Using a radio to open bay door at fire dept

[tcash158]

Is their anything that you can do to be able to open a bay door with a radio vhf high band? We have a couple of remotes but you can only put so many remotes on a reciever for the bay door and we need to be able for more people to be able to open the door. I have seen devices that will turn on a light when the page goes off but if we used it to open the door and just say know one made the run then the door would stay open until someone came by to shut it. Any ideas on this would be great, we have about 18 members and allot of them have radios.

[w5gm]

You can get a DTMF decoder kit and another radio and wire it up to the push button for that bay door.. That way all they have to do is punch the magic code and a relay closes for 1 second and whala!

[RKG]

There are umpteen ways to do this, but if your subscriber equipment is capable of being programmed to send DTMF strings, the easiest (and one of the least expensive) ways of accomplishing your objective is with a DTMF transponder wired to a source of receiver audio. My favorite is this device:

http://repeatercontrollers.com/nhrc-rem ... /index.php

Just remember that the transponder input is unbalanced audio. Do not wire it directly to Motorola balanced audio or you risk blowing the audio PA. Either find a line that gives unbalanced audio on the backplane of your receiver or wire the transponder to the radio through a 1:1 audio transformer.

[Bill_G]

I like the dtmf idea too. There's lots of product out there. It's well supported, easily understood, and generally programmable in most mid-tier or higher portables and mobiles as a single button function.

[tcash158]

OK but on what frequency would our radios have to be on Im not familar with this at all sorry.

[Bill_G]

You guys pick the freq. What channels are available in your radios? Do you have a tap out channel? That would be a good one to do it on. Then folks would know someone is opening the door at the station because everybody is listening.

[Wowbagger]

You can get a DTMF decoder kit and another radio and wire it up to the push button for that bay door.. That way all they have to do is punch the magic code and a relay closes for 1 second and whala!

Voila - from the French "voi la" (lit. [You] look at this).

Not to be confused with viola, which is either a musical instrument or the town where I live.

It's a minor peeve of mine....

[RADIOMAN2002]

That's how our shop doors are opened and closed. DTMF was easy, picked a channel not used, but licensed in our area. Just make sure hooking your decoder box doesn't somehow defeat the safety switches.

[RKG]

You can get a DTMF decoder kit and another radio and wire it up to the push button for that bay door.. That way all they have to do is punch the magic code and a relay closes for 1 second and whala!

Voila - from the French "voi la" (lit. [You] look at this).

Not to be confused with viola, which is either a musical instrument or the town where I live.

It's a minor peeve of mine....

Bonne chance!

[jackhackett]

Of course you have to keep in mind that DTMF on a VHF radio is not particularly secure, and unless you did something to limit the range you could open the doors from miles away, possibly accidentally.

[chartofmaryland]

I have had good success with two maxtrac 16 pin mobiles both which have MDC signalling.

This can either be simplex or through the repeater which can allow someone to open the door when out of simplex range.

Don't forget to program the MDC id to occur on post versus pre where pre can sometimes be snipped when the ID doesn't get out as the repeater is keying up.

Unique yet functional

Any way you do this remember you are compromising the security of the device under control unless you are running astro signalling with DES-XL running a key and are performing a call function that can activate a pin when the proper call is received.

This is about as secure as turning a key in the lock cylinder along with it getting cheaper and cheaper by the day.

CoM

[werdnuts]

I used a CDM radio years ago for a temporary solution. I wired it to the control buttons inside the garage. I used the one of the wires on the accy pins that was controlled by a DTMF code in the radio software. I programmed one code to energize the wire and open the door and another code to turn the wire off and close the door. It was simple, but effective. It would certainly be expensive vs. just buying more garage door openers.

[Bill_G]

I used a CDM radio years ago for a temporary solution. I wired it to the control buttons inside the garage. I used the one of the wires on the accy pins that was controlled by a DTMF code in the radio software. I programmed one code to energize the wire and open the door and another code to turn the wire off and close the door. It was simple, but effective. It would certainly be expensive vs. just buying more garage door openers.

A while back I started to play with the cdm series being able to call alert dtmf, and send ack, and then the customer changed their mind. That's not a bad idea. I'd use relays to isolate the radio from the door controls just to be safe.

As for security (not to mention falsing), with a complex enough string, it would be hard for a human to send manually. IOW, don't use 123 or 911 or double digits of any kind. Six digits with some fourth column is always a good choice if you're going to preprogram a button.

[Jim202]

I used a CDM radio years ago for a temporary solution. I wired it to the control buttons inside the garage. I used the one of the wires on the accy pins that was controlled by a DTMF code in the radio software. I programmed one code to energize the wire and open the door and another code to turn the wire off and close the door. It was simple, but effective. It would certainly be expensive vs. just buying more garage door openers.

I guess I messed up when I typed my last message. it didn't get sent correctly.

What I was trying to say was just put in a receiver in the station on what ever channel you want to use. Don't put an
antenna on it other than maybe a short piece of wire in the antenna connector. This way you would have to be just
about on the driveway for the radio to hear anything. This would cut down on people playing with the door from any
distance away. It would provide some security from just anyone trying to open the door. Use what ever type of
signaling you choose. Depending on what model radios everyone has, it could be mdc, dtmf or what every.

Jim

[Monitor142]

One other option to throw out is Click2Enter. It's a pretty popular item here in SoCal for opening gates and other items. Multi frequency option so you can have several agencies programmed into one device. At my employer we have 4 freqs to cover my 800MHz channel, 2 law agencies, and the fire service that has uniform simplex channels for fire ground use. Simple terminal program is used to set up and has a multitude of relay options that could integrate with your existing opener system I'm sure.

http://www.click2enter.net/

-M142

[Bill_G]

click2enter - I like that. I'm sure many of us have experienced cardlock doors opening when you key a portable nearby. What's even more fun are the new motion sensor paper towel dispensers activated by keying a portable.

[Will]

. http://www.click2enter.net/

WAY too much money, what ever happened to the tuned coil antenna and a diode to detect a high level of RF to open the door. Anyone listening would not have a clue....

[Bill_G]

That is kinda what their one click option for trunking and digital systems is all about. Very similar in concept to the four and five rapid click detectors used on some other equipment.

[KG4LHQ]

Anyone able to come with a schematic or something to do it with a radio.

I would like to atleast wire up our rescue truck door to open by DTMF.

AKA Cheaper the better.

[wd9cms]

If you still would like to use DTMF Intuitive Circuits has three very well made decoders for remote control http://www.icircuits.com/store/prod_dtmf_main.html I hope this helps.

Bill

[Deputy511Retired]

Hi

I read your discussion and wanted to stop by and see if I can answer any questions you might have about using the Click2Enter system for fire house bay door control? I worked in law enforcement for fifteen years and am the inventor of the Click2Enter. We have many law enforcement agencies using the Click2Enter for sally-port roll-up door control. Also, the Click2enter works well for fire house bay roll-up door control. The Click2Enter is especially powerful tool for mutual aid support. When various agencies roll out for major events leaving the house empty and mutual aid agencies are asked to stage at the empty house, allowing them to be able to control one of the fire house bay doors to stage works wonderfully well.

However, the majority of our deployments and use are in the area of gates, bollards, barrier arm, and building emergency access control situations. If any of you would like to have more information on the Click2Enter please feel free to contact me.

Pete

[Bill_G]

Sure. Tell us more. What kind of tech issues have you run ito with it? You know, like falsing, proximity issues, contractor issues, freq or system limitations. What kind of reseller opportunities do you have, or what distributors do you use like Tessco, or Graybar?