Introducing the Pertronic F220

Pertronic Industries is pleased to introduce the New Zealand version of its flagship product, the Pertronic F220 analogue addressable fire alarm control panel. The F220 has been an enormous success in Australia. The New Zealand version will go into production during the first quarter of 2020.

The F220 is the successor to the Pertronic F120A. Our new panel has been successful in small, medium, and large Australian fire systems. Three years after its introduction, Australian installers and end-users still get excited about the F220’s superior information presentation and processing capabilities. Designed around a powerful, cutting-edge RISC micro-processor and a large colour LCD display, the Pertronic F220 makes light work of tasks that are too hard for even the best of yesterday’s fire alarm panels.

Information and controls right where they’re needed

The F220 provides rapid access to exactly the right information and controls. Every fire panel, remote display unit, and remote control unit in the F220 product range has a big, seven-inch, 800 x 480 pixel colour display. Colour-coded default screens clearly show the system status at a glance, even from a distance. There’s no need to go right up close to the panel; There’s no need to drill down through menus. Wide colourcoded bars on the default screens identify the status. The green bars top and bottom of the F220’s Normal screen show that the system is free of alarms, defects, and isolations. Yellow bars indicate that one or more fire system devices have been isolated. Red bars on the screen mean Alarm.

Events such as alarms, defects, and device isolations are presented in well-organised, logical formats such as the Isolate List and Alarm List screens. And to make it easy to deal with practical situations, each screen provides instant access to relevant control functions. For example, from the list of isolated devices, you can reenable any device with a couple of key-strokes.

Installers often report that the F220’s Defect List screen saves time when testing a new system. This organised list makes it easy to find and fix problems such as detectors not properly plugged in.

The Alarm List presents all the alarms in chronological order. This simplifies the potentiallystressful task of dealing with multiple alarms.

A front service Pertronic F220 with zone index for the New Zealand fire system market.

Image supplied.

Advanced processing power

These capabilities are possible because of the F220’s advanced information-processing power. The panel master-board has a 32-bit advanced RISC machine (ARM) running at 456 megahertz, a Linux operating system, and more than 400 megabytes of total storage.

The F220/Net2 network card has its own 32-bit ARM processor, with the same resources as the master-board. In addition, the F220 Keyboard/Display is powered by yet another 32-bit ARM processor, this one running at 64 megahertz. That’s a giant leap forward. Our previous flagship, the F120A, had a four-line x 40-character display, 10 megahertz 16-bit Intel processor, and just 512 kilobytes of total memory.

The F220 has proven economic in projects ranging from small one or two loop systems up to the largest fire system networks. The F220/Net2 network has been tested and approved under Australian fire alarm standards with 130 networked F220 fire alarm control panels. In real life, the largest F220/Net2 network is the 97-node system in Sydney’s twin 5.5 kilometre M4 East motorway tunnels.

Pertronic analogue addressable fire alarm systems protect many of Australia’s high-rise buildings. An interesting recent example is Sydney’s 26-storey Arc by Crown Group apartment building. A single F220 in this building monitors more than 800 heat and smoke detectors. Complex cause and effect logic in the F220 controls automatic windows and a roof over a courtyard as part of the building’s smoke management system. Larger high-rise buildings such as Melbourne’s 76-storey Victoria One apartment building usually have at least two networked F220s: One in the basement or ground floor, and one half-way up. A Pertronic Net2 Network Control Unit gives full system control from a single point.

Low-rise facilities such as prisons and shopping centres often have multiple networked F220s. For example, Queensland’s Capricornia Correctional Centre has a network of twelve Pertronic F220 panels. Most of these F220s are small panels with less than four analogue addressable loop circuits. The entire system was installed under live operational conditions, with fire protection switched from the old panels to the Pertronic system in stages. Capricornia Correctional Centre is now undergoing a major expansion which will include eight additional F220 panels. Adding new panels to an existing F220/Net2 is easily done, because the F220 product range was designed with expandability in mind.

Bear Cottage is a children’s hospice in Sydney.

The Pertronic F220 fire alarm control panel at Bear Cottage is typical of the hundreds of F220 systems now protecting occupants of smaller facilities throughout Australia.

A Pertronic F220 fire detection, alarm, and suppression panel at Capricornia Correctional Centre in Queensland, with ten deluge controls.

A Selection of Australian F220 Fire Alarm Control Panels

This weatherproof 28U Pertronic F220 fire panel is one of 79 similar panels installed in Sydney’s M4E motorway tunnels as part of a 97-panel F220/Net2 system. The panel is built directly into a 28U Pertronic IP65 weatherproof equipment cabinet.

Programming Pertronic F220 Systems

Quick and easy configuration programming has been central to the F220’s success. Our Windows-based fire system programming application, Pertronic FireUtils, makes it easy to programme any F220 system, no matter how big or small. FireUtils provides matrix-like grids for editing fire system objects such as analogue addressable loops, deluge control blocks, fire fan control blocks, and cause and effect logic. With spreadsheet-like drag-and-drop editing tools, and practical, easy-to-read screen layouts, FireUtils keeps everything as simple as possible. For example, if you want to programme a remote network display to display information only about alarms from certain F220 panels, and ignore all other fire system information, you simply tick a few boxes on the network configuration screen.

At Sydney’s Arc by Crown Group apartment building, windows overlooking an arcade through the middle of the building are controlled by a complex cause-and-effect system in the Pertronic F220 fire panel. If the F220 detects a smoke alarm in specified parts of the building, it will close the windows.

The ability to quickly update an F220’s configuration has won Pertronic Industries a lot of new customers in Australia. Uploading a new or revised configuration file to a single, stand-alone F220 panel is practically instantaneous. On larger systems, with dozens of panels spread over a large area, FireUtils has become practically indispensable. A network of thirty-four big F220 panels can be updated in less than a minute. FireUtils uploads a complete new configuration for our R&D department’s 130-panel F220/Net2 network, over a single Ethernet connection, in less than five minutes.

Part of the cause-and-effect logic in the Pertronic F220 at Sydney’s Arc by Crown Group apartment building, as displayed graphically on the IOTrace screen in Pertronic FireUtils.

Conclusion

The F220 delivers real benefits throughout the product life-cycle. Installers save time during testing and commissioning, because it is so easy to find and correct installation problems, and because changing the system configuration is so quick.

Building managers consistently report that the F220 makes it easy to deal with unwanted smoke alarms. The F220’s well-organised lists and reports save time and money for maintenance and service companies too.

Whether you’re an installer commissioning a new system, or a fire-fighter trying to make sense of multiple alarm signals, the F220 gives just the right balance between the big picture and practical detail. We are proud to be launching the Pertronic F220 at the Fire NZ 2019 conference and trade show.