fire – TruXter Tech

About the New “Hoverboards” – Rant

Posted on2015/12/282015/12/30AuthorTruXterLeave a comment

So I saw this 19-20 year old dude with his dreadlocks weave thing in his hair, sputtering down the street blocking traffic at like 1 mile an hour. all I could see was his head and shoulders over the car in front of me. He looked to be about 7 feet. His head wasn’t bobbing like a person walking, and having long hair. His hair wasn’t swinging at all. I figured he must be on a unicycle and just poor at it,because he wasn’t going fast at all.
As I passed the guy I saw he was on this device that had only two wheels. One on either side of his feet. He was just standing on it and I assumed he was rolling down hill. Down a very shallow hill. He was just puttering.. Stupid slow.
I get home and forget about the thing. Until I see it again. My girlfriend is riding with me and she says ” Oh look a hoverboard”. Shocked I look around only to see some guy, on that same stupid thing. I said ” That’s not a hoverboard, that’s a skate thingy”. She looks at me like an idiot and we don’t discuss it again.
A week or two goes by and now it’s everywhere. Hoverbaord this, hoverboard that.
The thing does not hover.
The thing is not a board.

At best it’s a motorized skate stick.
A roller stick.

Now the thing is catching on fire randomly, and it is getting reported in all major news that this $400 skate stick is is a fiery piece of crap.
So now every parent has to buy their kid a skate stick. For Christmas.

So far the only thing I see that skate stick thing good for is… is a smooth ride so guys don’t mess up their man weaves.

Fire Alarm Template To Make Design Easy

Posted on2014/05/022017/01/23AuthorTruXter16 Comments

If you want to just skip ahead to the pricing
fire alarm template pricing
For a few years now I have been working on a fire alarm template. Actually a couple templates. I recently added a fire sprinkler template and an access control template.
In the templates I have tons of tools that I have created. They make my job much easier. I am continuously adding more features to the templates. The end goal is some day to own my own fire alarm company and be able to hire people who are in need of a job, yet have no skills. I can then hand them a computer with autodesk/autocad on it and turn the person into a fire alarm designer and I won’t have to worry about much to teach them and the jobs go as flawlessly as I can make them go.

Here’s the first version of this template from 2009

and here is the fire alarm template version from 2013

and here is the fire alarm template version from 2015 (Videos showing function) <– NEW
Also please notice I added a fire sprinkler template and an access control template with symbols.

Features of the fire alarm template
If you look click this image of a section of the fire alarm title block, everything that says “select one” has a drop down menu to select through the options I regularly have. Such as AHJ, Sales Person, Job type (new construct,add to existing) and so on.

I have also created Attributes for the site title and the address.

If you look at the fire alarm legend your will see I have parts numbers listed along with part count for relocated devices, existing devices and new devices. Also I made sure to show the little menu so that you can see when you click of the parts numbers of say …. for a Fire alarm Horn/Strobe you will see the little globe pop up next to the pointer telling you that you can click on it and get taken to the manufacturer’s website to download the cutsheets for the device. This cutting out the time it normally takes you to look up the devices on the web and find the cut sheets for each fire alarm device. Every place you see the word “select” there is a menu of items I regularly use pertaining to that mart of the legend. No sense in typing that stuff with every fire alarm I design.

Cool feature I added in Autocad/autodesk for fire alarm design

The goal is to be able to click the legend and a menu will come up asking you what vendor or parts distributor like genesis,system sensor, or firelite etc. you select one and the legend changes to the correct parts numbers. Then click the numbers on the left (parts count) and a drop down comes up of 0-1000. So if you have 43 pull stations , you go to the 00 to the left of the pull station in the legend and click once for the menu, then scroll to the number 43 and you now have your count as accurate as you need. Also the devices are on separate layers, this way if I want to not show my smoke detectors in the drawing, I just turn that layer off. It removes the smoke detectors from the drawing and the legend, and the theory of operation and the parts count. Kind of cool.

Now, there is a function that uses excel that I have been working on and “Table” command that is in progress. The goal to so that when you select your notification devices such as strobes or horn/strobes your counts change for your battery calculations. Yes you still have to manually do a few things to make this work so right now, that isn’t much worth mentioning unless someone has a better option they would like to share with me

I currently have three custom fire alarm templates that I use regularly and in their current state, It is BLISS. So much stuff you have to memorize about fire alarm design is a non issue while using these templates. Depending on task, location, manufacture and a few other issues, I will decide which template I need most for the job.

Many of the blocks and data links and attributes I have added to the fire alarm templates, are to remove human error, some are for my own security. Such as print time, creation date designer “Field” entries. Say if someone comes to me and asks me questions, I can see what date the drawing was printed and who’s computer printed the drawings. This is for my security and prevents people from tampering with my designs, and getting away with it. Yes I have worked in a pretty cut-throat office with people who tampered with my designs. These are great features.

