I suck. I don’t know if I could call myself an alarm enthusiast, but I’ve always had an interest in alarms and tornado sirens and such. I posted last year about this (TrippLite, possibly?) strobe/sounder that a store in town uses as fire exit alarms that used to scare the crap out of me as a kid:
Anyway, I was shopping at that store today, near the entrance to the back room when a worker comes out and says curtly into his phone to the manager on duty: “The alarm is going off.” So I made a beeline over to health and beauty care, where indeed the fire door alarm strobe/sounder was going off. I don’t have a cell phone that can record (I know, what decade is this?), but I did have an old mp3 player in my purse that can record, although I’ve never used that function. So standing under the alarm, I have it out, trying to hurry and record before the manager arrives and shuts it off. In my excitement to hurry and get a sound clip, I failed miserably at doing so. I couldn’t figure out how to get the mp3 player to start recording. I was fumbling around with it like an idiot, almost dropped it. Then I hear the manager’s keys, and he brushes beside me to turn the alarm off. He probably thought I set it off, since I probably looked suspicious. He sighed like he was really annoyed, and I guess stupid kids set the alarm off all too often for a laugh. I had almost a whole minute there to get a recording, and I totally screwed it up.
Afterwards, I saw that the menu to record had been right in front of me the whole time and I overlooked it. What a dumbass. I always wanted a recording of it, because it doesn’t sound like anything I’ve ever heard before. It’s a really quiet alarm, actually, a creepy nasally horn. I guess you would call it hi lo, although it sounds nothing like any hi lo alarm I’ve heard. “Ooowah ooowah”. And I know, it’s not technically a fire alarm, just could be used as such. Anybody know of any alarms that sound similar to that? And has anyone else ever messed up when trying to record an alarm, or else just miss it?
There are the System Sensor MA/SS alarms that can be set to hi-lo, along with the Roshni sounders in Europe, just to name a couple. Do you know if there were any other alarm components there (annuciator/panel, bells, horn/strobes, pull stations, etc.)? If there are, do they have a company name?
No pull stations or anything, they’re set off by pressing the door handle on the fire doors. The one that always goes off is on the ceiling above a glass door that opens into the garden center. I guess people have trouble finding the doors that lead out to the garden center that they’re supposed to use. They really should just have a solid door there so it’s more obvious that it’s not an exit your supposed to use (people don’t read, apparently). Someone said they look look like Tripp-Lite, but I never saw any strobe/sounders that they made, only strobes and an old fashioned fire bell that I saw once. But who knows.
I’ve watched a ton of alarm videos on YouTube, including all those weirid European hi lo alarms, but never seen anything that sounds like this.
They do have actual fire alarms in the store, I’m thinking maybe they were Gentex Commander 3s, or something similar. Never seen those go off. But I’ve always been more interested in those weird strobe horns.
I think I may have just found what you were looking for, thanks to internet research; it is an Ecco model. You can find more about their products here (may have to do a little hunting around): http://www.eccolink.com/ProductPages/BeaconsHMPG.cfm
They also have a section dedicated to alarms that they manufacture.
That’s what I heard. I’m guessing this was made in the early 80’s when the store was built. I actually emailed someone at Tri Lite to ask if they know if Tripp Lite ever made strobe/sounders, and he’s sending my message along to someone who would more likely know.
The Tri Lite guy emailed me back and said that he’s totally stumped. He looked through a bunch of old Tripp Lite literature and couldn’t find any strobes that include an audible alarm, just plain old strobes. He said he went through stuff going back to the late 80’s, but maybe this was only available in the early 80’s. It seems like it would almost certainly have to be a product of theirs, judging from the two circle logo that you can see. Curious.
gatoradedrinker-I knew that they made strobes through the 80’s, but I didn’t know if they had ever made any strobe/sounders. And it doesn’t sound like it.