Xander's Random Audio Shite

If The Shit Biscuit Ran ERN/KNA

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by

KanawhaCountyWX
in

I own a second EAS encoder unit, it’s a HollyAnne HU961 from the mid to late 90s, and I’ve given mine the nickname of the Shit Biscuit. It’s tiny and terrible. It requires an external audio switcher, uses a 1/8 inch (3.5MM) TS mono headphone cable for power, and only records audio at a 5KHz sample rate. Also, mine has corrupted programming. You can only program this thing from a DOS program that isn’t accessible, so that’s why the headers sound screwed up at the end, it’s just sending carrier signal when it’s supposed to send the callsign.

This is its relay of a Required Monthly Test it got from the DASDEC. Since this requires an external audio switcher, I had to add the music in post.

Also one nice thing, the only reason I keep this around the menu system on the unit talks. It’s otherwise comicly horrible.

Comments

10 responses to “If The Shit Biscuit Ran ERN/KNA”

  1. Landon205 Avatar
    Landon205

    Oh no. That’s not good.

    Reply
  2. KanawhaCountyWX Avatar
    KanawhaCountyWX

    Well it is just a contact closure driven by a triac. Serial communications are seemingly working, I just can’t use the DOS software to program it since it’s not accessible, it tries to make it look like a graphical application by creating a visually formatted page and constantly redrawing it, and JAWS and Window Eyes on my former Windows 98 machine want nothing to do with it.

    Reply
  3. Landon205 Avatar
    Landon205

    What is rs232?

    Reply
  4. EugeniuszPompiusz Avatar
    EugeniuszPompiusz

    Quite interesting that they use bi-directional thing instead of a simpler contact closure. IMHO the fact that this triac isn’t functional in Your case should also impair programming it via rs-232

    Reply
  5. KanawhaCountyWX Avatar
    KanawhaCountyWX

    There’s GPIO pins on the rear terminal block of the unit, one of the GPO pins gets grounded when its sending an alert. The switcher would detech this and activate a relay or something to switch the signal.

    Fun fact: in the units that require this sort of switching, a relay is used to ground the pin or close a contact. In this unit, however,a solid state triac is used. In mine, the triac is dead, so even if I had an external audio switch for this unit, it wouldn’t work.

    Reply
  6. EugeniuszPompiusz Avatar
    EugeniuszPompiusz

    AA, right, Now i kinda get this; the older models passed just the EAS audio and content, in quality comparable to having an Artic-215 type synthesizer. We should consider the impedance, levels etc.
    To cut the actual programming, the system in the station had to monitor grounding where? on the encoders GPIO port? (RS-232) for a specific pin which gets high when there’s an alert and route the audio either manually or automatically to the main feed.

    Reply
  7. KanawhaCountyWX Avatar
    KanawhaCountyWX

    The internal TTS is Festival Kal from my DASDEC, the HollyAnne doesn’t have internal TTS since it predates CAP requirements by 15 years. As for needing an external audio switcher, some early EAS units (like this or the TFT EAS 911) only have a mono unbalanced audio output and a pin that gets grounded when it’s sending an alert, so program audio would be routed through an external audio switcher. In practice, most enthusiasts will use VoiceMeter and have it switch the audio input to the ENDEC based on signal detection. Units like the SAGE, EASy and DASDEC have a built in balanced audio switcher so you route your line level program audio (music, talk, etc) through the unit, and it’ll cut the feed to an emergency alert as needed, no external equipment required.

    Reply
  8. EugeniuszPompiusz Avatar
    EugeniuszPompiusz

    BTW. What do you mean by external audio switcher? what ins and outs does it have?

    Reply
  9. Landon205 Avatar
    Landon205

    It sounded good. The music slowed down whitch was funny!

    Reply
  10. EugeniuszPompiusz Avatar
    EugeniuszPompiusz

    what’s the name of the internal tts there?
    I remember it from somewhere else.

    Reply

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