Another helpful feature is the option to insert devices anywhere in a drawing with just a simple insert command. Then just hit the enter button as many times as you need to drop the same device. Example:
I typically start my design with initiating devices. Pull stations first so I just simply type “insert” or “i” and hit enter. Then a window pops up asking what I want to insert I type in “pull” and hit enter. and boop, a pull station as at the end of my pointer. Now I just find a place that the pull station needs to go and click that spot.. There it is… pull station. I notice a few more spots, so I just hit the enter button (repeats last command) little window pops up again, this time “pull” is already in there, so I just hit enter again. From here out with the pull stations I repeat this ; enter-enter-click, enter-enter-click, enter-enter-click, enter-enter-click. By doing that I have just placed 4 more pullstations in the time it usually takes someone to place 1 pull station.
Like this:

The Template can be found for sale right now at my other site under fire alarm templates and blocks

Fire Alarm Design Made Easier

Posted on2013/06/062017/03/04AuthorTruXter7 Comments

I have put together a collection of great homemade tools that I have been building for fire alarm design in Cad since 2007.
Over the years these tools have evolved and gotten better looking with deeper detail, yet increased design speed while keeping a nice uniform appearance to my fire alarm designs.|
The videos and pictures below are some of the earlier on functions. I have created so much more and still maintain a (better than) fair price for such a large collection of design tools.
Click the link below if you want to just skip right to the tools, or continue reading the article to get a better understanding. More recent videos are in the link to the fire alarm design tools website.
Fire Alarm drafting files for sale

Detail

This Fire Alarm Template, along with all of the addons mentioned, there are also a few items and hidden gems. Such noting in the printed fire alarm lay out, you will see original date that each specific job is started, and the date it was printed. This protects the fire alarm company and the fire alarm designer. Gives the designer proof of date of file creation and print out, if there is ever any wonder if someone else has messed with the fire alarm design. at the same time, you will also see the name of the person who printed the drawings. So if Dave grabs Bill’s file and edits fire alarm system and prints this fire alarm system out, Dave’s name will be on the printed file along with that date. If Bill goes back and prints that fire alarm layout, the drawings will now have bill’s name back on the drawings. Where this protects the company, is the date of file creation and date of printout. if you add that to the date your fire alarm drawings are submitted to plans review plus date of notification of acceptance, you have further support of your contract if the customer has any issues with your productivity time.

Titleblock

There is also a location with in the fire alarm template, with in a block that allows you to insert project numbers and permit numbers. The intention of this option is permitting purposes. County/City/State project numbers and building permit numbers to be specific. I did this for the occasional issue that would come up when our Plans and permitting department would have the random act of luck, and just not have everything with him. I make sure he has the permit number and project number in the exact same spot every time.
Also there is a spot to type in the AHJ. City/County/State information goes there. There is also a spot to note if the building is fully sprinkled (fire sprinkler existing) or not. Some jurisdictions this is needed. So when Permitting guy is at the plans review office, the answer to that question is readily available.

For organization efforts, there is a location to add the salesperson’s name. For the occasional moment when no one knows who sold a specific job, and no one wants to claim it. That person’s name is right there on the fire alarm drawings locked in a block. helps prevent many disputes, and possible conflicts of interest.

Candela

The candela tool is made for ceiling mount and wall mount visual notification devices. So a fire alarm designer can know exactly what candela setting the device should be. This helps with battery calculations and voltage drops.

Also allows you to not have a mess load of full on technicians at a location and allows the chance for a trainee/helper to get his hands on experience with less people standing over him while he works. This was to reduce failure at plan review in the city/county/state. This turned out to have many benefits for the company. This allowed us to work on a lower budget and kept us all free from common errors.

Legend
The legend has a space to show device count for new,existing and relocated devices. Helps with ordering. If there are certain devices in the legend that you are not installing with this design, you can just look for this symbol’s name in the layers menu and just click the light bulb to the left and turn that device off. This also helps if you have to make major edits( but the “already placed” fire alarm symbols will be fine where they are), you just turn them off for a moment, make your edit, then turn them back on.
If you made it this far here’s some free samples
Cad blocks

Gimp Brushes

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***THERE IS AN UPDATED VERSION OF THIS FIRE ALARM TEMPLATE
and here is the fire alarm template version from 2015 (Videos showing function) <– NEW***
Also please notice I added a fire sprinkler template and an access control template with symbols.
Please like and share this post.

