Adding paging with IP 500 V2

[hsfdchief200]

Hello,

I'll say right up front that I'm not a tech/installer of phone systems. I have a basic knowledge and am pretty good at figuring things out by studying the wiring, manuals, etc. That said, the reason why I'm posting this is because our local phone system installer that put in our Avaya IP 500 V2 system with 1408/1416 phones says this can't be done.

Here's the deal: this is in a fire station. We have 8 phones (7 are 1408 and 1 is a 1416). With our old phone system, we had a Viking PA-2A paging amplifier installer with a horn in the truck bay so that we could hear pages better. When they installed this new system, they said paging with a speaker can't be done. I never thought that was right, and the limited info I've found so far says it can...

All of our 8 phones have the "page" button, obviously, which will broadcast the quick tone before users can speak. This pages over each phone's speaker. Is it possible to program this unit so that when "page" is pressed, it will broadcast over each phone AND the horn in the truck bay? The installer attempted this - they connected the PA-2A to the IP 500 V2, but I'm pretty sure they didn't know what they were doing.

Here's how the front panel looks now:
-Far left slot: phone extensions on ports 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, and 10 (all green lights). Twisted pair to PA-2A on port 7 (not lit up).
-Second slot: phone lines coming in (4) on ports 1, 2, 3, 4.
That's all for the front.

I realize that that doesn't tell you much without knowing its programming, but it's all I have to go on for now. My plan is to gather the info about how to make this happen, then call the tech back out there and hopefully explain how.

Can the external horn be tied in to page whenever the "page" button is pressed (without having the dial a page) and keep the page over the phone speakers at the same time, as well?

Thanks in advance for your help.

 

[TouchToneTommy]

Give your installers a copy of this:

http://www.touchtonetommy.com/Files/IPOPagingAnalogStationPortandUTI.pdf

and see if they can take the concepts to the Viking PA2A and make it work.

 

[hsfdchief200]

Thanks! I should have mentioned that we also have a rack-mounted, 8-channel Peavey MMA-8150T amplifier that our 2 base station radios are tied into with speakers in the ceiling and truck bay.

Could the Viking PA-2A be eliminated all together and have the 2 wires coming from the Avaya control unit connect directly to the Peavey amplifier on one of the other channels?

 

[TouchToneTommy]

Owner's manual for your amplifier/mixer

http://assets.peavey.com/literature/manuals/80302313.pdf

Appears that there are 9 input channels, each one requiring an input module to match to the source. You should be able to contact a Peavy dealer and get a telephone paging input module, put it into an unused slot, and connect to the IP Office.

 

[hsfdchief200]

Ok thanks. On the instructions you linked to in your first post, does that programming allow it to be a one button press to page through everything together? We'd just rather not have to manually dial a code in each time to page. Our old system was that way, and we'd like to stay with the "page" button, if possible.

In layman's terms, is the following what you're document says? When you press the button that's programmed as the "page" button on the phone, it will page over the phones and simultaneously dial in whatever code is programmed to initiate the output to the paging port? All with just one button press?

 

[TouchToneTommy]

Yup, you can include the phones in the hunt group along with the port that is used for paging. Dialing the code, OR pressing the button, does a page to the entire group, phones (that are idle) and the amplifier/speakers.

 

[hsfdchief200]

Thankfully, I was able to fix it without having a tech come out to reprogram anything. Just for kicks, I decided to disconnect the Viking box and connect the 2 wires to the Peavey amp instead. We already have a telephone paging input module on it with 3 channels of input. The third one wasn't being used. So I looked up which wire was supposed to go to which terminal, connected them, and everything works together. Apparently, they had programmed everything correctly to begin with, but either the Viking box or the horn in the truck bay is not working any more. I'm going to try to troubleshoot those further because if I can get that Viking system up and running again, I will use it to broadcast the telephone rings in the truck bay (the Viking has a ring input and page input).

Thanks so much for your help, TouchToneTommy!