The Siren Board

This is a bit of a stupid question.. and once answered I'm okay if this thread is locked.. but what makes some sirens voice capable and some not? For example, I haven't seen a Whelen 2016 on a Whelen controller do voice, but in the circumstances of Monroe County, where their Whelens are hooked up to Ultravoices, they are able to do voice. So what I'm asking is, is voice capability a controller thing, or a thing with the siren? Is there a seperate controller used for the Vortex/Omnialert/Firehouse/Hornet sirens then there is for the 4000s/2900s?

I'm not too educated on electronic sirens at that, but I think it might be both controller and the siren itself. If a siren's "built" to be just for tones rather than both voice and tones, it'll probably be unable to do voice even if on a voice-equipped controller. Controllers are also either voice-capable or not voice-capable so it relies heavily on that.
Unless someone can confirm any of the above information, take it with a grain of salt. Like I said, I'm not too educated on electronic sirens.

It depends on what controller the siren has, and if the entity controlling the siren wants voice cabable sirens. All Modulator controllers are voice capable (MC, MCP, UV) but only the type II and type III cabinets for the digital ESC-864, ESC-2020 and ESC-2030 can do voice. Type I cabinets are on Vortex, Hornet, and OmniAlert sirens, which are supposed to be more economic options for communities that don't need voice capable sirens, whereas the 4004 and 2900 series have the Type II and III cabinets which allow for voice capability. This is also the reason Vortexes and 4004s have different rotators, because 4004 rotators are able to stop in 4 directions.

sirensandfirealarms wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 22, 2021 12:40 pm

because 4004 rotators are able to stop in 4 directions.

So Vortex rotators are unable to stop unless cancel signals are sent out?

Before I begin, this is a friendly reminder that people should not be answering questions they do not know the answer to.

That said, just because you don't see something doesn't mean it can't be done.

All* Whelen WS-2000s, 2x00s, 3000s, and 4000s are voice capable. 404Rs, Hornets, Omnialerts, Vortexes are not.

Each Whelen siren uses the same controller as its contemporary mainline brethren. The 404R/OA/Vortex series use an entirely different amplifier from the mainline series Whelens. Its an amp that amplifies tones well but is not adequate for voice reproduction. As was noted above, the Vortex does not contain the extra equipment needed to index the siren. So yes, its all or nothing for rotation on a Vortex siren on a Whelen controller.

Now, one thing to address.

Some_3t22s wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 22, 2021 12:35 pm

If a siren's "built" to be just for tones rather than both voice and tones, it'll probably be unable to do voice even if on a voice-equipped controller.

There would be nothing stopping someone from hooking, say, a UV up to the siren and then it be voice capable. The UV uses amps that can handle voice and the siren head uses the same drivers as its mainline brethren. The UV indexes by estimating position (Federal's rotating electronic sirens never came with equipment that told the controller where the siren head was in its space).

*The WS-2000R was the only Whelen siren where voice was optional. The WS-2000R, unless otherwise specified, shipped with a rotator that was not indexable. However, an indexable rotator was an option. Having grown up there, I can say that St. Louis County, MO's 2000Rs did oscillate (like the 3000s and unlike the 2000Rs in, say, Rich Fountain, MO). Back when I was young, I also emailed with the OEM and confirmed the sirens were voice capable (and in fact the very first test of the Whelen system there in 1982 involved the then county executive talking over the sirens).

uncommonsense wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 22, 2021 1:58 pm

Each Whelen siren uses the same controller as its contemporary mainline brethren. The 404R/OA/Vortex series use an entirely different amplifier from the mainline series Whelens. Its an amp that amplifies tones well but is not adequate for voice reproduction. As was noted above, the Vortex does not contain the extra equipment needed to index the siren. So yes, its all or nothing for rotation on a Vortex siren on a Whelen controller.

