sundance-communications.com/forum Forums TDM Business Telephone Systems Comdial Telephones & Systems Integrating the FXII paging feature with a Valcom zoned PA system.

The school I work for has a Valcom PA system with speakers in the hallways, gym, and on the exterior of the building. Every classroom has an Impact LCD speakerphone.

The Valcom system is set up like a CO line... you pick up that line then dial a number for the zone you want to page. So to make an announcement to all areas of the school required 2 steps... page zone 0 of the Valcom system and do an all call page on the Comdial phones for the classrooms. They've been dealing with this for about 10 years.

Numerous phone installers had told them it was impossible to have one page that went to both systems since with the Valcom you have to tell it which zone you want. Then it would generally be suggested to upgrade the PBX and paging system to something newer

The Valcom also has an input for background music, and you can assign zones to play or not play the music. So to solve the double page problem I simply ran the paging output of the FX into the music input of the Valcom. Works perfectly, including the double dialtone burst at the start of the page.

If they ever want to use the Valcom system to play music it should be a simple matter to use one of the FX's relays to control weather music or paging is getting to the music input of the Valcom.

Thanks,

-Jason

I just completed some testing and wanted to share my findings.

On the Valcom 2006A unit there are two jacks, J7 and J9. These are intended for stringing multiple Valcom units together so you can do a master page all. The jacks work like this: Pins 1&2 are a contact closure... they close when there is an all call page, and closing them makes an all call page. Pins 3&4 are audio... both in and out.

So, by hooking pins 1&2 to one of the relays on the Comdial (I picked relay 3), assigning that relay to the paging zone, then putting the page output of the pbx to pins 3&4 I have a fully working system... I can have background music on the BGM input, and the page overrides it. The "All Call" page button on the Comdial sets comes out of the Valcom speakers, complete with the double beep. And the zone paging CO trunks still operate normally.

The only problem is that the audio coming from the page port on the PBX is rather loud, I installed a simple volume control potentiometer on that line to solve the problem. Here's the one I got for $6 off Amazon. There is a volume adjustment on the Valcom, but turning it down there made CO line pages too quiet.

PS: The Valcom's paging precedence is (from highest to lowest): Page Override, Page, All Call (J7/J9), Background Music.

Thanks,

-J