Custom Engineering

At Digital Recorders, Inc. we are proud of our efforts to work closely with our customers. We work hard to provide the best possible Automated Announcement system solution for each customer's specific needs. An example of such effort can be seen in our installation at Delaware Area Rapid Transit (DART).

Problem: Delaware Area Rapid Transit wanted to add an automated voice announcement system to their existing vehicle fleet. However, they had several unique needs:

• Although some of their vehicles had destination signs which were a discontinued model and did not have any existing interface capabilities, DART required that drivers have only one point of log-on for both sign and announcement system.
  
  
• Space in the driver's area was at a premium and could not easily accommodate extra peripheral equipment.
  
  
• The existing speaker system was located behind ad-paneling, resulting in less-than-ideal acoustic performance.
  
  

• A unique serial interface was designed and implemented between our DR500C Talking Bus system and DART's older destination sign controllers. This custom sign interface provides a single point logon system for the drivers of the older vehicles, and allows both old and new vehicles to share the same logon procedure.
  
  
• Digital Recorders, Inc. designed custom mounting hardware and brackets to fit existing spaces as efficiently as possible. A custom radio interface was also designed, which allows DART drivers to utilize the existing radio system's handset for both PA announcements and two-way radio purposes. This significantly reduces the amount of equipment and accessories required in the driver's area of the buses.
  
  
• Special "curved" speaker grilles were designed to allow speakers to be mounted on the outside surface of the vehicles ad-panels. This design has greatly improved the quality and intelligibility of DART's announcements, both automatic and microphone-based.