AIP?

What exactly is/was Alarm Industry Products? Perhaps you know of the AI270-SPO, the all-red variant of the Edwards 270-SPO. But according to the product box below, it was headquartered in my former hometown of Farmington, CT, just like Edwards.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Alarm-Industry-Products-AI270A-SPO-Fire-Alarm-Pull-Station/151672313544?hash=item23505fd6c8:g:XncAAOSwPgxVShZZ

Was it a subsidiary of Edwards?

It’s maybe a rebrand of some sort.

I remember seeing AIP-branded versions of the round Edwards heat detectors as well. Must be either a division of Edwards or a company that has some connection with them. I don’t know when EST and Edwards Signaling became separate divisions, but maybe AIP is a predecessor to the latter?

I’ve always wondered the same thing. There have also been https://www.buyfirealarmparts.com/shop/aip-ai9892-2b-horn-strobe.html AIP-branded 892 horn/strobes and AIP-branded Edwards panels (such as the rebranded Edwards 5754B pictured below).

(Photo is from a past eBay auction.)

1 Like

I can’t help but wonder if this AIP-Edwards situation isn’t the exact same kind of thing as the current Simplex-Autocall structure. I’ve seen several small 1980s-era (maybe as new as early 1990s) AIP-branded systems, but any systems requiring more than 3-4 zones and a handful of notification devices are branded as Edwards. I honestly didn’t even realize the difference in branding until I either saw the panels or got a good view of an 892 signal on the systems in question. All of the AIP systems around here use 892 signals, except for one that uses 881-D AdaptaHorns.

It makes even more sense once you take into consideration the rebadged Edwards initiating devices and 892 Signals. I suspect, however, that this was a fairly short-lived arrangement, as I’ve never seen any AIP systems newer than the early 1990s at the latest. I’ve also never seen signals newer than the 892-Series badged as AIP, and the AIP systems in my area tend to have Edwards/EST branded 792 and EST Integrity signals as spot-replacements.

The Simplex-Autocall comparison sure sounds plausible.

Given the rather generic name (Alarm Industry Products), I wonder if it is a similar situation to Faraday’s FOS/Faraday Outsourced) series products? It seems like it would be roughly the same time frame (late 1980’s - early 1990’s) and could have fulfilled some of the same objectives as the FOS series did for Faraday by providing a “generic” option to outside installers and/or other manufactures.

That idea is also a plausible explanation. I can’t help but wonder if maybe AIP was a combination of both of these ideas. Now that I think about it, a couple of our AIP systems actually use late-1980s System Sensor 2400 smoke detectors and one of those systems has ESL T-bars (RSG), while the rest use what I assume are old Edwards smoke detectors and AI270-SPO pulls. I wonder if they were available through primarily through Edwards distributors, but were also available to certain third-party suppliers in a possible attempt to claim more ground with existing customers of third-party Fire-Lite/Ademco vendors…
Fire-Lite definitely had a strong following in the small applications market by this point and Ademco wasn’t too uncommon either (not around here, anyways). Offering independent/third-party suppliers access to the “sainted” big-name products and technology could be a potential corporate-gains gold mine if the cards are played right (again, Simplex-Autocall).