Radio recommendations for our facility

[lllvibelll]

Hello all. I hope this is the correct forum.
I work for a small chemical plant (~100 employees) and we need to upgrade our radios.
We have previously used Motorola XPR 6550's (which worked well enough but were plagued with the micro-contacts for volume and channel selectors going out very, very frequently) and we were starting to migrate to the XPR 7550's when Motorola announced the cancellation of support for the 7000 series.
To be honest there is clearly a TON I don't know about all of this (I'm learning) and vendors have just tried to upsell me to the new/expensive R7's...which seem really nice, but we just need to talk on them. Haha That really is all we need them for and I was hoping someone could steer me in the right direction with some recommendations. (If anyone needs more info about the system we are using to be able to provide a recommendation I will do my best to find out and reply with the details. We are within the fence line of another facility and use their utilities (including their repeater). Which is inconvenient, but just the way it is.
Any help would be greatly appreciated! Also if anyone has a recommendation for radio repair/service in the Houston area I am all ears.

 

[Pr999]

Is your system DMR or Analog? Cos, Kenwood, as well as Tait, have such radios you can also check out.

 

[tweiss3]

Motorola dealers aren't really "upselling" you. You can no longer get the 7550e, it's replacement is the R7. It's difficult to provide recommendations because we don't know your use case and what capabilities are required. This is something to be worked on with your vendor.

Take your Motorola quote to a Kenwood or Tait dealer. They can talk through your options and ways to save money, but they need to know how you use your current radios, what software/job ticket stuff you use and the backbone hardware (repeaters, etc.).

 

[RaleighGuy]

Hello all. I hope this is the correct forum.
I work for a small chemical plant (~100 employees) and we need to upgrade our radios.

Please, chemical plants can be dangerous, communications are crucial in your industry, don't rely on advice about radio options from a website of strangers. Yes, there are many knowledgeable people on here, and many will give you good advice, but notice I said many not all.

As @tweiss3 said, take your Motorola quote, and talk to other dealers, let professionals talk you through it and help you based on your real world requirements. You need professional advice, not advice from people who pop in and give their opinions.

 

[mmckenna]

Please, chemical plants can be dangerous, communications are crucial in your industry, don't rely on advice about radio options from a website of strangers. Yes, there are many knowledgeable people on here, and many will give you good advice, but notice I said many not all.

As @tweiss3 said, take your Motorola quote, and talk to other dealers, let professionals talk you through it and help you based on your real world requirements. You need professional advice, not advice from people who pop in and give their opinions.

100% this. Was going to say the same thing.

RadiorReference.com is a hobby radio site mostly for scanner listeners and ham radio operators. It is NOT a resource for critical radio systems. While there are a handful of us professionals here that can assist, it would be negligent for us to attempt to do this remotely over the internet.

Do not rely on advice from hobbyists or hams for this sort of application.


You do need a professional that knows how to build radio systems in this kind of environment. You should work directly with a radio shop that has proven they can do this level of work and provide appropriately certified radios to work in that environment.

No reason to stick with Motorola. There are several companies that make suitable radios that will do what you need. May require some modifications if your company is utilizing repeaters to provide coverage, but there are many suitable products on the market that will do what you need.

 

[prima19rider]

I worked in a chemical plant for 36 years. Dangerous place, 3 deaths, you need good safety equipmen. I chose Motorola at the time, expensive, but ultimately saved the company 4 million dollars in a law suit.

 

[MTS2000des]

What these guys said. A radio hobbyist forum is nowhere NEAR the place to be seeking advice on anything IDLH. If you don't know and don't trust a sole source vendor, hire a consultant. It's all about that L word. Liability.

 

[dickie757]

......but we just need to talk on them. Haha That really is all we need them for....

I was part of an upgrade where we the radio shop were integrating new R7s into a company's fleet, while reprogramming the existing fleet of 7550e to new digital emissions. 3/4 of the way through, i go into the control room to read the base radio. No prob. Get the codeplug open and start modifiying the....Quickcall II system???? that goes through the ???DMR??? repeater??? We immediately reprogrammed all the radios back to analog.

There is always something else going on that you dont know.

 

[buddrousa]

And a Good Radio Shop will tell you that your site has to have intrinsically safe radios so you can not start a fire or cause an explosion.

 

[Project25_MASTR]

Hire a consultant.

There are many intricacies involved here. Are you using analog or are you using DMR? If you are using DMR, is it to the standards or are you using vendor proprietary features? How many talk paths? What kind of coverage?

