[EAS] Differences between EAS units

[Kluger, Michael]

While it was not good that stations who went to their test slide at the top of the hour, expecting the test to arrive within a matter of seconds, ended up waiting over 3 minutes for the EAN to propagate through to them, and while it was probably less than ideal for this issue to be uncovered during an event which was as high profile as the first ever national test, I think it is definitely a good thing that the issue has been discovered and is now being discussed.  It is an important issue, and I think it is extremely important that the EAS communiity should come to some resolution/consensus about the best practice for how time stamps should be handled and what to do when there is a disrecpancy regarding the message validity time window in relation to what the receiving unit believes to be the correct time.  It is probably also good timing to have this issue on the table now, with the upcoming release of that Part 11 rewrite.  I suspect that the rewritten rules will probably (I hope) clarify how such a situation should be handled, but in the event that they don't, I would hope that once a consensus is reached in the EAS community, all manufacturers would voluntarily impliment the solution that the EAS community collectively feels is the best way to go.

As far as other issues, there was one other significant difference in the way that various EAS units processed the EAN, which I was very surprised was not discussed during the November 29 webinar.  I am referring to the fact that some manufacturers buffer incoming audio when an EAN is received, so that none of the audio message content is lost while the SOM tones and attention signal are generated, while others simply discard the audio which arrives during the generation of these tones and then join the audio message in progress.  During the national test, this resulted in units which do not buffer upcutting part of the message (a rather critical part, given that there was concern about the national test possibly being mistaken for an actual emergency, and the very first part of the audio message was the part that clearly stated that it was only a test) and joining it in progess.  Again, I think that consistency across manufacturers on this issue is critical, so that all brands of EAS units handle this apsect of EAN processing in the same manner, and again, if the revised Part 11 rules do not address this (which I think they should), I would hope that we could reach a consensus on a best practice in this regard that all manufacturers would voluntarily comply with.

Just my two cents worth.

Mike

-----Original Message-----
Richard Rudman wrote:

Do members of this list see Monroe's viewpoint on one of the test's problems as one of the positive outcomes of the test as we continue to assess the value of the recent national live code EAN test?

Are there other national EAN test issues that you would like to suggest that manufacturers, the FCC's Communications, Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council, or the BWWG  raise with the Commission?

Regards,

Richard Rudman

The BWWG

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