MCC 7500 Elite Dispatch - Emergency Tone volume adjustment?

[EarDamageInAtl]

Posting here on behalf of a communication center using MCC 7500, searched around and couldn’t find an appropriate setting or other posts about this. Not sure if this even the right forum.

Basically, the emergency tones from radios that activate their alarm is insanely loud. We understand an alarm is meant to be loud, of course, but this in the ‘ear damage’ range. I was wondering if there’s a setting to reduce the volume for the emergency tone without lowering the volume for the rest of the radio traffic.

 

[NVAGVUP]

No. (By design)

 

[EarDamageInAtl]

No. (By design)

Terrible news, thank you - we’ll continue to suffer

 

[ryolsen8]

Terrible news, thank you - we’ll continue to suffer

Do your E buttons get activated that much? Our radio are set with a 1.50 press, and rarely go off accidentally. May be worth updating codeplugs if they're getting accidently activated that much.

 

[MTS2000des]

Do your E buttons get activated that much? Our radio are set with a 1.50 press, and rarely go off accidentally. May be worth updating codeplugs if they're getting accidently activated that much.

Users are stupid and not practical to touch thousands of radios. Even with a delay, they'll still do it and then not properly exit the EA/EC mode by long pressing the button to actually delete the EA/EC from the zone controller.

Dispatchers are supposed to be ALARMED by the sound so it does not go ignored. Silence/knock down, welfare check/roll call, and document is standard procedure here.

 

[EarDamageInAtl]

Do your E buttons get activated that much? Our radio are set with a 1.50 press, and rarely go off accidentally. May be worth updating codeplugs if they're getting accidently activated that much.

They get activated constantly, yes. Mostly by the paramedics who work for a private company contracted by our municipality (to make matters worse, they shuffle their radios around and we have no way of consistently knowing which medic pressed their button). But also we have multiple smaller agencies under our big tent and we receive emergency tones from units we don’t even dispatch for. It is extremely bad but there is sort of a culture of ‘just deal with it’ so w/e

 

[EarDamageInAtl]

Dispatchers are supposed to be ALARMED by the sound so it does not go ignored. Silence/knock down, welfare check/roll call, and document is standard procedure here.

Absolutely, I don’t disagree with this - my point is just that if the volume was about 50% lower, it would still be impossible to ignore and would still be very alarming. It just wouldn’t be giving migraines when the same unit sets it off like four times and keeps saying ‘sorry, we’re 10-4, resetting’
edit: also, I see you’re with Cobb, a bunch of my coworkers recently left and joined your agency - been thinking of joining them

 

[MTS2000des]

I see you’re with Cobb, a bunch of my coworkers recently left and joined your agency - been thinking of joining them

No, 5B2_BEE00 is our radio system. I am the "radio guy" for FCDES. I live in Cobb. You probably know who I am. If not, last four digits of my desk phone are 7908. If you're having issues with our radio system, you should be reaching out to me directly.

 

[MTS2000des]

They get activated constantly, yes. Mostly by the paramedics who work for a private company contracted by our municipality (to make matters worse, they shuffle their radios around and we have no way of consistently knowing which medic pressed their button). But also we have multiple smaller agencies under our big tent and we receive emergency tones from units we don’t even dispatch for. It is extremely bad but there is sort of a culture of ‘just deal with it’ so w/e

If the radio support team isn't getting notification from supervisors on these alias updates, than the radio team can't get with the agencies to get accurate alias information. Watch commanders and supervisors should be passing this information down. We don't know what we don't know. With literally over 8,000 subscribers and growing, we can't keep up with who hands out what radio to who: the onus is on the agency point of contact to submit a change request. We process a dozen or more every single day.

Again, I am very alarmed that one of our people is on a hobbyist forum asking for help for professional issues. You can PM me and I'll gladly pass on my contact info, but if you work for our agency, you should already have it.

 

[dispatchgeek]

We accomplished this by only having a handful of our MCC7500 consoles audibly alert in emergency condition. Everyone can hear them from where they are sitting, acknowledge and knock down the emergency. I don't know the exact nuts and bolts of this as I don't directly manage the consoles for our agency.

