Fire Alarm Disco Party

Dude about to pull a fire alarm

What should your first instinct be when the room catches on fire? Maybe get out of the room, pull an alarm, and have a disco party? Not your first instinct? Well, this seemed pretty obvious to [Flying-Toast], who retrofitted an old fire alarm to activate a personal disco party.

After finding a fire alarm being sold on eBay, [Flying-Toast] couldn’t resist the urge to purchase one to use for his own purposes. He immediately gutted the life-saving internals to fill the shell with his own concoction of ESP goodness to be activated by the usual fire alarm mechanism. This sends a signal to the next elements of the party system.

Every part of the party system receives this activation signal, including the most important part, the party lights. Using a generic crystal disco ball and its own ESP, the party lights are more than sufficient to create the proper panic party. Of course, what is a party without music? With another ESP board and salvaged speakers, the proper atmosphere can be set right before the venue burns to the ground. The final touch is the additional hacked WIFI relays to turn off the lights in the room.

Priorities are important in emergencies, and that is exactly what [Flying-Toast] gave us with this project. Learning from this expertise is important, but how about learning from the near misses? For some risky decision making, be sure to check out the near nuclear war that was almost caused by a false alarm!

34 thoughts on “Fire Alarm Disco Party

  1. In case of fire, it’s best to go down on your knees because the air above will get hot, and you can breathe for longer when on your knees. This will buy you some extra time to get to an exit.

    So, whether in a real fire or in a party fire: you should always ‘get down’!

    1. So you are saying to “drop it like it’s hot”, “get low” from lil jon and “get down” from the backstreet boys should be on the playlist. That makes sense.

  2. Really bad idea to do this. He’s in the US so he’s opening himself up to some legal trouble by doing this. This will get written up at the building’s next fire alarm inspection. If it looks like a fire alarm device, it’s expected to function as a fire alarm device. It’s required to be removed if it’s not in service. At best the landlord will have some comments and possibly a bill for him. At worst, in the event of an actual fire, if someone tried to use that pullstation to activate the alarm, he’s going to find himself in court facing criminal charges at worst and a lawsuit from the the insurance companies. I work on fire alarm systems for a living and I can tell you 4-hour depositions are not fun and that was with doing things the right way.

    1. heh i was going to say the secret is to install something like this in the sort of environment that never suffers a fire alarm inspection. but the setting sure looks like a large commercial / institutional building doesn’t it? i’d say your comment is a severe understatement if that’s really the context

    2. I am reminded of an advertisement for Pixar’s “Elemental” movie that consisted of a realistic sticker of a life-sized fire extinguisher, with another giant sticker of their fire character looking worried.
      I have no idea how that one made it out of the gate.

    3. He doesn’t say he’s in the US.
      Who says he’s ever going to get a fire alarm inspection. (I would never let anyone in my house for that)
      Who says he’s renting.

      You are making a ton of assumptions based on nothing.

      Be glad someone does something fun.

      1. To be (perhaps un)fair, from his other videos it’s possible to determine which US college this took place at. But I won’t call the building help desk if you won’t!

      2. He’s not in a house.

        After your house burns down the call on who gets to come in or not isn’t yours.

        Does your house or rental property have those rubber bumpers on the interior walls?

        “Be glad someone does something fun.” I felt that way coming in but the pompassery has turned me against him and I want him punished as a standin for BTB.

    4. +1

      Even aside from the legal issues, it’s just a dangerous idea to install a fake fire alarm. Like putting fake life vests on a boat. Or an emergency exit sign that leads to a dead end.

  3. Not to be a wet blanket here, but there’s a chance someone could mistake that for a real fire alarm. You’d hate for a disco party to break out when what you really needed was a fire truck…

    Maybe paint it pink and purple? Put some shiny crystals on it?

    1. The room does not have a real fire alarm pull handle that someone could mistake this with. Those are in the hallway, covered with a shroud to prevent accidental engagement.

      Source: I’m his roommate.

  4. I’m thinking what you do is make this battery operated with some strong magnets or removable tape. Then take it, plus accouterments, to places where you can slap it on the wall, pull a quick prank, and take it down again…

    1. How do you figure someone pulling a fake fire alarm and getting a disco party = fatal?

      I’ve never pulled one, but I certainly don’t expect to be teleported to safety when I do. You still need to evacuate. If it wasn’t there at all, its no more or less ‘fatal’.

    1. Well, I might be approaching the age where I don’t remember whether I remember or not but, for now, I remember Disco Inferno (Burn Baby Burn…).

      I’m not saying that it’s a happy memory, mind you. Brings to mind the “gullet of an interstellar cockroach” movie line.

      I’m not a nanny-state proponent, but I had the same reaction as many others to the use of real fire safety equipment for entertainment purposes. For some odd reason, people tend to take life safety fairly seriously.

      I’ve put effort into modifying the appearance of mechanical bells I installed at work so they didn’t look like fire equipment. Seemingly, they are only available in red (except for one chrome one, oddly enough). Spray paint is relatively cheap.

  5. I install, service, and inspect fire alarms for a living. NICET Cerified and all. I would be the one to write this up of i came across it in the wild. That said, if I did stumble across this in the wild it would just be a deficiency line item on the annual inspection. I see and work on far more concerning stuff regularly.

    The fire marshal won’t be bursting into the room out for blood, and from the sound of it this isn’t even in a public space, maybe the OP’s dorm or apartment.

    Don’t go making a habit of sticking dummy devices around public spaces covered by fire alarms tho. I’m looking at you skeevy landlords and property managers that put up security cams that look like smoke detectors.(those are also very rare)

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