Does anyone have experience integrating a Panasonic system with a 911 system? We just completed an installation of a TDE-600 for a police dept. which handles the 911 dispatching for the city. AT&T provides the 911 hardware which basically outputs 4 analog POTS lines. The lines are recorded and obviously send all related data to the dispatchers. We cut over to the new system and connected the four 911 lines to the new system. They work fine. The calls are still recorded at the 911 equipment and they ring through to the dispatchers via an ICD group with no problem.
Here is the issue...part of the 911 system is something called a Positron system. This unit is installed at each of the dispatcher’s desks. It really has nothing to do with the phone system. What it does is displays the caller information on a small monitor. All of the data that is displayed is controlled by the 911 equipment. However, what we found is that on the old Avaya system there are two small devices (see attached pictures) that are connected to the 911 dispatch phones. These boxes must send some sort of signal to the Positron system that signals it to then display the caller information on the Positron display for that dispatcher only. When we connect the small boxes to the Panasonic system it does not work. It also causes the caller volume on the new phones to be so low you basically cannot hear the caller. We confirmed that these extra devices are what signal the Positron system. To test it out as we moved the 911 lines back to the old system and called in to the 911 dispatch center. The caller data was shown on the Positron display at the desk where the call was answered. As an extra detail, that caller information is NOT displayed until the call is answered. Then somehow these extra devices must send some sort of signal to the Positron equipment which triggers that equipment to display the caller information on the Positron display at the desk ONLY where the call was answered. After we reconnected the 911 lines to the old system we disconnected those extra boxes and the call data did NOT display on the Positron display. So we know that these extra boxes are required to make this work. However, we don't know what these boxes do or what to use in place of them on the Panasonic system. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
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Clearly, something triggers the Positron and I would guess it's audio energy. Try the DIP switch on the 8000. Barring that, I'd keep Comvurgent in my pocket.
I shudder to mention it, but it should have been your FIRST task to make sure the PSAP's would talk to the phone system and function.
Thanks for the ideas guys. To answer a couple of comments - it is not the city of Cleveland and we did test the 911 lines before the cut over. They just failed to mention to us the Positron system until after the cut over was completed. We were aware of those extra devices but they told us they were not in use any longer as they had installed a new recording system and those were not needed.
When we tested it the city signed off on the test but they failed to look at the Positron system to see if it was working okay and because they never told us about it we didn't know to even ask. Trust me when I say we did our homework on this.
To close this topic out...we have since fixed the issue. As it turns out the positron system has a small box that goes inline between the phone handset and the handset port on the phone. When a call is answered that small box sends a signal to the positron system which triggers the system to display the correct caller information. We tried connecting the box but there was an additional box that had to be removed from the setup as it was blocking the signal. When we finally got a Positon tech onsite who knew what we were talking about it took him about 5 minutes to help us fix the issue.
