The fire alarm panel is the central element of any fire alarm system. All devices (detectors, call points, sounders, etc.) are connected to the fire panel, which typically provides power to them and information is relayed back and forth to determine whether there is a fire and if so activate an appropriate warning.
If you're not too sure which fire alarm panels are suitable for your needs, there are several factors that should be considered. Any fire alarm system that has been designed to the British standard BS 5839 will divide the property up into zones (physical areas which can be identified by a zone number used to locate the fire). Every fire alarm panel will have a zone capacity and this must be sufficient to accommodate however many zones your system needs.
Secondly do you know what type of system you need to install? Broadly speaking there are 3 types of fire panel; conventional, 2 wire or addressable and each is summarised as follows;
Conventional fire alarm panels are considered the most basic and economical in terms of the equipment itself. Detectors and call points for each zone are connected in series, which ends at the last device and terminates at the panel (radial circuit). Warning devices (sounders and flashers) must be connected to a separate sounder circuit. In the event of a fire the panel will simply show which zone this has occurred in (it is worth considering that a single zone may contain up to 32 detectors).
2 wire fire alarm panels can be thought of as an evolution of conventional panels. To overcome the additional cabling needed for the separate sounder circuit, 2 wire panels allow any type of device (detectors, call points or sounders) to be connected in series on the same wire. However, alarm indication is still limited to only showing which zone the fire is in.