It makes sense from a business perspective to do that since LED strobes are starting to become the norm: they likely neither know nor care about us in the community. Calm down (granted I wish that Wheelock wasn’t under the control of the tyrannical Eaton Corporation, but otherwise I suppose things could be worse). Besides, there will still be plenty of xenon devices for us to collect: just because Wheelock discontinued them doesn’t mean all existing ones will suddenly disappear (if anything we’re helping to ensure Wheelock’s xenon devices will, in a way, live on, even if they won’t be produced or installed anymore).
This is the nature of technology. For the same reason we don’t have new devices with incandescent bulbs, LED technology is superseding Xenon strobes. Just the circle of life.
Mhm: given they’ll be the only kind of strobe manufacturers make in probably only a few years (because of all the advantages they bring) that would be my plan too (making devices with only LED strobes that is: xenon worked for decades but we have a better kind of strobe nowdays so we might as well use it).
You sure about the Exceder? It appears to say that the devices in bold are being discontinued. The Legacy Exceder, Legacy Chime, and Legacy MT are unbolded. I hope that this doesn’t happen with Gentex.
Yes, it does say that, but I believe the non-bolded ones have already been discontinued (especially given the “Eluxa version available now” text next to them: no point in making them when there’s a successor).
Even if Gentex ends up doing the same thing (which they might given everyone’s going to LED strobes) I at least hope they keep the 4-wire nature of their products (which will help cut down on the number of devices that need to be made: for instance their current 4-wire devices work fine for both 2 & 4-wire applications: you only need one of each model for either case since the “wire mode” can be configured with DIP switches: no need for separate 2 & 4-wire devices like what System Sensor is doing).
No company cares about what the average enthusiast wants, they are all just going to stick to the business model that every other company is doing which is manufacturing LED fire alarms, making this discussion sound rather obsessive.