Simplex/Autocall 4017ES

Well, wasn’t expecting a new product release so soon after the Foundation Series. But here we go. Simplex 4017ES. Looks to be a new panel that supports up to 500 Points and have integrated voice according to this reddit post https://www.reddit.com/r/firealarms/s/FW1hasf4f8

Here’s a real image of the 4017ES that a Discord user has sent me

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real product kinda cool ig

hopefully it’s true, i love these buttons/labels

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Yet another ES-series panel huh? JCI just doesn’t know when to quit apparently (since something tells me that it’ll be just as proprietary as the others). Still rather neat I guess though.

An elementary school in my district that opened last year could have definitely used this. Because my area now requires voice evac in all education buildings, they had to install an Autocall 4100ES although the building has less than 200 points.

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Do you always have to complain when a company releases a new product?

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I do when a company thinks proprietaryness is the way forward or when I don’t think a product is designed particularly well (among other things). I’m just expressing my thoughts, do you mind? Jeez…

Notifier, Gamewell-FCI, EST, and Siemens are more proprietary than Simplex.

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Considering how widespread Notifier systems are I’m not so sure about them (aside from the INSPIRE-series of course which we likely have Honeywell brass to blame for), but I’d include the others (with the obvious exception of Edwards/EST since they’ve been quite the innovative company despite their semi-proprietaryness) with Simplex when it comes to level of proprietaryness.

I have a feeling that you don’t have any real experience with any of these systems do you? Any tech would tell you that every other brand I mentioned but Simplex is more proprietary.

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I don’t care: I’m going by what I know about them, & what I know about them is that they’re all (aside from Edwards/EST to some extent as I said) heavily proprietary in general, which means that no one except company/factory-trained personnel can do basically anything with them (which is why I’m glad that my first & so far only panel has been one from a relatively non-proprietary brand).

This is not entirely true. The only thing that outside contractors cannot do on a Simplex system is programming. They are fully capable of replacing components (devices, field wiring, and even cards). These do not need anything special to be replaced. Only if you are making significant changes like adding/removing devices or cards do you need to call JCI.

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Yeah, & besides screwing over basically all enthusiasts, from the professional side it also screws over both building owners & technicians if a local tech can’t just come out & fix a problem: they instead have to contact the manufacturer, have them send one of their techs out, wait around for said tech to show up, hope they do a good job & actually fix the problem properly, & then comes the likely service bill, which can (also likely) be any price the manufacturer wants since it’s their technician doing the work!

You realize enthusiasts do not have any say in that design choices of fire safety equipment, we do not matter to these companies and all they do is produce a product that serves a purpose instead of random kids messing around with it.

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Dude, some Siemens panels are proprietary to the point where someone from the company needs to come out to put it into walk test, and I haven’t seen you complain about them once. If you don’t like simplex that’s fine, they’re definitely not perfect, but it’s kind of annoying at this point. JCI isn’t going to become less proprietary because some kids who want to mess with it but can’t, like Ryan said

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I do, & that’s why I made sure to note/list what effects proprietaryness has on the professional side of things, besides just how much of a pain it is for enthusiasts. Also last I checked most of us who mess around with these things are not kids (I certainly am not).

Oh I certainly hate Siemens for that too (which is why I’d never go with them for a system either), I’ve just never said so until now. Also I love pre-JCI Simplex, since the company was actually great then, but ever since JCI came to own them it’s just gone to crap (& not just proprietary-wise either: from what many have said they supposedly charge ridiculously high service fees too): also as I told Ryan I’m just giving my thoughts, that’s all: that’s what this forum is arguably for, is it not? Yes, I know that just because someone wishes for them to improve they won’t, but I’m still hopeful that someday Simplex is torn away from their current owner & then owned by a company nowhere near as corrupt (at which point hopefully things will massively improve with them).

That is off topic. This isn’t the thread to complain about simplex’s proprietary nature and the corruption of jci. This is a thread to discuss a new product of theirs. Let’s get swiftly back on topic now shall we

Well I wouldn’t have launched into this in the first place if Ryan simply didn’t have a problem with my initial comment, but you’re right: let’s do that, especially since I’m tired of the constant back-&-forth-arguing (which clearly is ultimately getting nowhere). Why didn’t you say that in your initial message rather than only saying so now though? (since you were only helping to continue the “off-topicness” that way) Also while it may be off-topic I’ll still call them out for that any chance I get, & like I said I did not anticipate it blowing up the way it did here. Anyway, I digress…

I wonder if this one won’t require a license, in similar fashion to the 4007ES.

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