Honeywell’s 5800COMBO Wins SIA New Product Showcase Award

Last week at ISC West, Honeywell received a SIA new product award for the newly released 5800COMBO. The Security Industry Association (SIA) rewards products that balance industry innovation with false alarm prevention. The 5800COMBO encapsulates this criteria almost perfectly. This is the first professionally monitored, fully UL listed wireless heat, smoke and CO combination detector in the industry. This feat alone is quite an accomplishment. The technology packed into the device makes this product even more deserving of this award.

Honeywell did not just integrate standard smoke, heat and CO detection into a single detector housing. They did much more. The individual technologies inside the COMBO are fairly standard. Photoelectric smoke detection, fixed temp (135F degrees) heat detection and electrochemical CO sensing. There is a new infrared (IR) technology designed to pick up ambient light levels and flame flickers. Also the CO detector does have a longer than average life expectancy of 10 years. Everything else is fairly common across other non-monitored combination detectors on the market. So what is it that makes the 5800COMBO so special?

(Photo: Honeywell's booth at ISC West just after the award was given by SIA.)

There are 3 programmable zones: smoke (loop 1 with serial), low temp (loop 3 with serial) and CO (loop 1 with serial + 1 on last digit). The low temp and CO zones are standard and only rely on a single sensing element to trip that zone on the alarm system. The smoke zone is much more advanced since this is the most common zone type for false alarms on these types of life safety detectors. This is especially the case in residential environments. It is the "multi-criteria algorithm" that sets this product apart. Yes Honeywell did it again and engineered a state of the art sensor.

The smoke zone requires two of the four sensing elements to be tripped in order to trigger a fire alarm at the alarm system and dial out to a central station. The four elements are photoelectric smoke detection, fixed high temp, CO and the new IR technology mentioned earlier. The first element must be photoelectric smoke detection. Then any of the other three elements in combination with smoke detection will trigger an immediate alarm and report if the system is monitored. If there is only airborne particulate detected the COMBO requires at least 5 minutes of alarm level contact before triggering.

This dual technology of sorts makes the 5800COMBO extremely versatile and less prone to false alarms. That means better protection for your property and more importantly life safety for anyone within the protected premise. False alarms are not only an issue for local authorities. End users are seeing increasingly higher fines per false alarm across the country. That means by using devices like the COMBO will potentially save you money in the event that your local authorities deliver fines for false dispatches.

All in all, we are very excited about the added value of the 5800COMBO to the Honeywell 5800 series line up. The barrier to monitoring smoke, heat and CO just lowered with the introduction of this simple to install, multi-faceted product. We believe that every Alarm Grid customer should have every form of life safety equipped in this device. If you do not already we recommend adding it today!

Note: This is a 5800 series wireless sensor that requires a compatible RF receiver. To confirm panel compatibility you can contact us at support@alarmgrid.com. There is a list of panels mentioned in the product description as well.