One such collaboration has been with Johnson Controls, a story which we shared on our social channels earlier in the year. Our test lab at DT HQ is home to over 600 detectors, with 400 installed on the ceiling and a further 200 in archives. After JCI supplied us with the latest detectors, it was in this lab that we carried out initial testing, and with JCI covering multiple brands, it meant working with many detectors, both legacy and current, from brands such as Simplex and Zettler.
Compatibility with JCI detectors was two-fold for the Testifire XTR2 project. Firstly, we had to ensure that the generation of the smoke and heat stimuli was optimised to ensure fast detector activation times. Secondly, we had to ensure that Testifire XTR2 could identify each detector’s red LED to confirm a successful test and record a digital record of the functional test. With many detectors, come many different designs with LEDs not always positioned in the same place, it was this kind of testing that led to the 21 sensors being built within the Testifire XTR2 cup.
During the product development phase, we regularly met with JCI, these meetings started at the initial concept stage and went all the way through to field trials with BETA versions of the product. With Testifire XTR2 launching a new era in detector testing, there was always plenty to talk about during these sessions – with demonstrations of both the app and cloud portal, as well as the tester itself.
