Bought the wrong type of horn strobe, what can I do?

Fire Alarm Help
1

So, I kinda screwed up.

I own a Resideo Vista-15P. While it’s not an ideal solution for running fire alarms, I thought I’d give it a shot until the day comes where I can buy a panel designed for FA use. As I understand, the sounder circuit supports 12 volt devices.

I purchased a System Sensor PC2RH under the mistaken belief that it would operate on those 12 volts. After all, most SpectrAlert devices (from my understanding) can operate on that. However, rereading the data sheet I’m pretty sure that only counts for devices running at 15 or 15/75 candela. My horn strobe is a high-candela model that operates at a minimum of 135cd, therefore requiring 24 volt operation.

Am I misunderstanding what I read and my horn strobe is actually fine for 12 volts? If not, is there any way to make it work, even with additional parts?

It’s not a big loss ($10.85 total) if I can’t use the PC2RH, but it would really suck. It’s my first ever fire alarm device so that is kind of disappointing.

2

I probably wouldn’t advise trying to run it directly off the panel as it would likely draw too much current for the panel to handle, but you can try using a 12VDC relay hooked to the siren output to control the current coming from an external 24VDC power supply, which is then hooked to the PC2RH (12VDC relays are common, but I’m not sure where you might get a 24VDC power supply though. Be careful of ones that may output FWR too).