Motorola APX 4500 P25 Station Alerting

explorer115 · Oct 13, 2014

We are changing from UHF to 800 MHZ P25 trucked. I want the station lights and speakers to activate off the APX 4500 radio, which it should be capable of doing (based upon my reading). I want to know if any departments have the APX radios controlling their station on a P25 system and how it works. Does each station have its own alert or can all station/radios be alerted (group alerting) What special considerations and equipment will be needed.

Our Old system relied on DTMF and Quick-Call II to activate the lights and speakers via relays. I understand the there will not be any tones per say over the APX radios.

Also any info on the programming spefications might be helpful also

Thanks

krokus · Oct 13, 2014

While I am not familiar with the 4500 specifically, many fire departments would like to fund a way to do what you wanting. That is why most still use two-tone paging for alerting purposes.

You might be able to have a radio set an output pin high or low, when it receives a private call. This is very time and resource consuming, as each station needs to be alerted individually. (And will do nothing for anyone not in the station.)

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explorer115 · Oct 13, 2014

Yepp

That’s what I was thinking, I wasn't sure if you could do an entire talk group call to all the radios, or program a code in the radios that would receive an all call type set up. Has anyone experimented with it?

talviar · Oct 13, 2014

Funny. . . . My county has been doing that since 1995 on the old Spectra Control Stations, and since 2011 when the Spectra control stations were swapped out with XTL2500 control stations. All alerting our fire stations via trunked CALL ALERT.

Should be the same on the APX4500.

Enable Horn/Lights alert and set one of the VIP outs for Horn and you should be good to go as long as your dispatch center can send a call alert from the consoles. If you are dispatching on the trunked system via another desktop base station without the use of a console, it can take a little time to do all the call alerts if multiple stations.

If via a console, you can stack and bang out a handful of call alerts in the same time a set of pager tones can go out with one additional feature. . . . you concretely know the base radio accepted the "page" and the other end should be beeping and a relay pulled in.

cabletech · Oct 14, 2014

Have you verified with the radio system techs that in the upgrade to 800 they will also be changing the paging and tone ability?

Hundreds of depts nation wide have gone to 800 for all audio traffic but because of the problems with some paging systems, they have stayed with there old VHF/UHF paging and tone out system.

I know in my area thatis what was been done for all fire paging and station tone out.

(Tone out on UHF, all audio traffic on 800), been working just fine for several years.

krokus · Oct 14, 2014

talviar said:
Funny. . . . My county has been doing that since 1995 on the old Spectra Control Stations, and since 2011 when the Spectra control stations were swapped out with XTL2500 control stations. All alerting our fire stations via trunked CALL ALERT.

What are you calling a control station?

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PJH · Oct 14, 2014

Consolettes

talviar · Oct 15, 2014

krokus said:
What are you calling a control station?

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Mobile APX on a base station tray (with built in speaker) with a power supply and a desk mic.
Motorola's ordering literature has a "control station conversion kit" that includes the relays for Horn & lights activation that usually adds $400-450 on cost of the base at time of purchase.

A consolette is a self contained unit with built in power supply.

DisasterGuy · Oct 15, 2014

If this is a volunteer system your dispatch center will really want to keep a VHF or UHF conventional channel that is patched or simu selected to the dispatch talkgroup in order to activate pagers. Alternatively you would convert one of your conventional channels for POCSAG paging. Either of those would handle personnel and station alerting.

Station alerting really needs to be considered as part of the overall system design. Also remember that having multiple dispatch circuits that are monitored for integrity is an NFPA standard and impacts your ISO rating.

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krokus · Oct 15, 2014

talviar said:
Mobile APX on a base station tray (with built in speaker) with a power supply and a desk mic.
Motorola's ordering literature has a "control station conversion kit" that includes the relays for Horn & lights activation that usually adds $400-450 on cost of the base at time of purchase.

A consolette is a self contained unit with built in power supply.

I figured that was the case, but wanted to make certain we were talking about the same thing, and not a consolette.

Getting back to your configuration, did the horn output go active for any traffic on the dispatch only talkgroup? If not, what triggered the output?

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PJH · Oct 15, 2014

Well not to get too technical, but half a dozen one way or another.

The "control station" you refer too is basically just a mobile radio with very limited external features, and the kit is essentanally the same you get for a mobile VIP setup.

In Motorola speak, the consolette is/can be a true control station that allows for multiple uses, remote sets, console interfaces, etc etc and be used as a plain old radio.

FCC's definition of a control station is something different.

In reality, you are speaking of a base station in the proper sense.

Clear as mud right?

talviar · Oct 15, 2014

krokus said:
I figured that was the case, but wanted to make certain we were talking about the same thing, and not a consolette.

Getting back to your configuration, did the horn output go active for any traffic on the dispatch only talkgroup? If not, what triggered the output?

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800 MHz- Trunked Radio Call Alert.
Upon receipt of the call alert to the individual ID, radio pulls in (in case of our XTL2500 control stations) VIP1 to a relay for Horn and VIP2 to a relay for Lights activation. In the case of our fire departments. *none* use Lights activation and use the Horn relay to activate either a conventional Fire Whistle or a Bell in the station, or nothing at all.

As I mentioned earlier- when activating a Call Alert the dispatch console gets indication that this was successful or not successful. If the call alert was success- the relay should be pulled and whistle going.
Otherwise we know the siren didn't blow.

On our current smartnet system-this is usually a case of the radio left on other than the dispatch channel and "radio voice traffic" was being received when the call alert pulse went on the control channel.

We are using the In Call User Alert on the ASTRO25 system so that the call alert happens regardless of whether there is voice active on the radio when the pulse happens.

Motorola APX 4500 P25 Station Alerting

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