe, because the alarm can be silenced but the strobe cannot be disabled.
The middle school I used to go to had an est voice evac system (with genesis speaker strobes) and an original est panel. Around Covid time, the panel was replaced and the voice evac was adjusted. Prior to the change, each speaker in the cafeteria was set to 1/2 watt with a few exceptions. I remember the system being loud and clear every time. After the panel replacement, every speaker was set to 2 watts regardless of where it was. I’m guessing that this overloaded the new amplifier, because on top of the sound being distorted, it was somehow significantly quieter everywhere that voice evac was used in comparison to how it was prior to the change. I’m not sure if it is still like this, but I remember easily being able to hear the horn strobes from the classrooms upstairs over the voice evac in the cafeteria that was downstairs. The old voice evac subpanels that were recessed in the wall were also replaced by large red ones that were surface mounted. The new subpanels were potter branded if I remember right.
4:23 My college has alleviated this issue by just having one giant unified system throughout the whole campus. This does, of course, present the problem that completely unaffected and separate buildings get evacuated every time the alarm is activated anywhere on campus (which has _neeeeever_ caused problems.) The system even extends to the athletic building, which is the better part of 1000ft away from all the other buildings, and across the street
That sounds needlessly tedious
Interesting. My elementary school had a similar fire alarm system. The school had a main building, a smaller building with a preschool, and a separate building with a gym, cafeteria, and combination stage/music room. When one went off, they all went off, but that was probably because of the fact that being an elementary school, they need to get everyone out in a fire drill. Pretty sure it was an EST system with the Integrity horns/strobes.
My middle school had a similar setup for drills, where their portables were wired into the main fire alarm, but really, that system deserves a mention for having a super overkill system too in terms of the alarms being close together. The reason I say overkill is because they were horns!! Imagine horn strobes every 20 feet in the hallway, one in the dead center of each classroom, and even horn strobes in the bathrooms. To top it all off, they had a ton of weatherproof horn strobes on the outside of the building, set to high volume, which could be clearly heard over a quarter mile away! That building had a Notifier NFS320 panel, with the infamously harsh sounding SpectrAlert Advance horns and strobes.
4:16 reminds me of that weird setup at a nordstrom where there was 4 spectralert advances
And they were waterflow alarms
Kind of similar to the two buildings example is a building expansion. There is a mall that has a Simplex system in the original part and an EST system in the new expanded part, there is some weird crossover from the two systems on the second floor as there are stores with the Simplex system then the EST next to each other.
That's cursed 3:00
In my high school - the system is a 4100+ voice evac. There are speaker strobes in the halls and strobes in the classroom. Also in the halls, there are occasional strobes, no speakers or anything. The entire system isn't loud.
For the VoTech I go to - the systen is a Siemens and Cerberus Pyrotronics mix. The hallways have horn strobes and HORNS. Only *two* strobes are in the hallways. Other than that, it's horn strobes and horns. (Slow whoop and code 3.)
3:56 there’s something like that at Charlotte Douglas International Airport. It used to be a horn strobe only system but the airport is trying to phase that out as it’s becoming such a large airport, and is installing a voice evac system and you can see that there are horn strobes and speaker strobes placed in very close proximity in some areas of the airport
This makes sense. My local Walmart, before the 2014 Remodel, Had Wheelock As Devices. On a some of the columns down some Aisles, they had 4 Wheelock As devices on one column. In 2013, there were still Wheelock As Devices, while the Spectralert Advance Celing Mounts got installed. They Removed all the As,s a few months later.The system currently has Celing Mount Spectralert Advance horn and remote strobes, with even a few L- Series Celing Mounts that replaced some of the Advances.
I don't think System Sensor makes good quality products. They shouldn't have to be replacing alarms that are less than 10 years old.
@whelenvortexr4 System Sensor Screechalretadvance are the loudest System Sensor Devices.
