Simplex 4100ESi Non-Proprietary Fire Alarm System

Interesting! The links and other documentation I’ve found seem to indicate this is being marketed towards Australia and New Zealand. Should we expect to see this panel in its non-propreitary state rolled out in the U.S. anytime soon?

Well, since Nazeo is bringing this up, the answer is almost certainly yes. :wink:
Nazeo, how did you find out about this?
And yes, I’ve been watching that documentation page like crazy…

I seriously NEVER expected something like this to ever happen. I mean, Simplex is known for being proprietary and preventing retrofits. This is the last thing I ever could’ve expected them to do.

Preventing retrofits? Heck, they’ll retrofit anything as long as its with their own products! :wink:

From the buyer’s perspective, what are the advantages of a proprietary system? Just more uniform training and standards, right?

Everything is compatible, and you know your getting only a certified person working on that system who knows how it works.

if you have multiple people work on a larger system the owner will quickly run into a quagmire of documentation issues (unless they have their own staff for it) and eventually they’ll end up paying a fire alarm engineer lots and lots of money to come survey and document what multiple vendors have pieced together over the years in order to satisfy the AHJ and code requirements. and usually a lot of deficiencies will be found when this happens since a 2nd, 3rd, 4th vendor will very keep proper calculations since they don’t know what already exists, which means more money to bring the system back up to code.

have been there multiple times.

technically simplex has the only truly proprietary system right now, all other manufacturers have vendors but even then systems are usually locked into a vendor unless the customer specifically requests for it to be transferred to another one for whatever reason.

Preventing Retrofits of Simplex systems so building owners are stuck with simplex.

In that case, getting away from Simplex would be as easy as ripping the panel from the wall.

I think many of the proprietary aspects of Simplex equipment reflect an effort to protect the integrity of their own products. They seem to be much more concerned with reducing tampering or abuse of their systems and protecting against liabilities than they are with locking customers into their systems.

Personally, I’ve been amazed by the capabilities and features of Simplex’s newer control panels. It’s understandable that they would want to protect what they have engineered.

Same. My 4004 is small, but it does A LOT more than say, a Fire-Lite MS-2. Not that a MS-2 has features the 4004 does not, which it does, but the 4004 is very nice in that it is easily programmable and easily expandable via expansion modules.

Interesting… we haven’t heard boo about this thing here in Canada. I knew a new FUI display was in the works (I assumed it would be color & touch screen) but I hadn’t seen anything rolled out yet… But after the 4007ES I figured it wouldn’t be too far away. Hopefully it’s snappier than the current FUI, those things are slower than mud.