I was scrolling through eBay the other day looking for Silent Knight monitor modules and I ran across what’s called a SD-500 FRCM. It’s called a fast response module and apparently it acts like a normal input module. I’ve been trying to find documentation on it but no luck so far. Does anyone have any information on this module? What’s the difference between a fast response and a normal module? I have pictures from an eBay listing but I can’t attach them for some reason. Thanks!
It’s just a monitor module that’s supposed to trip the circuit as fast as possible. With addressable loops there can be a delay between a device going into alarm and it being reported at the panel, and that delay can be significant, up to 90 seconds is allowed under older codes. With some modules you want more of an instant activation, so they have lower reserved addresses or in this case they might interrupt the circuit or take priority over all other communication going on.
Whats interesting about the way this protocol seems to work is that Hochiki modules take longer to activate than System Sensor SK modules. When I first got my 5808, I was using some Hochiki SD500-SDM modules to monitor my old conventional zones until I could afford to re-do my demo setup with addressable smokes and pulls. I’ve actually timed it, the lag between me activating a pull station and the module alarming is practically 6 seconds! My MS-4 responded in less than 3! What’s more interesting, is that an alarm condition seems to not be reported during the normal polling cycle. I say this because one day I activated one of the modules, and in between activating and the alarms sounding, I saw all four modules poll as normal, and then a few seconds later, the activated module latched into alarm. You would think that if on the normal polling cycle, an alarm was picked up, the device would have latched then and there.