TK880 for Station Alerting

[farmtrain]

I have a TK880 that I am going to use for alerting via QCII at my station. The main reason behind it is I am tired of the Minitor and PR400 we have going from silent to rapid loud beeps and me wetting myself every time. Joking of course, however those of us at the station would rather enjoy an ascending tone to wake us rather than the alerting tones produced by the radio.

At a previous department, while they were using QCII for alerting they had a company build a package that took the 12vDC coming from the radio when alerted, and it slowly ramped up the audio to the attached speakers. The nice thing about this was it took the second tone being transmitted and used it specifically as the alert tone, while doing it in a non-apocalyptic alert. I did call the company that the department used for the piece, and they said it was home made but one of the key components was no long in production. Does any one have any suggestions for what can be used to do this? Also, the company I work for doesnt believe in the 'heart saver' tones, so we are doing this out of pocket and trying to keep it from costing us what we perceive a Phoenix G2 alerting system would cost.

I greatly appreciate the advise.

 

[ramal121]

Maybe a little more information on how you will set this up. Are you going to use the TK-880 stand alone with the internal speaker or a single external speaker? Or are you going to hook the radio to a PA amplifier to feed several station speakers?

The 880 will alert to a QCII page but will only give you a default beep sequence that you can turn on or off. The only other thing you can do is adjust the tone volume to a set level that could be lower than the voice traffic. Later models work the same way but you can build your own beep sequence in the program software, but it is just still beeps. Now a Motorola radio will provide an escalert alarm in their later models (CM, CDM) if that's what you're really looking for. Can't say exactly the way it works.

If you are using a PA amplifier with multiple inputs, you could use a stand alone tone generator that gives gentler chime than a hair raising beep, buzz, or whoop. I have used these in the past:

Valcom Ringer Products

There is nothing I have found (other than Motorolas and purpose built alerting systems) that provide a ramped volume for the alert tone.

 

[farmtrain]

Maybe a little more information on how you will set this up. Are you going to use the TK-880 stand alone with the internal speaker or a single external speaker? Or are you going to hook the radio to a PA amplifier to feed several station speakers?

The 880 will alert to a QCII page but will only give you a default beep sequence that you can turn on or off. The only other thing you can do is adjust the tone volume to a set level that could be lower than the voice traffic. Later models work the same way but you can build your own beep sequence in the program software, but it is just still beeps. Now a Motorola radio will provide an escalert alarm in their later models (CM, CDM) if that's what you're really looking for. Can't say exactly the way it works.

If you are using a PA amplifier with multiple inputs, you could use a stand alone tone generator that gives gentler chime than a hair raising beep, buzz, or whoop. I have used these in the past:

Valcom Ringer Products

There is nothing I have found (other than Motorolas and purpose built alerting systems) that provide a ramped volume for the alert tone.

yes i will be using external speakers ceiling mounted in the rooms, and mute the internal speaker. Ok awesome, thanks for the info! I wasnt aware that the CD/Ms did escalert. I may be able to access one of those as well.

Any other ideas still greatly appreciated