2009 , I created this post about a fire alarm autocad file I was giving away. I was steadily making changes to the cad file. Adding blocks, different fire alarm symbols, legend, battery calculation spreadsheet, Candela measuring tool, smoke array tool and many functions that just made the job easier. Every time I would get a new idea, I would add it to my template. After much time, I decided that I have way too much work in the thing to just give it away. So if you were not here through the beginning phases, Sorry.
(Here is the 2015 version of the fire alarm template)
Along with a fire sprinkler template and an access control template.

The fire_alarm.dwt file is no longer on the server for free, but here is where you can purchase it. Fire Alarm drafting files for sale.

Security Camera Amazement

Posted on2010/06/23AuthorTruXter

Sitting at a Houston Fire Alarm company who also does security systems, I was participating in a webinar from VideoIQ I was surprised at the bag of gadgets they had to show. Due to the agreement of watching the video I can’t tell you much about the innovative ground breaking networking device about to come. Just be certain it will cut short all of the issues you face in many large facilities. So keep watching their site for an update.
I can however tell you about the cameras they have on their site with between 160 gb of storage up to 500 gb storage. They call it “Zero-bandwidth recording” Some cameras are capable of up to 1080p 30fps true HD recording.

This will be a great future for HiTech Fire using VideoIQ products. This is the type of thing that customer want, but do not want to pay for. It is the stuff they wish they had when their $10 camera takes a fuzzy video and the suspects can not be identified.

Fire Alarm Technology In Houston

Posted on2009/03/30AuthorTruXter

I had some time to sit and listen to the people from HiTech Integrated Solutions, a fire alarm, security and sprinkler company in Houston Texas, about a new product that amazed me. See I was looking for close to home technology that I could locate and not have to quote someone’s website and basically repeat someone who has sales pitched their news article. Soooo I called around and asked if I could ask a few places some questions. Of course I am a bit simple minded when using a telephone book (if it does not have a screen, my imagination is quite limited). So I headed straight to looking for anything with the word tech in it’s name that was located here in Houston. I stumbled upon ” HiTech Integrated solutions” . I called and spoke to a little lady ( I forget her name) and she sent me right through to the owner of the company, Mr Dan Cooley.
I asked Dan If he could give me ideas as to what makes his company High Tech . You could hear the smile in his voice and tiny chuckle when he said ” Well, simply we have nothing in beta, but we do have Focal Point“.
Yeah Right away I hit google. Came across the only documentation on it, pdf .
Seems like no one actually has it yet.
Wait you will see why this is High Tech! ..
This is some sort of Monitoring software for fire alarms and what seems to be security also. I had to call back later and ask a few questions after the conversation with Dan, i got in touch with “Eric” the CEO of HiTech. Eric Told me that The owner of companies that purchase the plan, get this little tablet pc thing , so they themselves can see and monitor alarm activity on their location. This thing is amazing.
It allows the owner see specifically what room and what device is causing the alarm. I am not talking text notification. i mean an actual detailed blueprint of the building with devices properly located in simulation to the real alarm installation. if there is a smoke detector in the far east hall of the building two feet passed the last door on the left, you see that device on the blue print. If that specific device is detecting an alarm, it will notify the Fire Alarm Control Panel, The panel will then activate the “gateway card”, the gateway card (it’s in a pci slot looking thingy, on the control panel) will then notify the Focal Point Tablet Pc ViA Internet connection.
This Tablet Pc has Microsoft Windows Xp on it. Kinda cool. Has a start button and everything.
ok so far this fire alarm company is turning out pretty HiTech.
The signal is sent to the Tablet Pc In data Form and Translated back for the user to activate the images on the screen, showing the owner of the location exactly what device in what location is going into alarm.
So yeah, I had to drive up there, I wanted to see this thing in action.
Looks
Other than the glass being on the face of the machine, it looks really tough.big Rubber bumper pads on the corners and a leather casing that wraps around it. Some big pen stylus with a button on the side of it. I would prefer that large of a stylus anyway, would hate losing the little tiny stylus’ that comes with pdas.
Just had to test the protective casing (evil grin). for starts , I laid it face down to see how much clearance there was, to see if the screen is easy to scratch up. Exactly 1/2 an inch. That’s pretty good. You could lose a pen under there and not scratch the screen..
Weight and feel
I give this about 4-6 pounds of solid durable hard plastic, encasing steel.This thing is not a little mini laptop, this thing is not some little kid’s video game machine . This is made for the working people who are in the dirt (minus the exterior screen). Just keep it in it’s case while you are not using it.

