Anyone have any experience with 2TS codes? Our Station siren is setup with this system and is currently having issues. It is setup up as follows. I do not have much experience with the 2TS codes.
2TS CODE A 378.6. 2TS CODE B 903.2
FREQUENCY 155.595 PL TONE 051.
Hey there,
If you can send a picture of the specific activation controller, I can help you here.
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I have designed and installed dozens of siren and/or horn systems and controllers over the years. Prior to the use of RF to activate the older type “Civil Defense - Air Raid” sirens, most municipalities actually made use of either self installed and maintained or phone co. leased copper circuits.
Now with RF, the costs for leased circuits been eliminated and reliability is way up.
Are you using the same frequency for tone+voice alerting/paging of first responders? Or, is the freq dedicated to siren/horn activation? Are you using the sirens/horns JUST for storm alerting?
Fortunately, it looks like whoever initially designed your code plan used “standard” Motorola QC2 (“Quick Call 2”) tones. Going back to the late 1960’s and early 70’s, most of the encoders and decoders were produced by “Plectron”, a company that specialized in tone+voice alerting equipment. They were most commonly remembered as the company that incorporated a secondary “alerting” sound following the tone sequence. (warble sound or multiple beeps, etc…).
When I was a young volunteer firefighter, I was issued a “Plectron Receiver”. It was the size of a toaster oven, just half the height. It was powered by 120VAC power, but came with a battery backup option that allowed us to take it on the road, to the supermarket, etc… Seriously!
They were surpassed by //\otorola who started with QC1 (using a DTMF type tone sequence to avoid “falsing” - Remember the TV show “Emergency!”? They used QC1 and the final “klaxon horn” sound was actually a horn which was activated by the first 2 tones)
After a while, to allow for expansion in the code plans use by large agencies, Motorola came out with QC2 and 1+1 and “long tone” sequencing. Throughout most of this time, several other competitors came out with their own tone+voice signaling, but Motorola is really the only one remaining. Way back when, the decoders actually used “tuned reeds” which were individually created and individually tuned to activate when they vibrated when hearing the frequency they were tuned to)
Most systems consist of a paging encoder located at a dispatching facility (or can be automated for weather related alerting). In your case, it appears they are generating a QC2 signal based on the Motorola “QUICK-CALL 2 — ONE PLUS ONE” plan. The first tone is generated for a period of 1.0 seconds with an intertone delay of 0.0 seconds (no gap between tones) followed by the second tone for a period of 3.0 - 4.0 seconds. There are multiple ways to encode/decode tones to alert large groups down to individual users. The reason for much of this complexity is because of the limited technology of the day. Even though there are far more sophisticated and secure ways to alert pagers/users/stations/etc, QC2 still remains the ubiquitous method of alerting in the volunteer first responder world.
In many cases, a QC2 tone sequence that alerts the entire department will also be used at “civil defense” type horn/siren sites to facilitate alerting volunteers out and about in town who are NOT carrying pagers. The same applies to station alerting. A larger department can have separate tone sequences (usually sharing a common tone) for each station. That permits stations to be alerted individually or in large groups.
If this is just a telephone pole mounted siren or siren mounted on the roof of a fire station, etc… There are many ways that the device can be activated.
Assuming everything on the generating side of things is properly functioning (dispatch center, etc… ) and the tones are being transmitted out on the air properly (via radio transmitter(s) )…
The tones will be send out as a 1.0 second 376.2 Hz tone immediately followed by a 3.0 second 903.2 Hz tone. The radio frequency the transmitter (or repeater TX?) is sending this out on is 155.595 Mhz with a DCS (aka “DPL” etc) code of 051. When the device (can be a purpose built receiver or a “home brew” device consisting of a receiver with tone decoder and heavy duty relay or contactor to activate the actual siren or sirens)
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From the latest Motorola “Quick Call 2 – One Plus One” Tone Plan:
The first tone, 378.6 is from Tone Reed Group FOUR (4).
It is tone THREE (3) and Reed Code of 143.
The second tone, 903.2 is from Tone Reed Group FIVE (5).
It is tone NINE (9) and Reed Code of 159.
Essentially, like I mentioned, depending on the location of the controlling device, you have multiple ways to accomplish alerting. You could purchase a station alerting receiver from one of the major mfg’s (BIG $$$) - OR - you could simply assemble a few components together to accomplish the same function.
MOST of modern synthesized 2-way radios have QC2 decoding (AND Encoding!) built in.
For most of our station alerting (volunteer fire/heavy rescue/ems with emergency management), we replaced all of our copper RTNA telco circuits many years ago. We use retired from service mobile radios and equip with external heavy duty rated 12vdc coil - 240vac / 50 amp contactors.
Here is a company that produces some specialty hardware.
(we’ve used some of their hardware for several interoperability projects and their tech support is pretty good)
btw - you likely do not need to use a decoder for subaudible (DCS/DPL 051) tone. The audible QC2 tones are what will be activating the decoder device.
If you need any assistance, just reach out and I’ll assist you if I can .(no charge - of course!)
Good Luck!