Trantek - On-Board PA, Emergency Call Box and LED Systems

Trantek specialises in the manufacture and supply of high-availability digital public address (PA), emergency call box and LED display systems. Specially designed for use on-board railway vehicles, the systems are equally suited to fixed infrastructure where high-availability and certainty of message delivery are important.

Trantek's design philosophy that all elements of a system must be designed to withstand failures provides each field unit with the ability to detect malfunctions and to continue to operate with the best possible combination of operational resources.

Digital public address and emergency call systems

Trantek's public address and emergency call systems can deliver announcements or take emergency calls under a diverse number of failure conditions. This is achieved through the use of extensive dynamic diagnostic functions, diverse communications paths and redundant controlling nodes.

Maintenance is simplified by the use of dynamic self-diagnostic capabilities. The system is able to automatically report unit failures after each announcement, even to the level of a speaker unit, or – in the case of a display – an LED element.

This feature not only provides real-time maintenance information but can also be used by remote operations personnel to make decisions with the confidence of knowing whether or not announcements were actually delivered. This can be especially useful during emergencies when system integrity may be compromised.

The PA systems, together with the passenger emergency call devices and the information displays, are fully modular, with all elements able to share the same redundant digital network infrastructure. Systems can either be stand-alone, or components that can be fully integrated by the train supplier into their own on-board system controllers.

AMT-5 PA and passenger emergency call box

The AMT-5 PA and passenger emergency call box consists of a network of self-contained individually addressable speaker / amplifier combination. Each speaker and emergency call box has its own 6W RMS class D amplifier and is connected through two redundant CAN networks to controlling nodes that manage the audio connections between announcers and listeners. The controlling nodes also provide the connection to an Ethernet network.

This Trantek PA system solution can be compared with a traditional analogue PA by thinking of controlling nodes as replacing the analogue amplifiers, the traditional speakers with the AMT-5 speaker / amplifier, and the normal two-core speaker cable with the two-core CAN network cabling.

The CAN network characteristics allow for the perfect synchronisation of the sound from each speaker / amplifier within a listening zone (for example within a rail carriage), as well as allowing emergency call boxes and displays to share the same CAN network backbone.

Some of the features of the PA system are:

• Background noise compensation performed at each speaker location
• Dual redundant communications link to every speaker
• Multiple controlling nodes for bump-less automatic fail-over
• Speakers can be grouped into different audio zones
• On-demand and dynamic self-diagnostics
• Success / failure status on every message delivery
• API allows integration to third-party vehicle-control systems
• 6W RMS per speaker
• Class D amplifiers
• EN50155 compliance
• T3 temperature range (-25°C to 70°C) without the 10min overtemperature at 85°C

LED passenger information display

Our LED-based passenger information system is designed to complement our AMT-5 PA system by allowing the display of written and graphic information. The displays connect directly to the same distribution dual CAN network as the PA devices and share the same protocols and third party API.

Recognising that, when it comes to passenger information displays, one size does not fit all, Trantek display systems are built from basic modules of 16px x 16px. With a pixel pitch of 4mm the displays have an excellent resolution that ensures they are both suitable for graphics and able to provide a good rendering of all the different character sets.

The displays are equipped with extensive diagnostic capabilities, allowing for dynamic diagnostics able to automatically detect and report the failure of LEDs. Features of the LED display system therefore include:

• 16px x 16px, 4mm pitch LED modules
• Graphics capability
• Support of Unicode character sets for multi-lingual applications
• Super-bright LEDs for outdoor applications
• Ambient light compensation
• Dynamic self diagnostics
• EN50155 compliance
• T3 temperature range (-25°C to 70°C) with 10min at 85°C