Plectron station alert & siren control system
Posted: Mon May 09, 2016 6:27 am
Hey all...
Don't know if anyone else here has any of these, but I won a small sale in CT last month and picked up two complete wall-mount fire station alerting packages made in the 1970's by Plectron. This includes two alerting receivers (these are both low band) with separate tone sets for station alerting (speakers) and siren control, and also an on-board package to switch a siren on & off via electronic on-board timer in several different formats (alert, attack, 10-second test, cancel). Plectron called this system a H10 if I remember correctly. In this lot I also bought the two Plectron Model G8 encoders that did the tone encoding to activate the boxes, so add a transmitter on the encoding end and it's a complete radio control system.
Of note is that the control boxes would switch a motor controller remotely via contact closure (max 3 amps), so they would not do the heavy-duty AC switching in the controller itself. Plectron sold out a portion of their product line to Federal Signal in the early 1990's dealing with radio receivers, so it's possible that their technology made it's way into Federal Signal's radio siren controllers.
I'll try to get pics up of these soon, they're a little unwieldy right now as there is a small piece of conduit sleeve sticking out of the bottom which I have to remove to get them to sit properly upright. And, naturally with an auction sale there were no keys to the boxes (even though the department ran them for over 30 years!) so I had to have a local locksmith make an ace-type round key to get the doors open. Luckily it was the same key code for both of the controllers I purchased!
If anyone's interested, I have updated my Plectron page with many good quality pics of encoders, it's at http://www.policeinterceptor.com/plectron.htm .
Thanks
Eric
Don't know if anyone else here has any of these, but I won a small sale in CT last month and picked up two complete wall-mount fire station alerting packages made in the 1970's by Plectron. This includes two alerting receivers (these are both low band) with separate tone sets for station alerting (speakers) and siren control, and also an on-board package to switch a siren on & off via electronic on-board timer in several different formats (alert, attack, 10-second test, cancel). Plectron called this system a H10 if I remember correctly. In this lot I also bought the two Plectron Model G8 encoders that did the tone encoding to activate the boxes, so add a transmitter on the encoding end and it's a complete radio control system.
Of note is that the control boxes would switch a motor controller remotely via contact closure (max 3 amps), so they would not do the heavy-duty AC switching in the controller itself. Plectron sold out a portion of their product line to Federal Signal in the early 1990's dealing with radio receivers, so it's possible that their technology made it's way into Federal Signal's radio siren controllers.
I'll try to get pics up of these soon, they're a little unwieldy right now as there is a small piece of conduit sleeve sticking out of the bottom which I have to remove to get them to sit properly upright. And, naturally with an auction sale there were no keys to the boxes (even though the department ran them for over 30 years!) so I had to have a local locksmith make an ace-type round key to get the doors open. Luckily it was the same key code for both of the controllers I purchased!
If anyone's interested, I have updated my Plectron page with many good quality pics of encoders, it's at http://www.policeinterceptor.com/plectron.htm .
Thanks
Eric