'Conventional' Fire Alarm Systems, in their various forms, have been around for many years and have changed little in that time in terms of technology; although design and reliability have improved significantly. However, Conventional Systems are a well-proven technology protecting many hundreds of thousands of properties worldwide. A Conventional Fire Alarm System is often the natural choice for smaller systems or where budget constraints exist.

In a typical Conventional Fire Alarm System the 'intelligence' of the system resides solely within the Fire Alarm Control Panel, which receives a trigger signal from a Conventional Detector or Call Point and in turn, signals the condition to other devices such as alarm sounders and remote signaling equipment.

Conventional detectors are normally connected to the Fire Control Panel via dedicated circuits, each circuit protecting a designated 'Zone' or 'Area' of the building (the maximum size of which will often be governed by local standards). Detectors have two states, Normal and Alarm.

The Fire Control Panel will normally be arranged in a set number of Zones or Circuits, e.g. 2, 4, 8 etc. and have 2 separate sounder circuits.