The Pertronic General-Purpose Interface Board (GPIB) provides an interface between a Pertronic fire alarm control panel and an external device. Several variants of the GPIB are available, including interfaces for printers, pagers, and Modbus devices.

The GPIB monitors the fire alarm control panel's RS-485 bus, which carries the current event data as displayed on the panel’s LCD display. The RS-485 data-stream includes multiple queues including: Fires, Isolates, Loop Defects, System Defects and Information. For each event, the GPIB generates a message that is placed in a transmission queue to be sent to the external device. The precise format of the message and transmission is determined by the protocol requirements of the external device and is configured within the GPIB software.

The GPIB requires an isolated power supply. This may be either a mains plug pack or a DC:DC converter powered from the panel.