Basic Federal Signal Pathfinder Programming - Siren Sweeping Buttons - Ep 10

[@copieokie]

Appreciate the video on this! Do you happen to know how to do this with a fed sig smart siren?

[@PTRRanger951]

So that kinda isn’t the sweep. That’s just the transfer for what I am understanding in the video. There is in-depth programming to make the Pathfinder act like a SS2000 where it steps through the siren tones and you can have the buttons switch as well. It’s in the manual itself when they published it. That way hitting the horn will advance to the next tone, and that button will light up, and then next horn press will go to next tone with that button lighting up. To get sweep what I did was make the button a step, with a virtual input of a timer. Assigned the siren tones to each step I want them on, and then assign a timer where it advances to the next tone after 8 seconds. What I did was make it mimic the Unitrol TouchMaster Sweep, a true sweep, where it would cycle the tones every 8 seconds over and over. So I would have wail (maybe a different wail then I had for my wail button), yelp, and ultra Hilo. So when that button was pressed it would cycle through all the tones over and over until a different siren tone was selected, or it was turned off. But you can set up the Pathfinder how you did, without dedicating a button for the horn ring advance. It’s buried in the training section of the programming guide, but there is a section on having the Pathfinder act like a SS2000 when cycling siren tones using the horn ring.

[@mrpeeperz]

@coplites i am having an issue with this feature, it does the 3 tones and then does the 4th step as off. so I get stuck in a 6 second silence. would this be because I don't have the double press to shut off activated?

[@chpman2013]

So, if I'm understanding this correctly...when you have the slide switch on position 3 and you press the horn ring button once, does it automatically go to sweeping through the siren tones or does it go to Wail first and then sweeps upon a second press of the horn ring button?

[@Coplites]

Per this video, when you have the slide switch to position 3 it will not do anything unless you physically press B9 (Siren Sweep) or honk the horn once. It will automatically sweep through all the sirens you have selected, in this case it would be SSP Wail first but in 8 seconds it will switch automatically to the next step. If you want to manually skip one of the steps you can do so by pressing B9 (Siren Sweep) once which will automatically move to the next step, or you can press the horn once and it will automatically move to the next step. The only way to disable the siren sweep is to either move the Slide Switch to another position that is not 3 or double press B9 (Siren Sweep). Let me know if this answers your questions.

[@chpman2013]

@@Coplites Ok, got it. Thanks.

[@chpman2013]

@@Coplites regarding to turning the siren off with out pressing buttons multiple times, couldn't you just designate a "standby/reset" button to deactivate all siren tones with one press?

[@Coplites]

@@chpman2013 Yes you could. You could create a new button that actually has no function except as a momentary (or a push on/off). Then make all sirens dependent to that button in the off position so as soon as you press it, it turns off all the sirens. At the end of the day you're still pressing a button and for the most part you can only make one speaker at a time play a siren so I think that making a button that turns off all the sirens could be pointless unless you just want to have one button that turns off everything without having to press any other button. I suppose that would just be a convenience thing.

[@chpman2013]

@@Coplites Yeah, I was thinking of something similar to the Vision controller version of the Smart Siren (even though the Reset button that it had only turned off auxiliary lighting functions and not the siren/PA functions).

[@chpman2013]

Oh, something else that I thought of: on the older Smart Siren and Smart Siren Vision controllers, they had a "Press and Hold" feature where if you press down on the steering wheel horn ring with SS3 on and on a siren tone other than Wail, it would sound the Air Horn. Do you know if it's possible to do that with the Pathfinder?

[@Coplites]

I'm sure it is possible, but off the top of my head I don't know how you would do that.

[@chpman2013]

@@Coplites well, just thinking back to what you said, just another way of using a control while keeping both hands on the wheel. Plus, a really cool feature that I've seen is that the air horn can be tied in with the white scenery lights.