I have no clue how i stumbled into this part of youtube, but im glad i did
Very informative video! I've seen a bunch of Simplex 4903 15CD and 110CD Speaker Strobes installed really close to one another in the Boston Prudential Center as well as a Bunch of Simplex 4903-9357 75CD Speaker Strobes installed really close to one another. In my college we have a bunch of Simplex 4903-9148 30CD Speaker strobes installed kind of close to one another in one building and a bunch of Simplex 4903-9357 75CD Speaker Strobes installed close to one another in a different building with the exception of the gymnasium; Simplex 4903-9358 110CD Speaker Strobes.
Building B at my school just got a new system. On the third floor, there used to be 4 horns and 6 strobes, now there are at least two speaker strobes per classroom (bigger ones have 4), at least one speaker between every corridor speaker strobe (sometimes 2), and there’s a speaker strobe at every floor and landing in the stairwell.
I've seen a couple of T stations where the devices are really close to each other. All around the Alewife station parking garage in Arlington, there are two identical Wheelock ET70WPs with an MT above. I'm guessing the MT is to signal that the alarm has activated in the station, one of the speaker strobes is for the garage, and I'm not sure what the other is for as none have signs. Also, at South Station heading up to the silver line, there's a Spectralert Classic horn strobe above a Wheelock AS. Maybe one is for the main south station concourse, and one is for the red/silver line?
In south station, I believe the classic indicates a suppression system activation
Pretty interesting. The fire alarms in my school went off today due to a faulty smoke detector. Its gone off multiple times. Since im also im Massachusetts I got the same EST 3 tones.
My school has two fire alarm devices next to each other at one of the entrances near the auditorium. A simplex 4903-…….9219 I believe, and a simplex 4904-91 something remote strobe.
My high school did this with Edwards Integrity Horns And Horn Strobes. Some hallways had angles. But more classrooms..
Another reason they could be close together is if the building has a smoke control system implemented so if the smoke exhaust fans are activated the sound won't have to travel as far.
I've also seen a bunch of EST Genesis Speakers close to each other at my school with the occasional strobes. Now I know why there's a high amount of speakers next to each other! Even still, the audio quality is not that great and I can't even hear the voice message too clearly.
That’s unfortunate. Sometimes they aren’t loud enough
I love these video please start a whole series they are so cool one on candela would be awesome too but keep it up ❤❤
0:12 I guess there best friends 😅
in my new school i am attending, there are 2 ummt horn strobes, one on the front wall, and one on the left wall (both by a door), and their only about 4-5 feet apart (keep in mind their both horn strobes), whats the reason for this? required ada strobe coverage or just bad installers?
I love having two est Genesis horn strobes next to each other. Especially the one in the bathroom
Wheelock e70 are not grey and green 0:05
did you paint or someone paint?
It's a rare factory painted model
6:14 i visited this mall once and did notice these close to each other. 😂
My local Dave & Busters did that with their Wheelock speakers
Great video!!
yo its been a while, but do you have any idea of how those people make a bg-12 “addressable” with the fake LED light? i wanna try it out but im not sure how to do it, plus people dont make tutorials on this.
thx
You can probably just put a red LED in the pull station and wire it as a NAC device
I saw an alarm in a bathroom somewhere once with a red box and a white alarm unit on top, on a white wall, interesting design?