I wholeheartedly agree with @MTS2000des, you should be following chain of command to have the right people manage these issues.

 

[KE4ZNR]

If the radio support team isn't getting notification from supervisors on these alias updates, than the radio team can't get with the agencies to get accurate alias information. Watch commanders and supervisors should be passing this information down. We don't know what we don't know. With literally over 8,000 subscribers and growing, we can't keep up with who hands out what radio to who: the onus is on the agency point of contact to submit a change request. We process a dozen or more every single day.

Again, I am very alarmed that one of our people is on a hobbyist forum asking for help for professional issues. You can PM me and I'll gladly pass on my contact info, but if you work for our agency, you should already have it.

Here in Central NC our city PD uses employee IDs for radio aliases as their radios stay with a specific officer 24/7....HOWEVER even that is imperfect as I had a situation a few years ago where I got a panicked phone call at 2am from our 911 center when they had an emergency button activation and were not able to get a response from the officer/EID who was aliased to that radio. Our 911 folks did not know if they had an officer in a ditch somewhere not able to respond or what. Took me a lot of tracking down (and most of the night awake) but we finally found out that the officer whose EID/name was listed had recently left the PD and passed the radio along to his replacement without telling anyone or having the alias updated. What a cluster.

Don't even get me started on our county jail radios whose alias is a location ("4A POD") and who uses Moto RSMs where the BIG OL' Emergency button is at the top center of the RSM so it gets hit several times daily. They never respond to requests to make sure they are ok.

Somedays my Genwatch is FULL of red emergency button activations.

 

[MTS2000des]

Somedays my Genwatch is FULL of red emergency button activations.

As I sit here at my desk, I've counted three this morning. As you know, a system of our size and scope requires everyone to be on the same page. I have dispatched in a former life, and I understand the posters' frustration. Hopefully, they will be following through and letting their watch commander/supervisors know of their concern. I always get a little intrigued when professionals appear on hobbyist forums asking for help.

My county phone is always on, as is my office door, and anyone is welcome to come to me with concerns.

 

[EarDamageInAtl]

As I sit here at my desk, I've counted three this morning. As you know, a system of our size and scope requires everyone to be on the same page. I have dispatched in a former life, and I understand the posters' frustration. Hopefully, they will be following through and letting their watch commander/supervisors know of their concern. I always get a little intrigued when professionals appear on hobbyist forums asking for help.

My county phone is always on, as is my office door, and anyone is welcome to come to me with concerns.

Was trying to DM you but I don’t think my account here allows DMs (maybe because it is new), but to assuage some concern: I’m not at the same agency as you but at an adjacent one. Also, I have gone through chain of command at our agency with no response (we have a lot of gaps in our chain of command atm, and even in good times, communication between dispatch and radio team has been… limited).

I was asking here to see if it was even possible, not so I could do it myself, but so I could know if I’m asking for an impossible fix or not. I find that my requests or queries on these sorts of things are much better received if I submit both a problem AND a solution.
@dispatchgeek ’s solution is a good one, though I don’t think our agency will go for it.

I appreciate the assistance, thanks everyone.

 

[AM909]

In some places, sadly, the only workable solution has been to forbid programming of the emergency button/mode altogether.

 

[MTS2000des]

Was trying to DM you but I don’t think my account here allows DMs (maybe because it is new), but to assuage some concern: I’m not at the same agency as you but at an adjacent one. Also, I have gone through chain of command at our agency with no response (we have a lot of gaps in our chain of command atm, and even in good times, communication between dispatch and radio team has been… limited).

I was asking here to see if it was even possible, not so I could do it myself, but so I could know if I’m asking for an impossible fix or not. I find that my requests or queries on these sorts of things are much better received if I submit both a problem AND a solution.
@dispatchgeek ’s solution is a good one, though I don’t think our agency will go for it.

I appreciate the assistance, thanks everyone.

I was going to say, our radio team is very engaged with operations and very responsive. As stated though, changing the EA/EC alter volume isn't possible. It's set at staging to be loud and I even logged into Provisioning Manager (the application we use to provision subscribers and consoles) as well as Elite Admin and don't see an option to change the alert volume.

I'm really sorry to hear of such a disconnect, but if you're down the street from us...I totally get it.