All well said. I do hope that Potter ultimately sticks with Gentex, especially now that the latter is hopefully not that far away from jumping on the LED bandwagon (very late to the party given everyone else is already there but better late than never as they say) & given no one else really has a contract with them (shame that they’re so underused given they make some of the best signals in the industry if you ask me).
1 Like
The weatherproof Eluxa devices are now out from Potter.
Also, it looks like some of the Gentex rebrands have been discontinued.
That’s definitely not a good sign. Does Potter though not only not realize that Gentex also sells weatherproof devices (thus meaning that they don’t need to rebrand Wheelock’s instead, even if Gentex doesn’t make LED ones at the moment (they might soon though) but that by going with two different brands they’ll be causing headaches for installers & technicians when it comes to synchronization?
I think their plan is to completely switch to Wheelock. All Gentex speakers and ceiling-mount horns/strobes (besides colored lens devices) have been discontinued. I imagine the wall-mount horns and strobes will be discontinued when the Potter version of the indoor Eluxa MT is released, as the wall-mount horns have the chime and whoop tones that the ceiling-mount horns do not have. The Potter Eluxa MT is UL listed, so that probably won’t take long. Colored lens strobes have also been UL listed, including some models that Wheelock does not sell (e.g. standard horn strobes with green lenses).
One point worth noting about this switch is that Potter is following a similar plan as the Siemens ACEND series and outdoor Eluxa series where a bare minimum set of lettering options is sold, but options are provided to change the lettering on existing devices. The full table can be seen here. This might help distributors with inventorying.
It is annoying, but at least the only difference between Potter’s rebranded devices and the ones directly from Gentex/Wheelock are the model numbers/the sticker. That way, people that have existing Potter systems with rebranded Gentex devices (which I’ve seen installed very recently) can just use regular Grntex devices for replacements. I still think this is unfortunate, as Gentex lost one of its main partners and sources of sales.
I seriously don’t get why Potter can’t simply be patient & wait for Gentex to finally get their new Commander 5 series out: once the latter did the former would be all set more than likely. Were they not informed of said upcoming product line by someone at Gentex given the two are partners? (& thus so they would have advance notice of it)
I don’t know if the Commander5 is actually anywhere near release. I haven’t seen any evidence of new Gentex notification appliances on UL Product IQ, and as far as I know, all of the other LED devices that were presented at last year’s NFPA Expo have already been released.
I’ve been going by Gentex’s official website & so far they still have yet to appear on there. What do you mean by that last part though? As far as I know no part of the Commander 5 series is out yet (unless you mean another brand’s LED NAs instead).
I was referring to other brands. For example, Wheelock announced the outdoor Eluxa devices at the same event, and those were released almost immediately. If I remember correctly, Edwards also demonstrated the durability of their outdoor Genesis LED devices around that time, which were released almost immediately. On the other hand, Gentex displayed those prototype devices around a year ago, and we have yet to receive further information.
I was on the Potter website when looking up information for this post when I saw that many of the Gentex products are now listed as “obsolete products” along with the former Amseco devices.
Oh okay, that’s what I thought. Yeah: no idea what’s taking them so long to get them out to be honest: one would think that with how finished they looked at that one show they would have been out already.
Speaking of Edwards’, for some reason they demonstrated the Genesis LED replacement for the WG4 all the way back in 2022 going by this video on r/firealarms, but only in 2024 (a full two years later!) did they actually finally release them: no idea what took them so long to do so especially with, again, how relatively-finished they seemed at the time of that 2022 demonstration.
I’m honestly starting to think that no companies (even those not in the life safety industry) have any business announcing a product unless it’s being released immediately at the time of the announcement, since it really doesn’t make sense to then wait after the announcement before actually releasing the product: you get people all hyped up & then you kill that hype if you do the latter.
Yeah: that’s what Mhgk noted earlier today which is where this latest conversation in this topic came from.
Oh sorry about that. I guess I forgot to click on that link in his post.
Oh, I must have misremembered then.
It’s possible that Gentex announced the Commander5 in response to Potter’s transition to Wheelock in order to avoid losing Hochiki and National Time, both of which still rebrand Gentex equipment.
Gentex also seems to produce some specialized equipment for Potter, such as the AC-powered version of the GX-93 and the speaker/low frequency detector bases based on the SSPK series speakers. I do not know what will be happening to these devices.
Yeah, though just the same as far as I know the WG4’s Genesis LED replacement came out some time after the non-weatherproof Genesis LED devices for some reason (don’t know why they wouldn’t have just released the whole line at once to be honest).
Oh, yeah. Shame they didn’t think of doing so before Potter announced such though: then they might have been able to keep all three of their biggest customers.
Who knows honestly, though considering Wheelock doesn’t make such devices (not now anyway) they might be forced to stick with Gentex for those at least.
Potter is now also selling the Wheelock MIZ. I believe this was just posted on the website between yesterday and today. Note that unlike the Eluxa devices, the MIZ series horns are using the original Wheelock names.
For some reason, the datasheet claims that this horn can be synchronized with an AVSM sync module, but it also claims the horn is synchronized using the Wheelock protocol. I assume the AVSM reference is a typo.
The AC version of the GX93 does not support synchronization, so keeping that in production won’t cause any sync protocol conflicts. I suspect that the PAD100-LFSB will be phased out and replaced with the PAD300-LFSB, and the PAD100-SPKB might be replaced with a PAD300 version still from Gentex, since speakers also do not depend on synchronization.
1 Like