The WS-404R actually used the amps from the WPS series and could do voice. It coexisted alongside the WS-280 series, which is the predecessor to the Vortex-O/OmniAlert. I think their capabilities were limited to a smaller number of messages and no live PA compared to the fully-featured WPS lineup at the time, but the functionality was there. The old WS-404Rs in St. Charles, MO had voice boards installed inside their panels, and I have seen a front panel for a WS-282 that actually had voice options on the front panel itself that you could select with the dial and activate as you would the tones. The 282 only had four messages to select from. Independence, KS has a bunch of WS-285s in their system that don't do live voice with the rest of their voice-capable sirens. Regarding the amps from what I can tell in the schematics the main difference between the "tone only" amp is it lacks the extra circuitry to pump out 500 watts in voice mode and the driver component of the self-diagnosis system which is handled by the oscillator board since the output from the amps run through it first and then to the drivers. They can output voice or anything else you want to push through it, just at 400 watts instead of 500. Technically their tone only sirens can do voice, however it can only be done locally.



Whelen went through a weird phase in the early 90's experimenting with different configurations for their controllers. I speculate that they may have introduced their digital ESC-864 logic board on these two series for a test spin before finalizing it for use in their WPS series. From the looks of things, they were trying to reduce the cost of the 4004 and smaller 2800s below what they would typically cost in the basic two-way configuration without a voice module. They more or less rebuilt the controller from the ground up and probably did it for less than the cost of the original WPS controller. They housed the components inside of a Type I cabinet that was built more like the company's current IPS panels with a swinging front panel. These had the same rotory dial selector like the later iterations of the Type I, except the dial was built into the panel instead of a smaller one stuck in the corner of the cabinet. They could also accommodate up to five amps, and this allowed the omnidirectional sirens to go up to five cells. This is how the 404R and 280 series was created. The 404R shared the same rotator as the WPS-4000 series and WPS-3000.

Once Whelen committed to the idea of going completely tone only with the 404R they built a newer rotator from scratch. As you mentioned earlier these didn't have the extra limit switches for position indexing. The switch to the pulley-based system instead of the direct drive worm gear assembly, along with the enclosure for the rotator being a watertight box instead of the cast aluminum ones for the WPS series, was also an attempted price saving measure. They made a newer amp for the controllers that didn't have the 500 watt capability and removed the driver testing feature from the amps, placing it on the oscillator board. That probably brought the price down even more.

To my understanding, they dropped the 404R as soon as the Vortex-R series was released around 1995. Most of the 404Rs used the older style 4004 head, however at least one has been found with a newer style head. It wouldn't have made much sense to keep it in the lineup at this point. Oddly enough they were reluctant to drop the WS-280 series. The 282 I mentioned was confirmed to have been installed in 1997, and by that time the Vortex-R was already out. I speculate that they kept it for two-way capabilities since the amps could run self-diagnosis and also check the resistance of the drivers and might have deployed actual Vortex-O series sirens for systems that were one-way without an oscillator board. The series was most likely dropped by the early 2000s when the company officially switched to the ESC-2020 logic boards. There was a video of a 285 online years ago uploaded by one of the users here that actually had the OmniAlert insignia silkscreened onto its front panel. I have no idea on what Whelen was doing back then since the series, along with the 404R for that matter, were not documented very well, if at all. Whelen might have just been testing the waters, both with the branding and design, to see what sticks. We know what the conclusion of that was considering that they completely moved away from the WPS amps in their tone-only sirens. All of the later model Vortex-O, OmniAlert, and Fire House Series sirens have an oscillator board for driver resistance testing despite not being rotating sirens.

You’re right about the 404R. I had a brain fart. They use that Vortex style turn switch tone selector with Power Masters. What an odd unit indeed.

To add to this, controllers Pre-864 (and maybe 864 too?) like the WS-3000 controller were only capable of live voice, and stored no pre-recorded messages.

Model L wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 13, 2021 4:47 pm

To add to this, controllers Pre-864 (and maybe 864 too?) like the WS-3000 controller were only capable of live voice, and stored no pre-recorded messages.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfMO9MZOqR4

Synther wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 13, 2021 9:21 pm

Model L wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 13, 2021 4:47 pm

To add to this, controllers Pre-864 (and maybe 864 too?) like the WS-3000 controller were only capable of live voice, and stored no pre-recorded messages.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfMO9MZOqR4

I believe this is pre-recorded being broadcast from the central control. I should have been more clear, the controllers themselves unless modified have no storage for voice recordings, and are only capable of broadcasting voice messages recieved over radio.