The first products I found are made by a company named Maple Armor. I did a quick Google search and discovered that Maple Armor is the Canadian division of a Chinese manufacturer. One of the interesting things about this company is that their products (including initiating devices and NAs) all appear to be made in-house. They have some odd-looking LED horn/strobes and, interestingly enough, they offer UL/ULC listed call points.
I also came across a line of LED signals manufactured by a company named Light Engine (also from China). They have some rather peculiar-looking signals, to put it politely. Their ceiling-mount horn/strobe is particularly interesting since, unlike Wheelock’s LED Exceder devices, it appears to use five separate LEDs instead of a single diode.
Judging by these two companies, it appears that Chinese manufacturers are starting to approach the North American market with some serious products instead of simply selling low-quality SpectrAlert knockoffs on Amazon and eBay. I wonder, however, if these new products will actually succeed in the United States and in Canada, considering the fact that these brands are virtually unknown over here.
Those devices from Light Engine look a lot like the Chinese SpectrAlert knockoff so I’m thinking that maybe the devices some members saw over here in some places are from them?
Cool find! I like the Light Engine sounder/strobe the best. The Maple Armor ones were decent, too. But I agree that the other Light Engine stuff looks really weird. They should also work on the brand names, which sound childish in my opinion. “Hi. We’re Light Engine. We sell red noisy things that go wee-oo-wee-oo.”
Wow, these look surreal. It’s almost as if they’re physical renditions of fire alarms in cartoons (that aren’t bells).
Part of me knows I probably won’t ever see them in a real installation because they have next to no brand recognition here in the US, but then again building owners are always looking for the lowest bidder. I imagine these might sell for dirt cheap.
Now I want one, lol.
I like this. I hope they compete with and force Honeywell to innovate their current line up and sooner rather than later. It seems like introducing the L series would have been a good chance to do that. Even Simplex has an LED appliance that is UL 1971 compliant (despite the popular disdain for Simplex I very much like the direction they are heading with their product’s technology). The idea of spreading the LEDs around is intriguing and is a good approach to getting proper coverage. I think in the future the idea of multi color LED could come into play for mass notification type applications.
Simplex did a fantastic job with their LED line imo.
Everything I see on that Light Engine site about synchronization just says “Customized synchronization feature upon
customer’s specification”. So either they don’t sync at all or they’re looking to OEM to others and not sell to end users.
I do think it will be cool to see call points in the US. It will be nice to see some diversity in products again.
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Actually…
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It’s since been removed and nothing else installed. Evidently the fire inspector and/or AHJ didn’t like it there so they made them remove it. If I remember, I’ll snap a pic tomorrow of where it was.
I recently inquired about if they were going to expand their products to include having their products in white and if they were going to add a speaker strobe version to their series. I’ll reply with their response once they respond.
I hope they do since I feel we’re entering a transition to have more voice evacuation systems in populated areas.
