Personally, I think this is a good thing. Those panels were getting pretty out of date, and were definitely not known for being the best quality or most reliable. The FWR power supply was also not the best. Hopefully Honeywell can do better with the successors, but only time will tell.
Oh, finally? Jeez, about time if you ask me: those panels go all the way back to the 2000s if not the 1990s! (& like you said have also not been known as the most reliable or well-made either: if it wasn’t for this maybe their discontinuation would be kind of unfortunate)
Did anyone ever figure out the difference between the MS-2 and the MS-2-L8? The latter name appears on a lot of listings but only the former name appears on datasheets.
They were released at the same time as the i3 series, which was the early 2000s, since they were the first i3 Ready panels. Speaking of that, I’m still not sure what will be happening to the i3 series in terms of UL 7th edition.
Do any companies still rebrand these? The rebrands from Notifier, Silent Knight, and Gamewell-FCI were all discontinued back in 2022.
I just checked online, and I found this page for the MS-2 and this page for the MS-2-L8. I never noticed before that the MS-2 page was partially describing a pull station, so this may have been to avoid a name conflict. I’m not sure why else the MS-2 would have the -L8 suffix but not the MS-4.
I searched online for 2-zone panels and most of the results were MS-2 rebrands within Honeywell that were previously discontinued and the Hochiki 2-zone panel.
One thing to notice about the pull station I linked is that it does not have an FCI logo on it. Fire-Lite may have rebranded it at some point as a metal pull station alternative to the BG-12, although the BG-8 seems like it would have served that purpose. I didn’t find any evidence of Fire-Lite rebranding this pull station on archived pages, so Radwell may have just been confused since there was no logo. However, Honeywell’s UL listings are often listed under the wrong brand on UL’s website, so having two different MS-2 devices from different brands could still pose issues. I don’t recall any other instance of Honeywell/Pittway reusing the same model number between different brands; in the era of the System 5000 and Sensiscan 2000, the Sensiscan 2000 modules all had an “F” suffix to distinguish them from the equivalent System 5000 modules.
One possible story for the origin of the -L8 suffix could be that those two letters were in the original UL listing ID of the MS-2-L8, and when UL identified the model number as a duplicate, they added the -L8 suffix themselves (but after datasheets were written) to distinguish from the pull station, and that led to future technical bulletins referring to the panel as the MS-2-L8 for consistency with UL. I’m not familiar with UL’s naming scheme, but it looks like each listing is identified by four letters, an optional digit, a dot, a letter, and then a series of digits, which gives two places where “L8” could appear.
As I believe I just found out some minutes ago, it just happens to be part of the model number for some reason, as there doesn’t seem to be any actual meaning behind it (those two model numbers also appear to be one & the same as well).
According to a device database I maintain, the MS-2, MS-4, & i3-series were all specifically introduced in 2001. As for the supposed change in smoke detector regulations possibly affecting the i3-series, no idea, but I hope they end up not being affected since they’re some of the best smoke detectors ever made if you ask me! (especially since they were designed long before Honeywell started messing with the quality control of their brands)
Current production (2021 or newer, basically) i3s are indeed 7th edition listed! (Some smart chaps at System Sensor were apparently able to update the design to pass the 7th ed tests without breaking compatibility with the i3 “ecosystem” if you will. See UROX.S911’s lines for the various i3 model numbers for details.)
Older ones (2020 or older, save for a few units produced in late December of 2020), of course, are not.
Really? That’s great! (no idea how considering Edwards came up with a whole new detector series that operates quite a bit differently & more elaborately than most smoke detectors to meet UL’s new false alarm immunity requirements, but that’s excellent regardless) Long live the i3-series!
I’m not that surprised, considering First Alert managed to make it work with ionization detectors in the residential field. I don’t think it has to do much with the sensing components, but rather the software that decides what is or is not a real alarm based off of real world testing data.
It makes for a good selling point to claim that their detectors are extremely elaborate. In the early 2000s, Siemens transitioned to the FirePrint detectors as a replacement for both the ionization and photoelectric models, since it has similar benefits.
Great, did they do the same with the 2151/2151T? The abridged site mentions the 2151 on that list but I don’t know if that means it is 7th edition listed and whether that extends to the 2151T. Also, I don’t see SWIFT devices on that list; are those listed to the 7th edition?
Well considering Edwards’ track record (read: very good) I’m trusting that they’re telling the truth about their Signature Optica-series being elaborate & as a result a lot better at distinguishing between false alarms & actual fires. What did Siemens do with their FirePrint detectors though?
I could have sworn the 2151-series is no more for whatever reason (though I know Fire-Lite & Notifier no longer sell the addressable versions of the 2151 that they used to, since their current detectors look completely different).
Basically, those detectors use a heat sensor along with the photoelectric chamber with an algorithm to determine whether or not there is actually a fire. That made them a lot slower to respond, though, which is why they are no longer compliant and are discontinued. They were too good at rejecting alarms.
Ah okay, heh. Funnily enough Edwards had actually already done that by that point (albeit with the addition of an ionization sensor) with the original Signature Series, & as far as I know it did the job a lot better.