I saw this for sale on eBay and was wondering if i had to use the radio communicator part; or could just use it as a conventional panel. It seems a bit fuzzy what the actual applications could be?
here it is:
Here is the manual: http://www.transalarm.com/documents/user-manuals/Honeywell-Vista-Ademco/7720-Fire-Radio-Installation-and-user-guide.PDF
Everything you should need to know is contained in here. It appears that it requires a programming software that is accessed over the telephone connection (pages 7-11), so I would be careful about purchasing this unit.
looks like it has a radio antenna to send alarm/trouble/supervisory signals to a central station, instead of using phone lines or other traditional methods.
common on military bases since you can easily stick them in a temp structure and have communication, not to mention if a few lines are taken out it won’t effect the operation. sends the signals direct to the base fire department which would have a receiver. small towns could also use the same system but you pretty much have to lock everyone into it if you go this route so I don’t think you’ll find it in many (if any) places. works best were infrastructure isn’t the greatest, so maybe small clusters of islands could utilize it.
we normally run into monaco systems that operate like this.
(sorry for double post, can’t edit)
You could use it as a just a panel but reading the install manual kcin posted, it’s a 12volt system and you’ll need a programmer (that uses an rj11 telephone jack) to program the system. Probably not worth the hassle.
It looks like ademco has something called AlarmNet-A set up in multiple cities in the US and if you’re within one of those coverage zones you could use this as a your communicator. It also looks like Honeywell (who know owns it) is shutting it down one city at a time starting in August, ending in Dec. 2016, in favor of GSM communicators. This means you might see a lot of these go up on eBay over the next few years.
Current coverage map where you could potentially use the communicator: http://services.alarmnet.com/coverage/CoverageMain.aspx
Although I know I’ve never seen these used in a few of the cities on the list, so I have no idea how popular they ever really were. Seems expensive to run one of these networks in an area with so many other alternatives.