FireFighter Product Overview

Hi, DLYers. Joe here from Alarm Grid, and today we're going to talk about the FireFighter 345. Now, the FF 345, what it does is it allows you to integrate a smoke detector or a smoke enunciation system into your main alarm system with this intermediate device. They make a few different models of this and they make them for different frequencies also. For example, you can buy them that work on the 319.5 megahertz frequency, which will work with most Simon Interlogix panels. You can also get them that work on the 345 megahertz frequency. This will work on most wireless Honeywell panels. And they also make them on the 433 megahertz frequency, which will work on most wireless DSC panels, at least the newer ones. Now, the devices, they come in two different models-- there's the rectangle version and then there's the circular version. The rectangular version is the older unit and this is only going to pick up the temporal three pulse from a smoke detector. The newer version, the round version, this is also version 1.5, this is not only going to pick up the temporal three pulse from a smoke detector, but it's also going to pick up the temporal four pulse from a CO detector if you program it to do so. The way that these work is that let's say you have an existing smoke in your home and then you have your alarm system. Now let's say the existing smoke is a standalone smoke detector that works on battery and there's no way for it to be programmed into your main alarm system. You purchase the 345 that's going to work with your alarm system and you mount it six inches from the smoke detector. What this does is there's a little microphone inside of the unit that's going to listen for that smoke detector going off, and when it hears it two times in a row-- so beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep-- this will activate, send a fire signal to your main alarm system, and it will trigger a fire alarm. The nice thing about the new one is that this one unit can listen for smoke and CO alarms. So if you have a combination smoke/CO unit and you mount this next to it, depending on which alarm is going off on that unit, this will be able to send that signal back to the system and give you the appropriate alarm for what is going on in the home. There's a couple of things though that you want to be careful of when you do mount these in your house or location. One is that you want to try to mount it near a smoke detector that isn't clustered around a whole bunch of other smokes so it doesn't get confused from all the noise that's going on. An example of this is let's say you have a hallway and you have a bunch of bedrooms in the hallway and you have smokes going all the way down the hallway. You're probably better off putting this on either end of the hallway as opposed to right in the middle so it doesn't get confused. Now, there's some problems that you may run into. If you have battery-operated smokes, they're not all going to go off at the same time. So you have to work and figure out which one is the most important one or ones that you want to install your FF 345 next to. Keep in mind, you can have more than one of these on the system. So if you have battery-operated smokes around the house, you can certainly install as many of these as you like. In newer homes, many homes now have a hard wired smoke loop in the house. What this means is that they have smoke detectors that are connected by a wire and they work on 120 volts, and when one goes off, they'll all go off. In that situation, you really don't have to put this near one that is near a bedroom, as it's going to be able to get triggered by any of the smokes as they're all going to trigger when one of them goes off, and you can install it wherever you'd like. There's also tamper and low battery supervision on this device so that if somebody opens it or if the battery gets low, it's going to send that signal to your alarm system and you'll be able to resolve the issue. It's not going to monitor for any issues with the smoke detectors though that you mount it next to. So you will want to check the smoke detectors that are in the house just to make sure they're working, that the battery is good periodically, because this is not going to do that for you. Lastly, on the FF 345, they have a test mode. If you take the battery out and then reinstall it, for an hour this device will be able to get triggered by one temporal three pulse or one temporal four pulse. That means that when the smoke detector goes off-- beep, beep, beep-- that's going to activate the unit and send that signal to your system to trigger the fire alarm. As I said before, in normal operation, it has to hear two rounds of that for it to actually trigger. Oh, one more important thing about the device. It won't work on voice enunciated smoke or CO detectors. So if you have any smoke or COs or if you're going to purchase new ones, if there's voice enunciation on them, make sure that you can turn that off or have it only do the temporal pulse or else it won't work with this device. A lot of the newer smoke and COs that do have voice enunciation will do the temporal three pulse once and then say smoke alarm or fire alarm or something of the sort. That won't work with the FF345 and it's an important thing to keep in mind. If you have any questions about the FF345-- how they work, where to install them-- feel free to head over to our website, www.AlarmGrid.com. Send us an email to support@AlarmGrid.com or give us a call at 888-818-7728. If you enjoyed the video, feel free to subscribe. And if you want to get notified when we post future videos, hit the notification button below and it'll send you an update when we do so. Thanks for watching and have a great day.