From a personal standpoint, I have no least favourite panel as I have zero experience with actual fire alarm systems. However, based on what I’ve read online, the Edwards ESA2000 seems to be almost universally disliked by technicians. I’m not exactly sure why this panel is considered to be so loathsome, but I wouldn’t be surprised if its reputation comes from an extreme lack of user-friendliness: it appears to enjoy throwing trouble codes that are impossible to decipher, and I highly doubt that it’s particularly easy to access the system’s various features when it’s being serviced. The ESA2000 also seems to have, in my opinion, one of the least intuitive user interfaces of any addressable system; for some reason, the system controls were designed to look identical to the zone labels and system status indicator labels, creating a sea of indistinguishable white rectangular tabs.
Despite its poor reputation, I find the ESA2000 to be a rather interesting system from an enthusiast’s perspective. Its retro design is a throwback to the early days of addressable systems, and it puts a smile on my face when I see one in person as these panels are starting to become a rare sight. I’m sure its features were considered fairly advanced when it was initially introduced in the late '80s/early '90s, but the rapid evolution of addressable panels (including the introduction of other EST panels, such as the IRC-3 and EST3, which probably cannibalized the ESA2000’s spot in EST’s lineup) in the 1990s likely left it in the dust shortly after its launch.
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Sorry for the bump, but recently I was able to acquire an ESA-2000 from my job, and let me tell you that, in my opinion, it is one of the most collector friendly panels I have ever seen. Now I’m only speaking on the conventional models. These panels out of the box have 8 zones and 2 NACs on the motherboard. Almost everything that you need can be programmed from the front display (though yes it can be a little confusing sometimes). Coding options, zone labels, LED mapping, time and date, correlations, auto system configure, etc. The software was only really made for the addressability and more complex stuff. And speaking of coding options, boy does it have a lot, including a crazy 300 bpm rapid signal rate. The panel is expandable up to I believe over 100 zones. It’s also got a buzzer, and I mean, who doesn’t love mechanical buzzers right? The ONLY complaint I have about the panel is the reset time. That’s it. Once you get used to it it can be a really cool system.
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Never realized it had so many coding options, but that would make sense. The one we replaced from a building had mini horns set to 20 BPM, like it was a first stage alarm. Might have to play around with the ones we have in our shop, lol.