DTMF SiraTrol fun features
Posted: Tue Nov 29, 2022 9:28 pm
There's not a whole lot of talk about the old Federal SiraTrol equipment, but I want to shed some light on the DTMF variant, because these units had some very cool tricks up their sleeves. A lot of this information can be read in the manual for it, which I recommend brushing through if you have some time, because it's quite interesting. I'll leave a copy below if you're interested.
Moving forward, one of the unique bits about the DTMF option is that this allowed you to have a maximum of 16 functions on a siren. This of course isn't useful on mechanical sirens of the era, but this was mandatory for the SiraTone, especially if you had one optioned with home remote positioning, which allowed for voice functions over radio. This also allowed remote operation of the Quiet Test module.
The next interesting tidbit are the latched outputs. The DTMF option provided 4 latched outputs that could be used for any miscellaneous operations you wanted to perform, like running strobes independently of the siren itself for instance. You can set it up to enable the strobe and another function to disable it as well.
The last part, which in my opinion is the most fascinating one, is a function called Master Call. Master Call allows you to bypass the decoder's default DTMF sequence with # symbols to do an "all call" to any sirens on the radio system. This allows full one-way zoning of a siren system, so you can activate one section at a time, or send out a Master Call to activate all sirens on the system at once.
Here's the manual if you'd like to read up a little more on these neat gadgets:
SiraTrol DTMF Supplement
Moving forward, one of the unique bits about the DTMF option is that this allowed you to have a maximum of 16 functions on a siren. This of course isn't useful on mechanical sirens of the era, but this was mandatory for the SiraTone, especially if you had one optioned with home remote positioning, which allowed for voice functions over radio. This also allowed remote operation of the Quiet Test module.
The next interesting tidbit are the latched outputs. The DTMF option provided 4 latched outputs that could be used for any miscellaneous operations you wanted to perform, like running strobes independently of the siren itself for instance. You can set it up to enable the strobe and another function to disable it as well.
The last part, which in my opinion is the most fascinating one, is a function called Master Call. Master Call allows you to bypass the decoder's default DTMF sequence with # symbols to do an "all call" to any sirens on the radio system. This allows full one-way zoning of a siren system, so you can activate one section at a time, or send out a Master Call to activate all sirens on the system at once.
Here's the manual if you'd like to read up a little more on these neat gadgets:
SiraTrol DTMF Supplement