Batboard

Anyone else experiencing this?

Recently turn-key installed ASTRO 7.16 system with MCC7500 consoles. Dual jacks. One side has DB15 extension cable.

Dispatchers say they'll lose all audio, or sometimes just ear or just mic, and be unable to communicate with units. Unplugging and reconnecting the Plantronics P10 adapter or switching jacks will resolve the issue for a time.

How do your dispatchers know when the problem occurs? Do field units call in on the phone and complain?

Do you have a recorder connected at each position to the VPL logging port?

What does the dispatcher see on the VU indicator?

We decided that the on-screen VU indicator in the console application is pretty much worthless so we added hardware VU indicators (bridged at the workstations logging ports) because the dispatchers missed the indicators on the CIE's and a good indicator helps them keep their audio averages up where they should be.

With a good VU indicator at least the dispatcher should immediately know when there is a problem.

I cant tell you how much weird crap power cycling the VPM seems to clear up...

or bad grounding....

Even with R56 compliant grounding on these things, I've still seen them do weird stuff requiring a reboot.

Dispatchers would see that their selected resource was active but they couldn't hear the field unit. I like the idea of a hardware VU, though.

So we upgraded half the consoles to 7.17.17 per SSC and it seems to have resolved a lot of issues, including the vanishing audio.

The emer alarm is ear splitting compared to voice audio but that's a different issue...

Thank you for beta testing 7.16. Here's your upgrade!

com501 wrote:Thank you for beta testing 7.16. Here's your upgrade!

Lol yea, was gonna say this wasn't an issue for 7.13/7.14, at least for us.

I'm guessing the hardware VU meter is a homebrew part?

So, 7.17.17 didn't resolve the issue... Log pulling and rechecking the basics shall continue.

There's apparently a tech bulletin on this issue but it was supposed to have been resolved by 7.17.

"I'm guessing the hardware VU meter is a homebrew part?"
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Not much "brewing" involved, just a matter of mounting a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS - isn't that what everybody wants these days?) audio indicator in a box and hooking it up to the VPM logging audio port with a standard RJ45 patch cable.

Total cost about $100 per position. The ESE-216 indicator runs on 12VDC which all the audio ports on the VPM have available. There's an input adjustment on the indicator so you can set it to match your preferred send level.