Connecting lights to a station siren/buzzer

[FSEP]

Soooo were updating one of the rooms in my station and I've been tasked with updating and cleaning some of the old lights we have in it... Well while planning everything, I thought it would be a cool idea to hook the lights up to the stations buzzer/siren/whatever you want to call it... This way, everytime we get an alarm, the lights would go off for the duration of the buzzer being activated... However, this is where I need your guys help... How would I go about doing this? I know the lights I have are fairly old, so I'm going to have to create or buy some relay to change the amount of electricity going to the beacons... but what else will I need to do?

 

[Zapp Brannigan]

Soooo were updating one of the rooms in my station and I've been tasked with updating and cleaning some of the old lights we have in it... Well while planning everything, I thought it would be a cool idea to hook the lights up to the stations buzzer/siren/whatever you want to call it... This way, everytime we get an alarm, the lights would go off for the duration of the buzzer being activated... However, this is where I need your guys help... How would I go about doing this? I know the lights I have are fairly old, so I'm going to have to create or buy some relay to change the amount of electricity going to the beacons... but what else will I need to do?

Well, a relay is only part of it. Whatever activates your stating buzzer may already be hooked up to something you could tie into, possibly already a relay. You would most likely need an inverter to go from 120 VAC to 12 VDC. Would help if you know how your existing buzzer is set up/wired.

 

[shues]

You would most likely need an inverter to go from 120 VAC to 12 VDC.

Do not use an inverter! An inverter takes DC as its input and creates AC as its output.


What you need is referred to as a power supply.

 

[tacomabanga19861986]

i would like to do this as well, throw my old 184 beacon on top of the siren we have, its not hooked up at the moment, but would like to know how to make it do it, would be great as an alternative for night time calls, vs the loud siren,


might hook up my streethawk in control room and when the tones go off it will run a lil bit and what knot


i have yet to see anything setup like this unless someone has a video


would be awesome to see how its all hooked up, i love wiring things

 

[Torpedo]

This could go a couple of ways. If the station's buzzer is that, a buzzer, you need to know what voltage it is, usually 24 ac or 120 ac are the choices. Wire a correct relay coil across the buzzers terminals (parallel) and the relay's contacts will activate with the buzzer. If you are using a 120ac to 12dc converter power supply for the new load (light) I recommend using this relay to close the 120v circuit enabling the power supply to illuminate the light. This way the 120/12 power supply isn't always on, only when needed. This all needs to be done with extreme care as you are possibly mixing voltages and such in one enclosure. If your station's "buzzer" or "siren" is a speaker you're on your own, I have no idea how to trigger a relay from a speaker. Be careful, don't burn down the fire house comes to mind.

 

[OVERKILL]

can you post a couple of pics of the buzzer and the station alerting system so we know what there is to work with

 

[Zapp Brannigan]

Do not use an inverter! An inverter takes DC as its input and creates AC as its output.

What you need is referred to as a power supply.

10-4, thank you for the clarification!

 

[SirenWorld.com]

A lot of it will depend on what's already installed.... or what equipment you're getting your contact closure from... whether it be a radio, or an amp-charger base for a Minitor pager, etc...


This is a great resource I used to set up our station bell/strobe/PA system. Includes information on timing relays and even adding a tone generator and boosting the volume during pages, and lowering it during non-page audio. Pretty in depth.


We went pretty simple when I did the one at ours... it's a Minitor amplified charger. The pager is set to auto reset after tone-out, rather than remaining open. When the tones drop, the contact closure in the pager base trips two timed relays. The first is a relay which sends 12vDC to our house bell for the duration of the alert (3-4 seconds, usually). The second relay activates the strobe lights on our station speakers (fire alarm system strobe/speaker ceiling mount) for about 10 seconds. The word "FIRE" was replaced with "ALERT" to avoid confusion of the strobe.


Our audio for the page is sent to the speakers, and gradually ramps up during the alert phase of the tone out.


All in all... not a bad little system for a weekend project. We also included another set of relay contacts to turn on bunkroom lights and hallway lighting if we choose to have a staffed crew in the future. Those would trigger the lighting contactor in the appropriate rooms and activate the lights for 90-120 seconds.


Fire Station Alerting System Design