Question about wiring pull station to Silent Knight 5600

Fire Alarm Help
1

Hi, my son is a fire alarm enthusiast. In the past, I wired up a series of pull stations and horn strobes in our basement for him. Recently, he found a great deal on a Silent Kinght 5600 on eBay. We purchased, and I’ve connected to a 120V power supply and wired a horn stroble to the NAC interaface. We can succesfully turn on the hornstrobe with the Drill function from the panel and turn it off via the Reset function.

I’m trying to figure out how to set up a pull station. This is an addressable unit. I have an adressable Honeywell pull station and have wired it to the SLC interface on the panel. When I pull it, I see signal going to/from the pull station (light turns green, then red). But is doesn’t sound the horn strobe. Do I also need to have a wire going from the pull station to the hornstrobe for everything to work? Our goal is to be able to also turn on the hornstrobe from the pull station and then turn the hornstrobe off by either resetting the panel and/or the pull station.

Sorry for the novice question–as I said, my 10 year old son is the enthusiast, I’m trying to use this as a learning project (for him and me!).

2

Hello and welcome to The Fire Panel Forums!

Seems like you have a basic understanding of what you are doing, however for this panel you need specific devices.

To operate this panel using conventional devices, you will need one of these modules from silent knight. Error

3

Thanks for the reply, but the link you sent doesn’t work: Error

The pull station I have should work with the Silent Kinght, it’s listed as compatible, and is an addressable unit.

Thanks!

4

The link works fine for me, in that case are you sure the pull is programmed correctly?

5

To directly answer the questions.

  1. Don’t depend on any addressable device being compatible with any panel in the same manufacturer family. I worked for Simplex for many years and there are compatibility issues even in a single manufacturer.

  2. It is also possible that the pull station and/or the SLC in the panel has a failure issue.

  3. No additional wires are needed or advisable. The NAC monitors and controls the horns and strobes. The SLC monitors the initiating devices. Any additional wires connected between them will damage your panel!

  4. All modern panels latch in alarm so resetting the pull station will not turn off the signals.

This is the list of compatible SLC devices listed in the manual for an SK 5600. These can be depended on to work with your panel. Others may work but these is no guarantee.
link to manual> http://www.silentknight.com/CatalogDocuments/151450.pdf

6

Ah, Retired STR-SG, you may have nailed it. The Honeywell says it’s a Fire-Lite alarm and maybe there’s a difference between Honeywell Fire-Lite and Silent Knight addressable dual action pull stations.

7

There are, but that’s okay, because it’s a common error and you asked first! :mrgreen:
Since the 5600 is Silent Knight’s small, 25-point system, it’ll work with both Silent Knight’s SK protocol (Error like this device) or the HFS protocol, which is an odd little protocol that only this panel and the Fire Lite MS-25 uses. You can use detectors like Error these or if you want to use a conventional pull station, use Error this monitor module.
Remember to use end of line resistors to make sure you don’t have any faults on the signal circuits and you should be golden!
Best of luck to you and your son, and as always, if you need any more help, don’t hesitate to ask us!