Derrick Hall, Director of Sales and Marketing for Kentec Electronics talks through the innovative Taktis fire alarm control panel and its impact on fire detection
It’s time to take another look at Taktis – Kentec’s most powerful and sophisticated analogue addressable fire alarm control panel. When it comes to redundancy, the latest version ensures continuous reliable operation.
Fire alarm control panels play a vital role in ensuring the safety of building occupants through their ability to quickly respond to fire incidents. Redundancy is key in ensuring uninterrupted functionality, safeguarding against potential failures, meeting stringent safety regulations and ensuring the continuous monitoring of potential fire incidents.
The critical signal paths of a control panel are the lifeline of fire detection systems. Any disruption to power supplies, communication modules and control circuits can have catastrophic consequences, making redundancy an essential feature to mitigate the risk of signal path failures. Fire alarm control panels need to comply with several different standards and EN 54-2 states that a system fault should not result in the loss of more than 512 detectors and their associated mandatory functions.
This is straightforward when you have a single control panel with less than 512 devices connected, but have you considered a scenario where multiple panels are networked with greater than 512 devices involved?
A university campus, multi-level commercial building or hotel, for example, can have many thousands of fire detection devices with multiple fire alarm control panels. However, if a cause and effect is determined by a single critical signal path, which is damaged so much that the signal does not get to the fire alarm control panel that is the primary indication unit that alerts, for instance, an alarm receiving centre, then that single point of contact is lost. This would potentially mitigate the effectiveness of far more than 512 detectors.
The high levels of redundancy found in Taktis control panels ensures that if one component fails, another takes over, guaranteeing continuous monitoring and rapid response to potential incidents. The latest version of Taktis incorporates multiple back-up microprocessors to eliminate the possibility of a single point of failure with the main microprocessor. Even in a worst-case scenario where its full colour, seven-inch 800×480 touchscreen graphical display fails, Taktis will continue to operate in reduced functionality mode, the loops will continue to operate and if a detection device is activated, the panel is still notified.
Kentec is working to make network redundancy even more robust. In most situations a control panel network operates as a ring. If just one panel fails, the others will continue to operate but if there is a more than a single break network integrity could be compromised.
Kentec is looking at ways to address this by incorporating a redundant signal path to mitigate risk, enhance fault tolerance and ensure that alarms are received. This will exceed the requirements of EN 54-21, which addresses components of a fire detection and alarm system that are used for the transmission of signals from devices to the control panel(s). This proactive approach to redundancy enhances the overall reliability of a fire protection system and contributes to the prevention of false alarms or system failures.
For further information please visit https://kentec.co.uk/taktis/#connect_section or contact sales@kentec.co.uk
To read the full article, see our last issue here.
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