Internet Portal Remotely Monitors Royal Albert Hall Fire System

Advanced Electronics Ltd.
July 1, 2009

The Royal Albert Hall has installed intelligent control panels from Advanced Electronics as part of their recent fire system upgrade. The six networked Mx-4400 panels, supplied and commissioned by Leader Systems UK Ltd, have been fitted with ipGateway to allow the system to be monitored from anywhere on the internet using a standard web browser.

ipGateway is a fully interactive internet portal that presents the user with a detailed description and current status of the fire system. The information displayed on the user’s web browser is updated in real time, ensuring that any change to the status of the system is clearly identified and reported to the user as it happens. The ability to remotely interrogate the fire system is a valuable benefit for both the end user and Leader Systems, who can identify problems before they actually happen, saving time and money by reducing unnecessary journeys to site. The fire system can be configured to send maintenance and status information as a text message or e-mail.

The six Mx-4400 4-loop panels are connected to 1000+ Apollo Discovery and Xpander devices. In addition, there is condition monitoring of all dampers via a bespoke design LED mimic panel. Overall monitoring and management of the system is achieved with Advanced’s PC-NeT Graphics software, which runs on a standard PC connected to the fire network. It is a highly configurable system allowing the use of site maps, images and text to display a visual representation of the fire system to the end user. Any device can be isolated or its analogue value obtained by simply clicking an icon on the screen. Comprehensive event and alarm history logs can be viewed and reports easily generated for analysis and auditing.

The Mx-4400 panels have sophisticated cause and effect programmability and powerful I/O capability. This is demonstrated by the implementation of a simple mode change facility. Royal Albert Hall’s maintenance team can change the mode of specific detectors during a performance via a simple keyswitch connected to one of the panels.