Introduction

• A control Panel
• One or more detectors
• One or more signalling devices - usually an external sounder

Hybrid Alarm Systems

• True Hybrid - These systems use a hard-wired control panel which is capable of adding a full function wireless expander. By full function we mean that the wireless expander connects to the control panel as a number of addressed zones. For example the Scantronic Homelink 55 is such a system where the Control Panel is the Scantronic 9751 and the RF16 expander. This results in 8 hard-wired zones and 16 wireless zones. Each zone (hard-wired and wireless) can be individually identified, and thus any fault can be traced to a particular zone. Compare this to the system below.

• Hard-wired with wireless added - These systems comprise a conventional hard-wired system with the addition of a wireless receiver. The wireless receiver receives transmissions from wireless detectors. The output from the wireless receiver is connected to an unused zone on the hard-wired control panel. In this case a fault on any wireless detector will show as a fault on the particular hard-wired zone. It should be noted that a wireless receiver can be connected to any hard-wired control panel either at initial installation or retrospectively.

  A typical receiver is the Visonic Powermax Plus MCR304 Receiver (868MHz). This allows up to 10 wirelss detectors from the Powermax (868Mhz) range to be added.

• Wireless with Hard-wired added - In this case the control panel is a wireless control panel with hard-wired inputs. For example the Powermax Plus control panel has two hard-wired zones which can be used to connect hard wired detectors. Also note that more than one detectors can be connected to each of the hard-wired zones.

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