Astro Station Alerting

[nickburns186]

For any of you that are in this position, how are you handling station alerting over an Astro system? I've run my head into the wall trying to figure out a solution for this. I really dont have the option of having something like a Zetron alerting system requiring dry lines to each station. We havent moved to the Astro system yet but will be in the near future and this is a sticky point for us. Thanks for any help.

J

[Dan562]

Nick ... Quit banging your head against the wall .... That Mega Hertz!

Assuming you're using a Quantar Base Station / Repeater that you want to I.D. at the Dispatch Console and you also have the Digital Interface Units DIU for each station, there might be a simple solution using the Enhanced Wildcard Option's COR (out of the System Connector J7) to put a closure on a 2175 Hz audio oscillator at the Station's end, fed to a separate RT2002 Telco line and a 2175 Hz audio decoder at the Dispatch Console end with a SPDT Relay illuminating different colored Lamps or LEDs to indicate Analog or Astro mode operation. You would also need to do some Scripting for the Enhanced Wildcard for the external COR Output, out of J7 and configure wiring on the 50-Pin connector.

[xmo]

I think what he wants is something like:

http://www.zetron.com/data/site/templat ... oducts/fsa

On big systems Motorola has been selling Moscad as an alternative to the Zetron station alerting system. Open the doors, get engine / squad status, sound a claxon, open the PA, send a message, etc.

If you only need to alert the station and pass a voice message, you might be able to use the Astro signalling feature to call alert an Astro radio at the station. The horn relay output could set off a bell or other alert, and then have the voice message pipe through the station's PA system.

If you want to show the dispatcher what mode the incoming transmission is - I would just hook up the DIU MODE INDICATION signal, that's what it's for.

[nickburns186]

I've actually been considering the Astro Call Alert function but I need to have the radio muted until they are alerted. I'm testing on an XTL5000 Consolette. Call Alert does this when under Astro options on the conventional personality tab you set the Rx unmute rule to data and squelch, BUT, the radio only stays unmuted for the duration of the call alert and not long enough for voice traffic. If I could figure that one out, I think what xmo has suggested will work with the horn relay.


J

[wavetar]

What are you using for consoles? It reminds me of a similar situation we had years ago when the city FD went trunked. In our case, a separate talkgroup was created on the system for each of the 17 FD locations, and a Spectra was installed at each station, programmed with it's own unique talkgroup. Dispatch simply had to choose whatever FD resource screen icon they wanted to call out, and use the Centracom alert tone followed by a voice message. If they needed to call more than one station, they used the Centracom multiselect function to call as many as needed. Worked perfectly. In your case, where it sounds like it's conventional Astro, you could do the same thing using Astro talkgroups.

Of course, if you want it to do other things like sound alarms, open doors, etc then it wouldn't be the right solution for you...at least, not without some hardware modifications on the XTL5000 end.

Todd

[nickburns186]

We are using Zetron on the console end and yes, it is trunking. The multiple talkgroup option doesnt sound bad but might be a little too much talkgroup wise. Its funny though with such the push for digital that there is no solution for paging stations, volunteers, etc.......Thanks for all of the suggestions.


J

[wavetar]

We are using Zetron on the console end and yes, it is trunking. The multiple talkgroup option doesnt sound bad but might be a little too much talkgroup wise. Its funny though with such the push for digital that there is no solution for paging stations, volunteers, etc.......Thanks for all of the suggestions.


J

In the case of Centracom, multiple talkgroups aren't a problem as it's a simple matter of programming, but I'm assuming with Zetron you need a dedicated radio for each talkgroup? Or possibly a multi-channel capable radio at the very least?

I agree that there should be an engineered solution for paging & volunteers, etc. The same FD I mentioned above recently switched to a SmartZone system & the city installed a completely new VHF MTR2000-based paging system specifically to handle station & volunteer paging. I guess for Motorola it's a question of "why would they?" when they are able to sell two systems instead of one.

Todd

[nickburns186]

Good point Todd. Thanks for all of the replies guys. I'm the biggest M supporter you'll find but I really think they need to start addressing this issue if they really want to see wide spread adoption.......

J