While I was there, I spoke more with Dan Cooley and he showed me how the thing works. Dan walked me to this little tiny demo room they had near the Accounting Manager’s office. In this room they had smoke detectors, Horn/Strobes and plain strobes and multiple pull stations mounted on the wall. Mr Cooley then booted up the tablet pc and showed the scoop. He had this imaginary building drawn up looking like a futuristic castle. Dan then pulled down on the pull station and instantly we got notification that the pull station in the butler’s chamber had been triggered. That was cool. Right then, Dan’s phone rang and I could hear the guy on the end of the line laughing saying “our castle is burning up!” . It was HiTech’s IT guy, 400 miles away in Corpus Christi. He had notification at the exact same time as we did. Very impressive. They seemed like a happy bunch.
So basically the owner of the property will have notice to his tablet, before the monitoring company has a chance to call him, but not faster than the emergency teams can be contacted. i learned that the monitoring company is automated to make all contacts the instant a warning is made. This sounds like it saves lives and property a whole lot faster than just some dude named bubbah saying ‘hey you alright?” .
I have made requests for further interviews. The guys at HiTech said they would be happy to entertain, and may point me straight to Fci, so I can see more HiTech exclusive products before it can be advertised.
Focal Point was an amazing set up, but man, i swear that sounds like it used to be a M$ product.

Job Expands

Posted on2008/02/14AuthorTruXter

New locations coming to our fire alarm company, pretty good stuff.

Our Main office will stay the same same in Houston

We have purchased the property for our new locations and have construction on the way.

Our austin Facility is up and running. This is a great year.

I may even transfer to our San Antonio location as soon as it has ac .. lol Texas is fricken hot. anything to get out of Comcast’s capitolism.

I like to think we are better than all Texas fire alarm companies . I am sure we are the better fire alarm and detection company in Houston .

We are upgrading hundreds of fire alarm control panels (facp) from the 7100. it seems people want the new stuff. Really i am just the bew guy and all so I have no idea why they want the new one that sounds an alarm just the same as the current one that sounds the same alarm. I am sure it’s the ease of use in the new ones that allow the ‘actual owner’ a chance to understand what to do and how to do things, in certain situations. The E3 Facp is the “broad band” panel, The new. Maybe I’m old fashioned and like the old everything, Vintage means ” all bugs have been noted” and you can actually get help from past users< but this planet seems to be full of wealthier people than who are out for the E3 type things in life. Maybe it’s the security of knowing that you have the latest when your establishment is built and it should be good for a while that sales them to go that route. I myself will buy it used and and hack what I can into it’s firmware and make stuff better for me. But that is me. I guess that is me and why i am in the office doing cad instead of out in the field programming the panels. lol.

I mean it’s not like everyone in the world wants to have cool specialized interface that comes at the price of having to reboot every time you do something or what ever expense that modded software usually causes you to have to endure.

it sure would upset a fire marshal if every time he inspects my panel he sees his name on the display. lol

New job!

Posted on2007/12/26AuthorTruXter1 Comment

Probably not the most techy news I have done here but I got a new job working for a company called “HiTech” Fire detection.

A fire alarm and sprinkler company from out in Houston area. The guys here are great and very relaxed. Kinda strange to me because I have never been this comfortable in a work environment.

Well forget all the intros let’s get to the bone. I seem to have been assigned a task of building a website. See this guy Eein that I am working with built a site straight from css and tables and stuff which of course i think is fine and runs circles around the current site . But the owner saw me messing around with some flash ap and just jacking around with my desktop and a web template . Now see, I didn’t really want the task of building the site, simply because if it looks lame to me I will rebuild it , and rebuild it and it will never be finished. I have scrapped it like five times now already.

Well if a site is what they want then a site is what they get. You see though, I like the site that Eein built. It just looks better and is more sound and can be easily updated when needed, and it can be crawled at any time by any search bot. The owners of the site want a flash intro and a flash ap on the page , a flash ap that I really do not want to get buried in. They want a room to navigate in with a fire extinguisher and a sprinkler and a horn strobe and a lighted exit sign above the door in the back. I am sure I can do it, but man I would hate to have to edit it. I can edit it but dang .

You guys tell me what looks better. I really like Eein’s site I have said that from the start and am really against a bloated flash site. The current site is done in mostly Iframes and I really cannot see a bot crawling that which really is not a helpfull thing, ya know? See I know that they are going to be expanding to Austin Dallas and San Antonio real soon, like before the end of 2008. They surely will be wanting an update to the site telling people in those areas that it would not take long for us to get our guys on the site. Now that is becoming bigger work. I am still learning the ropes of the job and if I spend all my time on the clock building a site, when my evaluation period ends and I don’t know anything……. dude I will be screwed.

Looking at hours of photoshop and adobe flash cs3 man,!!!!

The dell machine and adobe flash cs3 and if you could zoom way in, you would see photoshop somewhere in the taskbar. This sad little machine is a trooper though, it is doing all that with only 512 mb ram, minimum for flash install. The 3.2g pentium is the life saver there though.

looks like houston.com has them in the forefront