On the topic of intrinsic safety...this is actually a bit of a nightmare because there are currently no regulatory standards for intrinsic safety in the United States. The UL standards are actually for Canada thus if you need them it's going to be a case of some regulatory body in your industry stating you will adopt the Canadian standards for intrinsic safety requirements.

This is all stuff that a consultant will be able to wade through which is why we tend to recommend hiring a consultant.

 

[lenk911]

because there are currently no regulatory standards for intrinsic safety in the United States.

Not correct. Factory Mutual a division of Underwriters Laboratory (UL) has a complete suite of standards and a certification process for the radio manufacturers. They have had since at least the 1970's. Also the classes and locations are listed in the National Electric Code in section 504. Consult with your company's safety and plant engineering departments before you act!

 

[speedway_navigator]

The tech who maintains your system would be a great resource for determining your needs. I imagine most of us here would be honest about letting you know if a Kenwood, Tait or Hytera radio would meet your needs no matter what brand the sales team promotes. From your post I'm assuming you don't need to add features or increase coverage area, just find a replacement radio.

DMR adds some features like man down alarming that analog doesn't have, at least to my knowledge.

Call a few radio shops and let them know what you are looking for, I bet at least one would bring in some demo radios programmed to your system so you could do a side by side comparison.

While the radios may have the same coverage capabilities you might find differences in how the audio sounds, especially in an industrial environment with noisy equipment. I was in a mfg plant to add Vertex portables to an existing Motorola Trbo system in analog mode. The problems started right away when we found out the new radios only had 12 character displays but whoever created the list had used names like
SECURITY SAFETY PUBLIC and SECURITY SAFETY PRIVATE.

Once the user remade that list we hit other issues. They had 371 radio ID numbers assigned to users but only 240 radios.
The channel names for their 8 repeater system did not match what was in the radios, users only had access to a few repeaters based on their work area.

The next day we made the switch to DMR at 0900, right away we had complaints of low receive audio and distorted transmit audio from the speaker mics. I stayed until 1 am the next day doing various gain and level setting changes in both types of radios to get it sounding better.

 

[Project25_MASTR]

Not correct. Factory Mutual a division of Underwriters Laboratory (UL) has a complete suite of standards and a certification process for the radio manufacturers. They have had since at least the 1970's. Also the classes and locations are listed in the National Electric Code in section 504. Consult with your company's safety and plant engineering departments before you act!

Standards which are at the discretion of the AHJ to adopt and/or recognize. As adoption of NFPA 70 (NEC) is not mandatory on the federal level each state can then choose what to adopt and how it's adopted. Again, the AHJ which can be a fire marshal, insurance agency, OSHA, MSHA, or some other governing body still has the option to do so at their discretion. So just because an item is UL "Listed" doesn't mean the AHJ recognizes it as being Intrinsically Safe or that standards for NFPA 70 even apply.

 

[buddrousa]

OSHA, The Insurance Carrier, Local Fire Codes to name a few require intrinsically safe radios. Been a part of this for the last 40 years. 3M plant radios are intrinsically safe Tyson Feed Mills are intrinsically safe.

 

[lenk911]

As adoption of NFPA 70 (NEC) is not mandatory on the federal level each state can then choose what to adopt and how it's adopted

For nearly 50 years I have engineered communications systems for chemical, petroleum, and agricultural facilities. Never have I seen it as an option for compliance in the hazardous atmospheres and locations. In the safe zone, yes but never within the danger zone. All my engineering work was in the central US and maybe there are other areas in the US where compliance is a choice/option. If it is, I have been involved in injury law suits where the IS/NI radio was suspect and the insurance carrier surely was concerned.

 

[speedway_navigator]

Are there any after action reports citing a radio problem with injuries? I've read some when communication problems turned out to be operator malfunction or improper use vs the tech failing.

 

[lenk911]

Are there any after action reports citing a radio problem with injuries?

There are few but the ones I am aware of are the substitution of a non IS/NI (intrinsically safe/non-incendive) battery system or components for certified ones. Usually there is another cause but the radio gets the first scrutiny.

One of the concerns I have is fire departments purchasing IS/NI radios that are certified for petrol-chemical atmospheres/locations and then use them in a grain storage facility. Some UL/FM certifications are not all encompassing. Know the fine print-Be careful!

 

[speedway_navigator]

Does a non IS battery spark at the contacts or is it something else? Is the result an explosion inside the radio or does it ignite fumes outside?