I’m an electrician working for a contractor that normally does power and controls, never fire alarm. For some reason they decided to take on the fire alarm work on a job where we did all of the other electrical work. I had some minimal experience with fire alarm years ago, but most of that knowledge has evaporated from my brain.
They sent the equipment out to the job and I have what I believe to be a conventional panel-a Fire-Lite MS-10UD. Along with it they sent five MMF-300 monitor modules which look to me to be addressable devices. Am I correct in my assumption that these devices are not compatible with this panel? This all has to be in rigid conduit, so whether or not these devices need to be installed will affect my conduit installation. I can’t really run the conduit without knowing if these devices will be used.
I also received what I believe are addressable pull stations, so I’m assuming these won’t work with this panel either.
I’m just looking for a sanity check here. Is my panel conventional? If so, can these monitor modules be used with it? Can addressable pull stations be used with a conventional panel?
You are correct: the MS-10UD (along with its smaller brother the MS-5UD) is indeed conventional & thus it will not work with any addressable devices (including those monitor modules): seems like somebody with that contractor overlooked something when it came to selecting the devices for that system.
Thanks for your reply. That’s what I thought. Let’s say I did have an addressable panel. What would be the purpose of the monitor modules? I’m having trouble wrapping my head around what they would actually do if I did have the proper equipment to implement them.
A monitor module is basically an addressable device that creates a conventional zone. It lets you connect conventional devices to an addressable system.
Monitor modules essentially act as an interface between conventional devices & addressable panels: the conventional device is connected to one pair of terminals on the monitor module & the panel’s SLC loop to another, with the panel supplying power to the module so it can function & the module telling the panel when it sees a closure on the terminals the conventional device is hooked to (of course the panel has to be programmed to react to that signal from the module or it will do nothing).
A monitor module could be used to connect any device with normally open contacts to the fire alarm. Manual station, waterflow switch, valve tamper switch, heat detector, 4-wire smoke detector etc..