Has anyone ever seen (or heard) a System Sensor ExitPoint in an actual building? For those who don’t know, ExitPoint is used to direct building occupants towards stairways, exits, and areas of refuge. The ExitPoint consists of a directional speaker, with a tone module on the back. It plays an interesting tone to get your attention; almost static-like, and then either plays a tone, or a voice states what the ExitPoint is representing.
Here is a picture of the device:
And some videos I found regarding the device:
I strongly encourage you to watch the videos, especially the second one, as it shows all the tones and message. The third video from System Sensor, also plays the start to an EST message, which i found interesting. Does anyone know if they even still make these?
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I’ve at least heard of it: a very interesting & ingenius concept/idea indeed if you ask me (shame System Sensor apparently didn’t think so though given they discontinued it about 4 years ago). They are quite rare to find in actual service (for sale too): apparently it was not a very popular product (shame if you ask me given their supposed effectiveness).
Fun Fact: there have actually been two different models of the ExitPoint device, the PF24 (2006-2007) & the PF24V (2007-2020), with the only difference being that the PF24V has voice messages in addition to the basic sounds that the PF24 comes with (hence the “V” added to/in the model number which means “voice”. Apparently System Sensor came to the conclusion that not everyone would recognize what the sounder was trying to tell them with just non-verbal sounds (though that also creates a potential problem of not everyone understanding it since the messages are only in English).
Yeah: a SpectrAlert SP201W with said tone module to be exact.
Said “interesting tone” is “broadband sound”, or “white noise” as it’s more commonly known (which is what a TV not connected to a media source plays, AKA static).
Kinda odd that they went with that instead of a Fire-Lite or Notifier message, since by that point (2006 more than likely since that’s when the first/original PF24 model was released) all three companies were part of Honeywell (speaking of which note the fact that behind the host in some shots are original SpectrAlerts (along with a group shot of them towards the end), even though the SpectrAlert Advance-series came out the same year that that video was supposedly made (unless it was filmed &/or released in 2005 or early 2006, before the Advance line was released).
Several further notes:
The host calls it “the audible exit sign” several times in that last video, which is a great analogy as it does essentially do what an exit sign does, but audibly instead of visually, & potentially better too!
On the board of devices in said last video is what appears to be an old 90s-era BRK residential smoke detector in addition to all the commercial devices, which would sorta make sense since System Sensor started out as a division of BRK, but in 2006 the two would have long parted ways (with System Sensor first (seemingly) being purchased by the Pittway Corporation in the early 1990s & then Honeywell purchasing System Sensor from Pittway sometime in the early 2000s, & BRK (along with their First Alert brand) were acquired by Jarden Corporation that very same year (2006). Just something odd that I thought I’d point out.
Note how the end of the 3rd video has narration very similar to the promotional video System Sensor made for their i3 series (even featuring a shot from it at one point): interesting how their videos back then apparently all had similar ending narration regardless of what product was being featured: definitely something unique that it seems like very few companies have ever done for their promotional videos.
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