Mmh I guess I should say that my ASD Alpha E6 has a place here…
No, it’s far from being a bad panel at all, but it has a few interesting, oddities.
First, the buttons are… I’ll get to the point: they’re terrible. They’re kinda mushy-feeling and don’t register presses very well, I had a DEF Polaris C2/6/10 before, felt the exact same way.
Second, albeit a mild inconvenience rather than a full blown annoyance, the bezel (dress panel?), it screws in but the screws are unfortunately not captive and are easy to lose. Plus the threaded inserts tend to break free (something I’ll have to fix on mine).
Third, while you don’t need specific software to program it and you can easily get the documentation, it’s a bit tough to figure out the programming options on it.
But at the same time, it has some redeeming qualities… So there is a silver lining here:
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It’s a very versatile panel that can easily be expanded (either more zones, or a fire suppression card, on some versions you can add a relay card), plus it’s very compact.
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The bottom side of the panel has a removable “hatch” that you can drill holes into to pass the cables, instead of having to drill holes into the case.
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As I said, there’s no need for specific software or anything like that, you just need to punch in a key combo to program stuff, different codes for different items that you can program (like cross zone detection or agent release delay, on mine at least)
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The terminals are all laid out in-line and can be taken out, even though it takes a bit of force to do so.