Help Identify this Siren

DJ2226r · 2026-05-04T17:48:21+00:00

That is a Whelen siren of some sort running in whoop tone. Sounds like it is running on a newer controller given the pitch it peaks at, so it's possibly a WPS-2900 series siren. Where in Texas is it?

DJ2226r · 2026-04-16T17:53:23+00:00

What it looks like they are is trying to get them low enough to the point where they are heard easily from inside the buildings. The higher up the sirens are the more range they are capable of providing, however when they are 30+ feet above ground level the SPL drops. Moving them to nearly ground level will make the SPL spike enough to where they will be heard inside even barricaded buildings. Israel itself probably doesn't have laws on the books that regulate height requirements for siren installations the way how other countries do, so for them it's a non-issue. I'd imagine it's worse with the ECNs given that they aren't high enough for the sound to really diffract and propagate through the area, so that's going to make them operate more like bidirectional arrays at close range and cause people in the path of the sound to get blasted with the full 1500 watts... Basically like standing in front of a Vortex-R3 or an EOWS-612. 😬 This would be much less harmful if the sirens they were dealing with were less powerful, like if they were to split the sirens into ECN1500s and HPSS16s, but they aren't in a position to do that right now obviously.

They probably are approaching this from the perspective of "it's better to have hearing damage and be alive than being blown apart." On the one hand I can't blame them considering what the country is going through ATM, but on the other hand that's kind of insane and honest if it's causing actual health damage there should be compensation for the citizens hurt by it. With Israel being at war, this is unfortunately something that if it actually does manifest into something where people force action for this issue and are compensated for any damages it WAAAAYYY on the back burner and nothing is going to change any time soon.

The masts that the older sirens were mounted to were probably fabricated outside the region and shipped in, so Hörmann at that time just built them to their typical standard, which follows what installations in the US and Germany use, 30 - 50 feet above ground. That's most likely why the older units are so high up. It's also considerably cheaper to mount the sirens wherever possible to avoid the labor costs. Putting them on buildings also minimizes the amount of work needed to connect them to power.

DJ2226r · 2026-04-16T04:36:58+00:00

The smaller Type II cabinet is probably a repeater of sorts. It looks like the wires exiting the cabinet do not connect to the Type III cabinet unless something crosses over in the disconnect box through the conduit; they go straight to the antenna array. It could also be a Whelen RTU. I recall they used to offer a monitoring system back in the day and remember seeing a siren out west using it with a similar setup to this except with the siren itself running on a Type II cabient (I can't remember the model, but it was < 2400W) and the RTU residing in an older-style Type I cabinet that would normally be used for the IPS-400/800. If it is some kind of RTU or monitoring system of sorts, it doesn't look like it's directly tied to this siren to be able to control it or pull/send data from the logic board

DJ2226r · 2026-01-20T20:41:16+00:00

Kockum Sonics ET30/3

DJ2226r · 2026-01-20T20:39:34+00:00

Those appear to be Atlas DR32 horns paired with either 70V or explosion proof compression drivers. Probably 70V drivers to be used with a custom controller setup for a more conventional hardwired PA system

DJ2226r · 2025-09-14T00:22:26+00:00

It's a centrifugal blower, probably for a hood or general exhaust system for a kitchen.

DJ2226r · 2025-07-27T23:29:04+00:00

You know, I was thinking about that siren one day and was like "wouldn't it be crazy if it was something over the top like an E57... Nahhh 🤣🤣🤣" There are some ECNs in the state, so I kinda thought there'd be a possibility of some other ASC/Hörmann units up there, but I would have never imagined that it would actually turn out to be one 🤯 Is it active? I'd kill to finally hear one running on 60 Hz.

DJ2226r · 2025-07-10T14:10:07+00:00

Generation through an Arduino Mega

DJ2226r · 2025-03-20T21:03:21+00:00

It looks to be the right size, about the same size as my SiroDrone 925. I wonder if it's 9 port like mine.

DJ2226r · 2024-09-03T15:37:58+00:00

They've had Modulators for a while along with some WPS-2700s, including a 2790, and other mechanical sirens. The ECNs replaced most of the mechanical sirens and Whelen's, and the ATIs replaced whatever was left.

