Well, what were the odds? It happened again (sort of). I was eating lunch in the food court, and then the fire alarm goes off! I scramble to get out my camera and after I turn it on, I grab my lunch and get out (forgetting my book bag was under the table – oops).
Well, after we get outside, they tell us it was NOT a drill, and they don’t know what set it off, so we had to wait for the fire department to arrive and inspect the place. After finding out there’s no fire, they silence the alarm. The system, like all the rest on the campus, is programmed for “audible silence”, so the strobes were still flashing after the alarm stopped. However, wanting to get back to their lunch (not to mention the warm building) people start to make their way back in. But, the UPD officer on the scene forces them back out. Well, as it turns out, for some reason, they couldn’t get the system to reset (it was acting funny from the start – the “Alarm Silenced” LED was on, even though it was never silenced), so they decide to let everyone back in anyway.
They fiddled with it for the next 20-25 minutes, and they even set if off again briefly (they didn’t make us evacuate, though). After finally figuring out a smoke detector was the problem (it went bad), they were finally able to get the system to reset.
Duration : 0:1:3
Clip of a fire drill in progress. The alarm you hear is a Simplex 4100 fire alarm system; signal coding is march time.
Test of a Simplex 4002 fire alarm system. Signal code is March Time.
This is a pull station test at the same school as shown with the “Old School” IBM fire panel. You will see when the pull station is opened the alarm rings four rounds and then stops. The 8″ tan bell is the one you hear ringing. 
This is literally an “Old School” fire alarm system. It is the original fire alarm system that was installed when the school was built in 1955. This thing is a workhorse.
a demo of my mini fire alarm system. Devices hooked up are a Fire-Lite MS-4424B alarm control panel, Simplex 4251-20 pull, Simplex 4904-9101 remote strobe (4.5 Cd) and BRK 2824 smoke detector. This demo shows how a fire alarm system is activated by smoke. The beeping you hear is not the smoke detector, it’s the panel’s piezo indicating there’s an alarm condition. I used a burning insense stick to activate the smoke detector. The reason why I blew into it torwards the end was to make sure there was no smoke inside the detector so it would not trigger a false alarm. This system set up is a work in progress. Also what you see here is a privately owned set up, do not attempt on a public system.
Testing my Wheelock EHS-DL1 Horn/Strobe with my Fire-Lite BG-12L.
Video clip demostrating alarm activation, and alarm acknowledge, silence and system reset functions from the remote annunciator.
Testing my Simplex 2903+2901-9806 horn/light combo. The flashing at the begining and the end were accidently done by me while hooking and unhooking it to the batteries. The light bulb is basicly a flashlight bulb.
Fire Safety. Please watch the video to your left.