Dual Speakers on PM1500

[plainsff1976]

I have a friend that works for a local electric company that is switching to pm1500's in all their trucks. They used to use Spectras and Maratracs, but are upgrading. They have external speakers on everything, which they have always ran through a switch on the dash to turn on and off the audio to the external speaker, which they just tied into the speaker leads for the usual internal speaker.

I suggested that they just programmed a button on the control head for speaker a/b or something and tie another speaker into the vip terminals somewhere. We finally got to looking today at the software, and cannot find anywhere to do that particular thing. We are using CPS 13.

My question is, is there anyway to tie an external speaker to the pm1500 and get external audio that can be turned on and off?

[HarrisonRHW]

The funny thing is I haven't read anything about PA capabilities with this radio. We are just beginning to see a lot of them installed, and I was amazed that there was no mention of such an option because the Waris radios have an "external PA" option where you can have the radio set up with a second speaker, and then program how the external speaker works (then to turn it off, use a DPST relay)

What we have been installing is dual heads, with a second head and external speaker controlled by the second head. Although that is a bit pricier of a solution, it works quite well.

Judging by the fact that it is an electric company, they want nice loud audio from a horn type speaker so they can hear when they are in the bucket? It would be expensive (if a cable is even long enough) to locate a second control head in the bucket, but that is an option.

[Jim202]

Not a good idea to even consider running cable for a control head to the man bucket.
The booms on these trucks are insulated to provide some protection from contact with
electrical lines. As such, I don't think you would want to run any wires from the chassis
up to the bucket. You would probably violate a number of safety rules by doing so.

Jim

The funny thing is I haven't read anything about PA capabilities with this radio. We are just beginning to see a lot of them installed, and I was amazed that there was no mention of such an option because the Waris radios have an "external PA" option where you can have the radio set up with a second speaker, and then program how the external speaker works (then to turn it off, use a DPST relay)

What we have been installing is dual heads, with a second head and external speaker controlled by the second head. Although that is a bit pricier of a solution, it works quite well.

Judging by the fact that it is an electric company, they want nice loud audio from a horn type speaker so they can hear when they are in the bucket? It would be expensive (if a cable is even long enough) to locate a second control head in the bucket, but that is an option.

[chartofmaryland]

To go to the extent of using a non-conductive hyduralic fluid to power tools on the end of boom point, then NO, there is to be no continuity between the end of the boom and rotor table.

CoM

[MSS-Dave]

I am doing the same thing at my Utility. After running MDX EDACS radios for years, we just switched to a Smartzone system and use XTL2500 mobiles. The last radios had a soft key definable PA on/off but we chose to implement the big switch method. We do the same on the XTL because 1-- the radio won't support PA on a menu selection unless you have a DEK box (I don't know if the PM1500 will do DEK, probably not), and 2-- the big switch is MUCH easier on the training curve. I.E. "flip the big silver switch up when you leave the truck during a call" thing. Hunting for a soft key menu item sometimes gets lost on these people. Only issue you might have is if both speakers need to run at the same time. I can tell you that I never saw 1 failure with the MDX radios running a internal speaker and a 16 ohm PA horn in parallel. Since the XTL requires a external speaker anyway, we just interupted the line with switch and now have an "either or" situation.

As pointed out above, running a line for a remote head up the boom is not an option. If it gets that critical, put a HT on them. My trucks have mobiles and the crew leaders have portables just for that reason....

Dave

[KitN1MCC]

FPL upgrading

[MSS-Dave]

FPL upgrading

Huh?