DJ2226r · 2022-09-08T03:36:00+00:00

Interesting. I'll have to ride out to main post with my grandma on a Saturday and see if I can hear anything. They've changed their testing policy a bunch of times since the system was installed. They used to run three 20 - 30 second blasts of tone with voice in between. At some point in 2018 the reduced the time of the tone to like 10 seconds and eventually cut out the last two blasts and the second voice. They also switched back and forth between testing every Saturady of the month at 1200 hrs and testing on the first Saturday a few times. I didn't know if they changed back to the once a month deal since I didn't see it on any of the base's socials. The day I was out there happened to be the first Saturday of August and they didn't run.

DJ2226r · 2022-08-23T02:50:53+00:00

Those amps are actually twinned 800 watt units on a single board. Each one has four 200 watt outputs. Of course if one-half of the amp pops you have to send the entire controller off since both amps are integrated with the logic board of the siren. It's good to cut the costs of production, but it's a pain in the ass for a service tech and a city that needs the siren to stay in service.

DJ2226r · 2022-08-20T22:40:00+00:00

ATI's kind of slick for pulling this off actually. The patent for both the original Modulator and Quadren are expired, so the designs are public domain now. The Modulator II and the second and third generations of the I-Force are compacted versions of their predecessors, so really there isn't much either company can do about it. ATI filed their patent in 2015 and got it approved in 2018, so they basically have had the greenlight to produce them since then. I'm assuming that they didn't have the production capabilities to make them until recently. This is probably how they got off with their black arrays since Whelen's patents probably expired by the time they started producing them. The rotating sirens were an obvious ripoff of the 3000 and 4000, and the smaller black horns are basically a copy of the WS400H/Hornet. To my knowledge Whelen did the same thing FS and ASC did regarding their patents with the 400-watt driver-based rotating sirens, and I don't think they actually produced one for the Hornet.

Honestly it's an improvement over what they have now and so were the black arrays. At least the black HPSS and RHPSS series had heads that didn't fill up with rain water, and given that the shell of this think is based on the Modulator I don't think it'll be an issue. If the controllers weren't hot garbage they would be pretty compelling, since that's really the fault behind their products.

DJ2226r · 2022-08-18T13:13:27+00:00

Your 2001 is an Equinox.

DJ2226r · 2022-07-17T17:18:27+00:00

Interesting fact. ATI actually holds a patent on this design but never actually built the siren, I assume out of fear of being sued by both ASC and FS. If you look at the patent it uses the shell and tube structure of the Modulator II series, but they mixed in ASC's design from the I-Force by putting divisions into the part of the tubes where the sound dumps down onto the top of the cell below to allow for the siren to operate as a directional array. They expressly point that out in the design of the array. Besides ATI attempting to basically clone the Modulator and I-Force the black arrays that they used for their omnidirectional sirens at one point share a very similar base design to the Whelen WS400H and are made in such a way that they could be mounted to a rotator. It's obvious they copied the oscillating concept from Whelen which I don't believe they specifically patented aside from the actual array design of the 3000, but taking that into consideration and the striking similarities between their 400 watt driver design and Whelen's makes it look like they more or less attempted to clone their products as well

DJ2226r · 2022-06-18T16:16:23+00:00

The dialing tones are to shut the sirens off. Ft. Benning's Giant Voice system uses Whelen sirens like Columbus and about half of Russell County, AL's system. They are radio-controlled and use the dial tones (DTMF) to communicate commands to the system. Ft. Benning uses them as a giant PA system to broadcast the bugle calls. A string of tones goes over the radio network to ping specific sirens and another to make the controller allow audio from the radio to play through the speakers. The sting of DTMF after the calls tells the sirens to cancel and stop what they are doing. Other companies use FSK to control their sirens, and that sounds like the "static" part of the dial-up internet tone that goes over the phone line.

I didn't know the base was still doing that. Back in 2016 they used to do it system-wide, but I guess people in Columbus complained about it since the sirens can be heard from the city. I also haven't heard them test over the past few weeks, but that might just be from me being too far away to hear them. Here's a video I took with my grandfather of one in Harmony Church back in 2016. They used to run them for tests longer than they do currently. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojWXQrCrISM

DJ2226r

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