The Siren Board

I have a private customer that wants to set siren off by cell phone. Here is the catch, they have no land lines, do not want to use walkie talkies to set them off by dual tone. I have called ASC and they are looking into it without success yet. Does a cell phone company or cell phone manufacturer have a device that will except a phone line (sim card) and be able to activate thru DTMF of the cell phone. Anyone have ideas

You "might" be able to buy a cheap cell phone with a basic plan and have it so it automatically answers and feeds the audio from that into the reciever/controller. You could use the keypad on the calling phone and have a 4-10 didgit DTMF string that could be dialed in through the calling phone and that would activate the siren.

Similar to this setup:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysBDURN7xwE

Aren't some sirens activated by pager? I thought I read an article some time ago about a small town in Iowa that was going to start activating their siren by pager. Seems like an option to explore.

How many sirens do they have and what type?

You can set off by pager however you need a walkie talkie and a tone generator. There is a tone generator as an app for your phone called "Ted Tones Out" and it is great and I can set sirens off that I work on by this method and it is great. However this company wants to set the siren off by cell phone as everyone has cell phone and not many carry walkie talkies. There is only one siren at this company.

The idea of a cell phone in an enclosure is not the greatest thing, but that is the idea I am looking for and a timer could be in line with the output to blow the siren for only a minute or so.

Here is how I set mine off by phone or laptop.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MdfI4bsVlY

Have you talked to any cell phone companys? An oilfield that I do safety testing at has wireless callout boxes with relays and input/output modules so that if something trips, it sends a signal to the callout box and dials specific numbers. The same box may work the other way where you can program different numbers and have it do different functions based on its call.

There's a couple options I can think of that may depend on how willing you are to DIY something. You could use an Arduino with a GSM shield such as http://www.hwkitchen.com/products/gsm-playground/ to accept a phone call, interpret DTMF, and then trip a relay. This ought to be pretty straightforward. If there are multiple sirens, you ought to be able to use a solution like this to allow specific selections, groups, etc.

Another option, which would overall be mostly overkill and require an internet connection, would be something like a Raspberry Pi running Asterisk. Set it up with a SIP DID, and one of the various options for recognizing DTMF (whether a dedicated DTMF module or something simple like a silent Auto Attendant) and use the gpio on the Raspberry Pi to trip a relay. This would be massively overkill and require an external internet connection somehow, but could work.