The Siren Board

I know I haven't been on her much lately, but thought I'd share the new setup I have for the 2T. I had an old timer that was kind of crappy rigged together with an Altronix timer, 12V car relay, small power supply, and a backup 12V lead acid battery. It was plugged in with an extension cord with wires going to the 2T. That was in use for a few years. Then had a year or 2 hiatus of the noon siren and I wanted to get it back up and running again....as my neighbors and horse boarders wanted also! =)

I needed to pull a new subpanel to this area for a dryer going in the wall behind here, so the timing made sense for a new setup. In the control box is the smallest regular sprinkler time I could find that used regular batteries as a backup (not a button cell/watch battery). I looked at propagation timers (used for mist houses and can do cycles in 1-second increments), but I opted for a regular one which can only do increments of 1 minute. I do not want the siren going a full minute each day, so I got an interval timer ($17 or so on sale from Grainger). Interval timers energize their relay when the control signal comes in, but only stay closed for as long as chosen on the dial. It then opens and resets once power is removed. I have it tuned to approximately 15 seconds.

I also wanted the ability to run it either at 120 Volts as a noon signal or 240 Volts for other events...wildfires, tornado warnings, etc.....though I also have the 1003 that I use for that

To choose the voltage, I bought a (used in good shape) generator transfer switch off eBay. I can then choose either 120 or 240 Volts. This voltage and the timer signal go to a sprinkler pump start relay which is more than enough for the current the siren draws. I am going to add a cable into the house and hook it up to an AR timer so that it can be set off that way also. I thought about doing a DPDT relay to automatically switch over to 240 when the AR is running it, but this will work fine for me.

Siren housing also got a nice sandblasting and powder coat!

Awesome! Why a backup battery? Its just a home siren But none of the less, really cool!

Ha! That sprinkler timer setup looks like something straight out of my "playbook"! That's the same kind of setup that I devised to automatically set Rhine's 2T22 off once a week at noon for its test, using an old Orbit 4-station sprinkler timer hooked to a potted relay with a 24VAC coil (like the older style pump start relays for sprinkler systems) with a 24VAC delay timer between the timer and relay to drop it back to the same 15 seconds. It only goes off on Saturdays at noon though, but it's same basic principle and it works great. Glad to see that I wasn't the only one with the thought to use a sprinkler timer for something like this, and that's a great choice on the timer too!

The backup battery will keep the clock's time if there's a power outage. I still have to remind myself to change it twice a year with daylight saving time. We do have a standby whole-house generator. Not that the noon siren is on the priority list that high though!

Ian, I looked into using a time-on delay relay like you are talking about, but this seemed more straight forward of a relay setup vs subtracting time from a 1-minute cycle. I guess it doesn't really make much of a difference in the end though. The time range on mine is 1-180 seconds. 1-60 seconds would have been nicer, but this one was on sale.

The total setup was not cheap though. When you add together the clear Nema box, transfer switch, pump relay, sprinkler timer, time relay, and transformer, you are looking at around $350.

Adam Pollak wrote:Ian, I looked into using a time-on delay relay like you are talking about, but this seemed more straight forward of a relay setup vs subtracting time from a 1-minute cycle. I guess it doesn't really make much of a difference in the end though. The time range on mine is 1-180 seconds. 1-60 seconds would have been nicer, but this one was on sale.

The total setup was not cheap though. When you add together the clear Nema box, transfer switch, pump relay, sprinkler timer, time relay, and transformer, you are looking at around $350.

I don't blame you with the relay, kind of wish that's what we used on the Rhine setup instead of the delay-on relay so that it would activate right at noon instead of waiting 45 seconds (and possibly having to program the time accordingly). Not too big of a deal overall but I most definitely see where you're coming from! That setup sure looks really good though, nice and clean which is something I also strive for. Those NEMA boxes really have gone up so much in the recent years, which has made it quite hard to find the right one for the job while still trying to keep within a budget. Usually Jeb and I got lucky with a lot of it though since quite a few of the parts, including refurbished used enclosures, we already had on hand between the two of us and didn't have to buy all new components. Relays have also seemed to go up quite a bit in price too compared to 5+ years ago. At least the good thing of it all is at the end of the day, you get to look back at it all put together and see how nice the finished product looks. I'm even amazed at some of the things I put together, like "wow...I did that?!" haha

You can use one timer output as a daily noon test signal and connect another output to your AR timer for a weekly test of alert or attack.