The Siren Board

djscrizzle wrote:

Adam Pollak wrote:If you have the means to and the money, and if the siren is going to be regularly used as an active and meaningful warning device, I would do nothing other than radio activation or get a regular land line.

Doing any internet-based systems just adds on more and more methods of possible failure. If there is any failure along the way, there is not much that anyone will care to fix it all that fast, or even be aware of it.

If a land line goes down, the phone company is well aware of it and in addition to the phone systems having battery backups, they are also a repair priority. If you can see what the most-basic phone service you can get is, I would definitely go with that if the money is available to do so.

Agreed. the KISS rule is typically the best rule to follow in mission-critical systems, such as warning sirens.
Also, Robert, Have you tried pointing a Yagi antenna towards Denver OEM's location and getting their siren activation signals? Yagis are crazy good at direction signal pickup. Point the antenna towards your target, Hook up a scanner and a CATV/antenna amp (good from 5-900MHz with 10-20dB amplification) tune a scanner to the frequency used, and listen at test time.

Thanks.
I was hoping to run (bury) an extension line to the siren.
But do not see how that can work with an IP phone system.

Another idea is to buy a Whelen radio receiver.
When the City of Aurora sounds their Whelen siren closest and west of us, our receiver would intercept their signal and operate the 2t22.

But Aurora has sounded a number of false warnings.
And they do weekly silentests. (I do not yet know enough if the receiver can discriminate between a weekly silent test and a tornado warning.)

Regarding false warnings, there was a tornado just south of Aurora's southern border.
They sounded their entire system.
We heard the tornado sirens though it was clear blue sky where we lived.

"Lassie" (2t22) was howled for the first time in her life last Sunday!
But there was no threat to our huge trailer park. (I would not have sounded the false warning.)

Naturally, I, a tornado chaser, was called by a mountain hospital to deliver a blood specimen to Denver and missed everything (A tornado, no doubt visible from our house, caused some damage a few miles east.)
While heading to the hospital in the morning, I told my wife about the clouds with "good potential" I observed building west of Denver.

Actually if you want radio control get a Federal Informer and hook it to your AR. They have two relay outputs and only cost about $400.

Robert Gift wrote:

djscrizzle wrote:

Adam Pollak wrote:If you have the means to and the money, and if the siren is going to be regularly used as an active and meaningful warning device, I would do nothing other than radio activation or get a regular land line.

Doing any internet-based systems just adds on more and more methods of possible failure. If there is any failure along the way, there is not much that anyone will care to fix it all that fast, or even be aware of it.

If a land line goes down, the phone company is well aware of it and in addition to the phone systems having battery backups, they are also a repair priority. If you can see what the most-basic phone service you can get is, I would definitely go with that if the money is available to do so.

Agreed. the KISS rule is typically the best rule to follow in mission-critical systems, such as warning sirens.
Also, Robert, Have you tried pointing a Yagi antenna towards Denver OEM's location and getting their siren activation signals? Yagis are crazy good at direction signal pickup. Point the antenna towards your target, Hook up a scanner and a CATV/antenna amp (good from 5-900MHz with 10-20dB amplification) tune a scanner to the frequency used, and listen at test time.[/quote
Another idea is to buy a Whelen radio receiver.
When the City of Aurora sounds their Whelen siren closest and west of us, our receiver would intercept their signal and operate the 2t22.

Here's the Whelen VA300 decoder if you haven't already seen one:
http://www.whelen.com/pb/Mass_Notificat ... onitor.pdf
It has one relay. Since it lacks two relays, it would be best (IMO) to get the Informer if you want radio activation. I've seen a Thunderbolt 1003 controlled by one of those before.

The problem with VOIP services like Vonage and Magic Jack is they don't always reproduce DTMF tones correctly. I have seen in several sitations first hand where a DTMF decoder on the other end of a VOIP line just doesn't work correctly, due to the limiations of the VOIP system's audio reproduction.

And don't forget, with Magic Jack, you need to keep a PC running full time as well to support the IP side of the service.

I think the suggestions about using a radio based system or getting a solid land line are going to be your best bets.

I don't trust Vonage or MagicJack for a situation like this. This is something that needs to be a real landline telephone...no exceptions! I have always been (and continue to be) extremely skeptical of high-speed internet telephone service. I just think there are too many bugs underlying in this stuff...

WHY introduce the whole phone situation into this when a simple radio decoder and touchtone microphone or encoder will accomplish the task?

Franz? wrote:WHY introduce the whole phone situation into this when a simple radio decoder and touchtone microphone or encoder will accomplish the task?

Because radio and decoder would be the SMART way to do it.

I was thinking that officers, or low-life scum like me, could sound the siren using cell phones.
Often we do not have a radio, but everyone always has a cell phone.

Your idea sounds the best, as usual.
(Don't you get bored being right all the time?)

What would it cost to do radio activation?
I do happen to have a little DTMF speaker device which one holds to a telephone mouthpiece.

Thanks, Franz.

A favorite recording:
E. Power Biggs playing J. S. Bach's "Gigue" Fugue BWV 577
So joyful, rhythmic, complex, uplifting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IH10P42aaGY

A little off point, but variable message signs by the side of the road mostly have cell phones in them to control them. It seems like a slow way to control a sign, but that's how it's done. I'm referring to towable signs, not signs permanently mounted on sign structures.

I would not use any VOIP connection for something mission critical like a siren.

You can get a Sentry G3 siren controller for $1900. Then all you need is a radio with DTMF or Two Tone Sequential capabilities.

gee Bob you think maybe having done it a few hundred times going back to the days of vibrating reed decoders & encoders might have given me a plan?

Selectone should have whatever you need, DTMF, Burst or dualtone sequential.
http://www.com-spec.com/selectone/product.htm