Depending on the development of the electronic communication technologies, it has been possible to send information to the panel from the information received as input from each detector, button or other device and/or system, indicating their addresses together with the fire status warning. This has led to the development of a new type of fire alarm system. In these systems, which are generally defined as “addressable systems”, the fire start location can be specified as a point value on the device scale. In addition to being more technological, the methods and processes of determining the “alarm status” of the detectors are not very different from the conventional detectors. These systems, which can be switched between two positions, either "everything is OK" (0) or "fire" (1), are later called digital addressable systems to distinguish them from the addressable systems that are capable of processing analogue information in different ways.
In the digital addressable systems, regardless of the physical zone of the addressable device, all detectors, buttons and other addressable field elements can be connected to the fire control panel with the same electrical circuit. These circuits, called cycles, are often referred to as Class A. The cycles are established in the form of a closed electrical circuit, which is returned to the control panel after circulating all the field elements (addressed devices). Devices in the same physical zone can connect to more than one cycle, as well as operating the devices in more than one zone on their own line. The functions such as addressing and zone definitions are defined completely by programming from the panel.
The fact that all addressable devices (detector, button, input/output modules, etc.) are connected to the cycle line in a jumping manner provides great savings in installation costs. Likewise, since the failure alarms can be viewed individually on the control panel, they provide great convenience and time savings in service, test and maintenance work.
The detection method in the digital addressable systems is not different from the simple decision-making method in the conventional systems. Therefore, the likelihood of false alarms as a weakness is the same as in the conventional systems. They can only give alarm according to set threshold limits if you pay attention to time, environmental conditions, the status of the sensor (drift compensation) or certain variables. In terms of historical process, the situation is slightly different in the analogue addressable systems immediately following the digital addressable systems.
Fire Detection and Alarm Systems from Past to Today »
Conventional Fire Detection and Alarm Systems »
Analogue Addressable Fire Detection and Alarm Systems »
Distributed Intelligent Interactive Fire Detection and Alarm Systems »
