What is the deal with this simplex system!?

Hello, I just wanted to explain my elementary school’s fire alarm system to you. This school was a very large elementary school, and it had a simplex 4020. Inside the classrooms, we had simplex QuickAlert horn strobes (an earlier model of the TrueAlert) And in the hallways, we had 4903 electronic horn strobes (the ones that go MYERRRR) Anyways… The system was set on pulse AKA 60 BPM march time, and it sounded extremely weird. The quick alerts made a dinging/skipping sound while the other alarms did their normal horn sound. I still can’t find any other systems on YouTube that were set up like this. And that’s the only building that I have seen with this kind of a setup. this building was built in 1999.
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that might be because the quickalerts are smartsync and not capable of free run, and since simplex did not (in 1999) retail the 4 wire selectable truealerts. the installers also might’ve chosen 60bpm so that the strobes could flash just like the other alarms. also the installers should’ve installed a 4905-9938 SCM for those quickalerts and a 4905-9815 adapter for the older devices or the smartsync devices would glitch out.

The “QuickAlerts” are most likely chimes.

I tend to agree with RSSAlarm. When the SmartSync devices came out there was a learning curve. It was found that if installed on a standard NAC with a slow pulse rate it was possible to confuse the horn control circuit into working - sort of. The horns would make various noises sometimes including dinging, a ping type sound, or skipping a beat. The strobe would flash normally as they fire on power loss like previous sync strobes. However, at a 60 beat march they only got 1/2 second to recharge which is not enough for a full charge. Truealert chimes were not available in 1999 when the school was built. The chime devices were released for sale in 2010.

the school should probably retrofit the existing panel to a 4100es with a retrofit kit and have the quickalerts wired to a SmartSync NAC and have the older devices wired to a free run NAC or wire them to the same NAC and use a 4905-9815 adapter so that the SmartSync doesn’t cause issues with the quickalerts.

My suggestion is a complete replacement of the panel with 4100ES. The 4020 upgrade kit is a one bay box with the ES master controller card, an RUI card, and an add on 8 volt converter module. The CPU and RUI are mounted in 4100+ style motherboards. No U/ES type power supplies are included. Adding those are extra expense and a lot of work that would be better put into a totally new panel with a full warranty on everything in the box.

The upgrade kit uses the existing 4020 power supply components and all the other existing 4020 cards. The 4020 has not been manufactured in many years and replacement parts are getting more scarce every day.

[quote="Retired STR-SG" post_id=81222 time=1533315210 user_id=3047]

My suggestion is a complete replacement of the panel with 4100ES. The 4020 upgrade kit is a one bay box with the ES master controller card, an RUI card, and an add on 8 volt converter module. The CPU and RUI are mounted in 4100+ style motherboards. No U/ES type power supplies are included. Adding those are extra expense and a lot of work that would be better put into a totally new panel with a full warranty on everything in the box.

The upgrade kit uses the existing 4020 power supply components and all the other existing 4020 cards. The 4020 has not been manufactured in many years and replacement parts are getting more scarce every day.

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true, I agree with you. The notification appliances should also be replaced, especially the free run devices as they are not capable of synchronization. All the alarms should be replaced with truealert es devices.