Emergency tone alert

[tootallsteve]

Hi  We had a devastating fire in our area a year ago and had to get out in minutes. We formed a Non Profit and are setting up GMRS repeaters . My question is is there a handheld and or mobile that will receive a tone and set an alert on the radio that there was an emergency tone sent out. Like if you were outside working in the yard when you came back in it would flash or beep. Thanks Steve

[JeepCrawler98]

Commercial radios can frequently do this - I have this set up to page my family in case they want to keep the radio muted from the every day chatter on the repeater, or I need to alert them when they're away from the radio. Take a look at 2-tone paging; it's robust and plays nicely with weaker signal strengths which is why it's popular with the various public safety agencies still on analog (it's the two long beeps you hear before the buzzer goes off at the fire station).

Other options that can do this include DTMF and AFSK (MDC/FleetSync) signalling.

edit: see http://genave.com/two-tone-paging/

Edited November 17, 2021 by JeepCrawler98

[mbrun]

A few of the Wouxun GMRS models (and some of their amateur models as well) do have an emergency alert feature. The alert can be set off by sending the radio an ANI-ID followed by DTMF code ‘110’. This can be triggered manually to experience it yourself by doing the following. Using a radio with a DTMF keypad enter ‘999#110’. 999 represents an ANI-ID value, # is used to terminate the end the ANI-ID, and 110 is the actual alarm code. I have confirmed this works on the following models in my possession: 905G, 935G, KG-UV8H, KG-UV9P, KG-T56. Activation is a true annoying emergency alert siren. It seems to reproduce on the receiving radio until the radio detects a carrier on the originating frequency again, at which time it stops. This function appears completely separate from the calling function that exists in some of the radios.

The 905G is a very poor performer. While it can be set off, the DTMF decoder is so poor, that it is completely hit and mis as to whether it will sound or not. All the other models activate nearly 100% of the time when tested at short range.

The 905G, 935G, KG-1000G, KG-UV8H, KG-UV9P do have a calling feature which, if the radios are configured appropriately, will cause the radio to ring when they receive an ANI-ID followed by either the ANI-ID of the receiving radio, one of the supported wildcard key combinations (*#, [digit]**). The later wildcard represents the first digit of the receiving radio’s ANI-ID.

The KG-805G has an official alarm button. When the button is pressed it sends out its ANI-ID followed by the 110 alarm code. However, the radio fails to terminate its ANI-ID with a # sign when it transmits it, consequently, the act of pressing the alarm button fails to actually notify anyone that the user is in distress. Instead, the alarm goes off locally.

Michael
WRHS965
KE8PLM

Edit - This post has been edited since it was originally posted to remedy incorrect information originally posted. My original recollection regarding the 805G was incorrect. Have checked my notes and retesting, I have opted to revise the post with the latest information since it had not be quoted.