I shared this in the Discord a few weeks back, but I thought it made sense to share it here as well.
This is one of three new buildings under construction at my school, and the fire alarms were being tested in this one. You may have heard this tone before, but have you ever heard it on a voice evac system?
No, I haven’t for one: that’s certainly new! Wonder what made them decide to use that instead of say a more standard whoop tone (unless the older sections of the campus had Advance horn/strobes & they wanted to keep the students in the newer sections familar with the alarm sound (provided any of them will come from the aforementioned older section & thus be familiar with the way Advance horn/strobes sound) & so did that).
The admin building right next to the building in the video has used a much more traditional temporal tone (500 Hz?) since it was renovated last year, also with a Notifier voice evac system with L-Series and Advance (outdoor) peripherals.
The campus has a mish-mash of alarm systems: some have Wheelock MTs and ASes; a few some older Simplex systems from what I’ve gathered (one with EL1s, or MT4s even, on late-model 4903 strobe plates); and a few refreshed buildings have Advances. The new building will house a lot of the services and programs that were originally hosted in some of the buildings that have the Wheelock peripherals.
i havent heard nor seeen a voice evac for a long while
i wanna say that those are discontinued but idk im in the UK and i never seen nor heard one
Voice systems seem to be quite common in Canada & the US for two (though the former very rarely have actual voice messages): not sure what the story is in the UK, though I have seen such things as “fire cryers” (however I can’t tell if they’re actual speakers that are fed an external audio signal (which is what most voice systems do) or that have voice messages built-in).
cool thing that UK fire alarms have more than just its usual fire thing
it does fire, lockdown/ secuiryt and a few more that idk of
it may have voice evac? idk
That’s what mass notification systems in North America (& possibly in other places too) do as well, it’s really nothing new.
wdym?
“thats what mass notification”
“mass notification” means, as the name implies, notifying a large group of people, usually building occupants, of an ongoing emergency & what to do in response to it. It also often means that the system can warn of more than just fire, including general emergency, carbon monoxide, toxic or combustile gases, armed intruders, & severe weather (& as a result said systems are pretty much always voice-capable, as a horn or sounder system couldn’t possibly indicate all of the above conditions unless there was one horn or sounder for each kind, which would be highly impractical).
ah oki thx
so ye
the westronics company that the school uses can be capable of lockdowns and fires (commonly) and the others idk