Commercial Public Address System

Covanta Hillsborough, Inc. is a resource recovery facility near Tampa, FL that converts solid waste to clean renewable energy. Ken Defreitas, the company’s Lead Technician, contacted Visiplex looking for a replacement for an old and failing wired outdoor PA system. He needed a wireless solution that was extra loud, had weatherproof outdoor speakers, and the ability to access the central base station in the control room by phone for field supervisors. He also needed the system to be expandable so more speakers could be added later and easy enough that the facility electrician could maintain it.

Visiplex’s solution to Covanta’s requirements consisted of a VS4500 wireless paging base station for the control room, VS101-40 high-power transmitter for complete facility-wide RF coverage, 8 VNS2200 wireless, outdoor PA speaker controllers with weatherproof NEMA enclosures, each driving VNS2088 high-power horn speakers to provide facility-wide overhead voice messaging capabilities.

The VS4500 base station included an integrated VS3003 upgrade, which provides dial-in telephone access to field supervisors for an instant, remote overhead paging capabilities.

The proposed system is fully wireless, eliminating costly wiring between different facility areas and needing only an AC outlet for each controller. The total cost of the complete system was approximately $9,700.