Emergency Alerts

[tstuart]

In our Province we have an Emergency Alert. When it's triggered the audio takes over our Air chain. The issue we run into with this is our talk station has no clue an alert is happening, as they don't monitor the air feed when on-air due to being in delay.
Even our music stations when they are talking are not monitoring Air feeds.

The alerting box has relay closures and I've been able to take that into a GPIO node. Originally I thought I would have Pathfinder perform route changes so all Monitor paths would get the Air feed when this was triggered. Then when the alert was over pathfinder would switch these same routes back to "previous". It seems there is no way to control the volume, so sometimes it's so low you can't hear and others it will kill your ears.

Another idea is to create an Emergency Alert profile, when triggered switch to that profile, and when done switch to a default profile for that station. But this seems a little cumbersome. Doing this may not be good for the talk station as each show is run completely different, some involve the Op others the OP isn't even on the board. All it means is the Op needs to know to change the profile back, which they all know how to do so it's not a huge issue.

Are there any other ideas of how we can change the monitor feeds and then put it back to the way it was before the alert? Perhaps a way to have the route changes retain the volume settings?

Any ideas/suggestions are welcome and appreciated!

Thanks!

[Andrew_KOOP]

We do something similar. We use a VMIX to interrupt the monitor speakers in the studio. The VMIX output is the source for the studio monitors. The control room monitor bus is an input into the VMIX, as is the feed from the EAS.

We use a simple pathfinder script to control the VMIX. Under normal operation the EAS input is muted and the control room feed is on. When an EAS alert is forwarded the control room feed is muted and the EAS input is turned on.

[tstuart]

Using the Vmix works for the host and co-hosts when they are on-air. But what do you use for interrupting Record mode? Or do you even worry about that?
I don't think there is a way to have pathfinder switch you out of record mode based on a gpi trigger, or to switch what bus your headphone or other destinations are monitoring. Of course I could be wrong on that and would appreciate any info...

[wharrison]

Any idea for a solution that bypasses Pathfinder altogether?

[AXIA_milos]

VMIX can be controlled through a GPIO port. With Element, this is a legacy method and depreciated. To enable this you would need to configure in the engine for VMIX control by Element. Since it is depreciated, this option is not available in PowerStation, and only in separates.

In iQ, there is a vmix and this also provide an option to control the VMIX states based on a GPIO trigger.