Speaking of: at my school we have smoke detectors in every restroom stall, probably to prevent vaping ig
Maybe a 7002T
@@FireAlarmDude5967 Can U do a video on ways to prevent "false alarms no kidding my school has those covers over the pull boxes and somehow during the school year especially grade 6 it was pulled for no reason more then 5 times we have blue dye that comes out all over your hand that's REALLY HARD to wash off 2 identify who did it, but if U have a chance do a video on this thanks
CREDIT WOULD BE APPRECIATED
ID LIKE TO BE REFERRED TO AS JAY
L for not saving the apartment est3
also to note, the more speakers, the lower the quality, not better the quality. It has to do with the amount of amplifiers or booster amps the system has
L for commenting that. Nothing I can do to save a system in a building I don’t live in. Also, that’s not true. More speakers at lower wattage will be higher quality than less speakers with the same wattage distribution. If I had two speakers at 2 watts, the quality would be much worse between those speakers than if I had eight speakers tapped at 1/4 of a watt each
@@FireAlarmDude5967 I’ve saved the systems from like 4 buildings I don’t live in, nor do I even live near. I don’t see your point but respect your opinion
About the speakers - that’s not what I said. The more speakers there is on a speaker circuit, the more distorted the quality will become, unless eventually, a booster amplifier is installed between the speaker circuits/audio loop. I’m not talking about wattage, I’m talking about the amount of speakers on a singular circuit. Regardless it’ll be low quality. I’ve seen this exhibited several times in systems I’ve maintained and inspected. The EST3 voice evacuation system at the school i inspected, had no booster amplifiers, so of course the quality was not good and the message was not greatly intelligible. Even the speakers tapped to 4 watts in the hallways were the same quality, it was not good quality, but it was the same, merely amplified. All together it depends on the type of system. Some amplifiers, like new notifier and simplex, are some of the best on the market and exhibit excellent audio quality regardless. The results won’t be the same on every single system, and every single manufacturer, they are not all alike and it would take experience from a few actual real voice evacuation systems in action to come to a more sound conclusions, which I have done. The higher the wattage on a speaker will amplify the audio, but overall the quality of a speaker relies on the stress of the amplifier.
To note,
If your point was that the more speakers, the more intelligible…
Even if more speakers make it more intelligible per se, that does not mean the audio quality is better. Which, with more speakers, regardless the setting… it’s not going to be. And about your hypothetical speaker setup, there wouldn’t be much difference between 2 and 8 speakers, but the more speakers the lower quality, so on a lower end system like the potter evax, it’s possible that 8 speakers would further distort the audio quality as opposed to 2 on high wattage. The only way really to test this is on a voice evacuation panel, and have 15-20-30 speakers, (more variables along with the panel and amps, because there’s too many variables to come to one single conclusion here) on a single speaker circuit (on the amplifier) with no booster amp in between. No good way to really test it besides field work which I do and am able to back it up with that.
Your points seem to be based off of variables that can’t all be applied to all installs, systems, or quality, but are good hypotheticals for some systems that may exist and it can apply to.
Is this why my high school gym had 2 speaker strobes on each wall and above the bleachers?
Not sure
0:06 my school has this one!!!
I see a building with two alarms literally an inch apart on the outside of the building. They are both spectralert advances.
One might be a sprinkler alarm
@@FireAlarmDude5967 yeah probably. Though I thought sprinkler alarms were bigger. But then again I'm still new to alarm systems.
You can eliminate the problem with poor speaker quality by using Eluxa.
No speaker eliminates poor quality. More speakers will always produce a consistently higher quality sound provided the total wattage is the same
Cool video!
0:05 What kind of fire alarm is that?
Wheelock
Silver plated wheelock E70
Nickel E70
Wheelock
Hey Lake High School in Wood County did this too
I wot not. Wherefore art thou enquiring?
Won door go vroom
WOOMP WOOMP HERE COMES YOUR M. 0. M.
cringe
@@SodiumInduction-hv well I told yawl not to reply womp womp but what did you do now whoever replies that will get a big fat insult
@@SylvieonPiggyFan29YT Hahaha womp womp
@@SodiumInduction-hv womp womp here comes yo m. 0. m. to beat yo woms womps she hit you hard
@@SylvieonPiggyFan29YT shut up, kid
want ice cream
Fr
Who else got obsessed with these loud obnoxious objects
Hey, I'm a siren enthusiast. Those are more loud and obnoxious.
@@pLzza4150 Those federal signal Q2B sirens will hurt your ears when a fire engine passes you as a pedestrian but I love the sound of electromechanical fire engine sirens. A 12-volt 1000-watt DC motor turning a chopper at over 5000 rpms inside a 14-port stator does emit a pretty cool sound.
Sorry rong channle its krisdude1562
First, Hi!😊
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