National Time and Signal

Hi all,

I recently stopped in a newly-built establishment (name/location undisclosed) in my area for a quick errand. It was my first time going into this particular building, and I was expecting your typical Honeywell-subsidiary system (BG-12s, SpectrAlerts, ya know). Anyway, I was in for quite a surprise…

The building has a National Time and Signal 902 fire alarm system running NTS-rebadged Apollo smokes, SigCom T-Bars, and Gentex Commander3s and Commander4s. There is a 902-Series remote annunciator by the entrance.

I had always heard of National Time and Signal, but had never seen ANY of their stuff in the field until now. I know they’re based in Michigan, but do they have distributors? I couldn’t find any evidence of a distribution network on their site. I found this old thread, but it didn’t help me either: <URL url="National Time and Signal Corporation]National Time and Signal Corporation].

Does anyone on here have experience with their systems? Are they well-made/reliable? The panels look to be really nice…

Did the Commanders have “National Time” in place of the “Gentex”?

Yes, they were rebranded by National Time in that manner. The SigCom t-bars also were branded as National Time.

Let me ask…

Are the panels made in-house by National Time and Signal? Or are they custom manufactured by another company for NTS? They definitely look like very well-designed panels…

Their panels are indeed made in-house.

They offer this LCD graphic annunciator which looks pretty interesting. Only Notifier, that I am aware of, makes a similar product for the US market to interactively display floorplans and allow firefighters to pinpoint the source of the alarm. This is the direction I think manufacturers should be going, but the only other one I have seen is from Advanced and not yet available for the US market.

They used to make Graphic annunciators, not too sure why they don’t anymore.

They’re still available from companies like Space Age Electronics. They can be pricey though since they are all custom fabricated. I still think they should be used, but AHJs don’t seem to require them at least in my area. An LCD would probably be the same cost or less since it is more advanced but mass produced, and has the advantage of allowing you see things on different zoom scales and show or hide details as needed.

I suspected that they were, as they definitely resemble their master time panels. All of their panels look to be nice, flexible systems and those Apollo smoke detectors are pretty much bulletproof from what I’ve been told.