STC In The News

Maricopa County Installs STC Fire Station Flashers with Optical Detection

TEMPE, AZ - 04/04/2012 - Maricopa County DOT (MCDOT) installed fire station flashers with optical detection and direction specific pre-emption emitter at Station 131 in Sun City, AZ during Q1 2012. The fire station driveway, located about 250 feet from a nearby intersection, had no warning signals and an inoperable optical detection system tied to the nearby intersection control cabinet.

Solar Traffic Controls worked with the county to provide a total of three flashing beacon systems on the approach to the station. The application site had a large median and two lanes in each direction. Two flashing beacons were placed at one approach, on the median and one on the curb, to account for various visible obstacles in advance of the curb unit. The other approach required one flasher in advance of the driveway.

Each flashing beacon unit was based on the STC XSR product family and included a radio receiver, control logic with an LCD screen and a DPC2000 integrated charge/flasher control with built-in night dimming. Each unit included an omni-directional confirmation beacon strobe and a solar powered system designed to meet the location, load and duty cycle of the project. Additionally, each system included a self-test function to allow county personnel to verify operation of each unit.

Originally, the station had an optical detector system on a pole at the end of the driveway with a pre-emption emitter on the pole aimed at the detector at the nearby intersection. However, the equipment was originally tied to the controller at a nearby intersection. The conduit connecting the equipment to the intersection had been cut several years ago and was never repaired.

The original design was to use an AC system powered from the controller. Once the conduit problem became apparent, an all-solar solution made sense to meet the project timeline. The master unit consists of an optical detector transmitter unit with a solar-powered system. The detector head is a Tomar Strobe Switch with an additional amber LED detect confirmation lamp. Once an exiting vehicle with pre-emption lamp on is detected, the control logic transmits out an ON command to the flashing beacons. The signal is repeated for redundancy thus ensuring success in transmission in noisy environments.

Since the fire station is located near the intersection, but not all calls require using the intersection, a secondary radio system to control the pre-emption emitter function on the pole was included. When exiting, trucks must head through the nearby intersection and the system is activated, the driver may use a short range radio on the truck visor to activate the pre-emption emitter on the detector pole thus giving an early pre-emption signal to the intersection. Since the intersection has a 40 second "Don't Walk" cycle the early activation helps get the intersection into pre-emption earlier thereby speeding the fire station's response time when heading in through the intersection.

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