Chiron Security Communications has been awarded the highest standard accreditation of EN54-21/CPR for the entire IRIS Touch 4-NG series, Chiron’s high-end Alarm over IP diallers. Adopting a strict quality management policy, Chiron has always been at the forefront of obtaining approvals for its products such as EN and VdS. This new accreditation is of major importance to the company in terms of new market segment development and will enable Chiron to help its customers to better and easier comply with insurers’ regulations.
What exactly is the European Standard EN54-21/CPR for fire systems?
This European Standard specifies requirements, test methods and performance criteria against which the effectiveness and reliability of routing equipment capable of transmitting fire alarm and/or fault warning signals for use with fire detection and fire alarm systems installed in buildings can be assessed. The routing equipment is designed to allow the system to function in accordance with the requirements of this European Standard. It also provides for the evaluation of conformity of the equipment to the requirements of this standard.
To be compliant with the Construction Products Regulation (CPR), products always need to be tested connected to a panel and prove they are communicating. The IRIS Touch 4-NG series has been tested as part of an overall fire system and has been approved EN54-21 throughout Europe for the fire market.
IRIS Touch 4-NG series fire panel integration
Signalling for fire alarms has traditionally only been applied to two events, ‘Fire’ or ‘Fault’. This provides very little information to the monitoring centre on the best way to action the alarm.
Most fire panels can generate a great deal more information (e.g. id of sensor activated, zone) on a local serial port. This is normally done in a panel specific manner with the protocols differing from one manufacturer to another and therefore not in a format recognised by the monitoring centre.
For some time IRIS Touch diallers have supported the serial ‘ESPA’ pager protocol interface which many fire panels offer and use to signal such additional information. The IRIS Touch dialler converts the ESPA messages from the panel into standard SIA format and sends these to the monitoring centre with additional information to the ‘Fire’ or ‘Fault’ signal.
This concept has been extended in the V2.14 firmware of the IRIS Touch NG range so that serial event messages generated by Honeywell Notifier and HHL fire panels can be handled in the same way and converted to standard SIA format for the monitoring centre.
Chiron's CEO, Willem L. Harthoorn, comments: “Chiron recognised the need of the Fire Security Industry for reliable Alarm over IP transmission. We therefore significantly invested in both development and applicable certification for our IRIS Touch 4-NG series. These efforts have already resulted in winning a major project in Germany. We will continue to implement serial fire panel protocols when we’re asked to do so and there is an economical justification for this.”
