Which smoke detectors are good on homemade fire alarm panels?

Fire Alarm Help
1

Since I have a homemade fire alarm panel out of a Arduino, I need to know that which smoke detectors are good for homemade panels like mine. I know four wire smoke detectors are compatible on all fire alarm panels, and security systems.

Also, can I wire a relay in-series on the negative side of a base determined detector? Is it safe?

Thanks

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2

Can you provide more information on your homemade panel? How does it work right now?

3

Its a still work in progress panel, but it has seven zones (it used to be four, because I upgraded using the IDE code that I have) a horn nac for silencing the horns (when silence button is pressed which keeps the strobes going, until reset), a strobe nac, a resettable smoke power (9v as of now) and a whole lot of stuff on it, which is a lot to tell about. But it acts like a regular conventional FACP as I programmed it via the Arduino IDE.

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4

Sounds to me you’d want a System Sensor 4w-b. It has 2 terminals for re-settable power and 3 terminals for zone only (3 for tamper supervision). It will also operate between 9v and 28v DC. This is good if your zone is just a dry contact. If your zone is capable of outputting 9v DC and dropping power on reset then a 2w-b would work as well.

EDIT: I must add though that you’ll need a 12v smoke for this application. 24v smokes will NOT work on your setup. Stay away from simplex conventional smokes. They ONLY operate on 24v DC.

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Well, I could upgrade the voltage on the resettable power on the smoke power terminals to 12v or 16v. I also have a 19.5v laptop power supply that I can use a 24v smoke detector. But if I’m going to use a 12v smoke detector, then I need a 24v to 12v step down converter to have proper voltage to the 12v smoke detector.

Also, will a 19.5v laptop power supply work with 24v detectors?

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19.5v DC is around the cutoff so yes it should work for “most” 24v DC detectors. Sounds to me that you’ll want to use 4 wire detectors as your current system can support that.

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Just an update, I put a 24V 4A power supply for the smoke power and the horn and strobes.