Whelen WPS-2810 Goes Rouge, Runs Full Alert

[DJ2226]

I'm sure most people who have been on the board for a while have seen some of my previous posts from the system here in Columbus, GA. Every once in a while some of our sirens will go rouge due to the way the RTUs, Motorola ACE3600s, are configured with the controllers. This mainly occurs when a siren's batteries are reach the end of their lifespan and no longer have enough capacity after running for a period of time to sustain the operation of the RTUs. Those RTUs command the siren to activate in its various functions, so once the voltage drops below the threshold, the RTU will shut off, resulting in the siren getting stuck in whatever tone or voice message that was triggered. Most times, the sirens will make their way into either a wail or air horn before the RTU drops, but sometimes, depending on the state of charge of the batteries, it will drop in the middle of the alert tone. Typically, they'll continue to do this until the batteries get bad enough that the voltage will drop below the threshold of the controller itself, causing it to abruptly stop. Once the batteries are basically dead, the sirens will only do the first message before dropping out. I did report this to the EMA director, and the tech should be fixing it shortly.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3EYi6D6EMU