Motorola Emergency TX/RX troubleshooting

[pkuntzy]

I am trying to program two radios (R5 and XPR3300e non display) to transmit emergency tones to each other when emergency mode. We have an XPR8400 for the actual implementation. However for testing, I am simply trying to get it to work in a simplex style and can't get it to work. We are manufacturing plant. On the weekends, only two employees are in it monitoring. I want love worker to emit an alarm to the other in the case that they have a problem when they separate from each other around the plant. But at this point I can't get the emergency trigger to transmit at all (or perhaps its the receiving). I think it is transmitting because my coffee table light flickers everytime I key the radio and it's doing the same when the tone sounds

In CPS2.0 I have the following
- Emergency On/Off control set
- Emergency search tone set (works)
- Digital emergency system is set to go to the zone and channel and contact i want. (the radios also transmits and receives voice)
- Contacts with the same Call ID
- Channel configured with the same frequencies and emergency system

I can't get the emergency tones to sound on the other radio and the status light is not turning red. I have a feeling I'm missing something simple. Any experts here to point me in the right direction?

Thank you in advanced

 

[cmjonesinc]

So I'll preface this by saying that I have absolutely zero experience with setting up any of the emergency features so I'm not sure what the correct way to actually accomplish what you are trying to do is, but this is what worked for me.

I have a XPR 3550 portable and a XPR4550 mobile. Neither of my radios have the red emergency button so for testing purposes I assigned the side button 1 on the portable to short press "emergency off" and long press "emergency on". I did the same on the mobile with the P1 button.

I created a contact called "emergency" set as a group call and gave it an ID off 911 for the sake of it being the emergency group.

I created a "digital emergency system" under the systems tab. Set the alarm type to "regular", the mode to "emergency alarm", the revert zone and revert channel to the simplex channel I was testing on. Set the contact to the emergency contact I created above. I also set "acknowledge required"

On the Rx Group list I add the "Emergency" group call contact to the existing group call contact used on the channel.

I then went to the zone and channel I wanted to test with. Scrolling far to the right side on the options I enabled "RX: Emergency Alarm Indication", "RX:Emergency Alarm Ack", "RX:Emergency Call Indication", and "RX:Emergency Call Decode Tone" on the 3550. The 4450 did not have the "RX: Emergency Call Decode Tone" option.

I was able to trigger an emergency alarm from the mobile radio using the assigned key from above. The portable had an audible alert, led status change and a visual alert with the alerting radio id on the screen (I used a different RID on each radio, not sure if that matters). When the portable received the alert I could use the keypad to acknowledge and clear it.

Sending the emergency from the portable the mobile also received the alert with an audible tone, led status change, and a visual on the screen of the radio that sent the alert. The one problem I had, was that I was unable to acknowledge the alert and clear it on the mobile radio. I had to power cycle the mobile to get the alert to clear. Not exactly ideal but it is an older mobile radio and I've read where others have encountered the same problem with no actual resolution. It may have something to do with the "acknowledge required" settings.

But all in all, I was able to get alerts between the two radios successfully. If none of that works for you attach your codeplug and I'll compare and see if you're missing something I forgot to mention.

 

[pkuntzy]

I had the radios set to the same radio ID. It seems to work ok now that I have changed one. That was the only thing you described that I didn't do.

When our distributor delivered these radios to us they set all the radio IDs to 1. I don't see how this could be an issue given that the contact is a group call. But what I actually think is going on is an enhanced privacy issue

 

[pkuntzy]

It will be interesting once I put this on the repeater

 

[redbeard]

I had the radios set to the same radio ID. It seems to work ok now that I have changed one. That was the only thing you described that I didn't do.

When our distributor delivered these radios to us they set all the radio IDs to 1. I don't see how this could be an issue given that the contact is a group call. But what I actually think is going on is an enhanced privacy issue

It's normal for radios to not respond to their own ID in those circumstances.