Why does the EST QuickStart get so much hate?

Wanted to make this topic to discuss the EST QuickStart and why it is disliked by techs and the community. I am aware the CPU can be rather faulty, but we need to go deeper than that. Make sure to avoid Brand Bashing :wink:

I don’t like how it doesn’t have a walktest feature, or you can’t access much. Which sucks if youre working by yourself or one guy doing heats and the other smoke alarms, because you can’t listen to the horns in units. You basically have to do another round listening to horns instead of doing it while youre going through units.

I also dislike that it is a little delayed. I had finished up the inspection at this building, about an hour from where I live, and the panel was normal when I left. However, half an hour later my coworker called me and said the panel was showing a trouble on the panel. So I drove back, found I wired up a horn circuit wrong, and rewired it. Sat there for about 20 minutes to make sure the panel stayed clear, and left. Needless to say, I had wired it incorrectly again, and the trouble didnt show up till another 20 minutes later. My co worker went back and rewired it right.

I had another one in a hotel, where there wasn’t a disable switch for the elevator recall, instead there were 2 wires from the relay for the recall that were stripped in the panel, and all you had to do was twist the wires together with a tie wrap or something. Which is pretty dangerous considering there is most likely 110V on those lines, & the fact you could leave the wires twisted there without the panel telling you its disabled.

Actually they do have walk test, but it has to be programmed in. A technician told me that.

Early ones would turn on all NACs for a second about once a day. Having to completely disassemble the front to change the printed zone labels. No network download to the annunciators, although there is a slow work-around. Having to put EOLs on the class A return IDC zone terminals. But mainly the CPUs.

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I don’t like that the database of the EST panel can’t be uploaded all . So it’s hard to do things about old project .

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It is possible on the QuickStart. I have done it. Just not the EST2/EST3 and other brand variants like MIR2. QuickStart can also be programmed without need for a license key. But yeah, that’s about all it has going for it. Almost all I have found in the field are now glitching in some way.