Responders Alerting System (RAS)

So what is it?

RAS is an application for processing pager messages, displaying them on a screen and announcing the message over a PA.

What does it consist of?

There are actually two parts to the application, both of which need to be run on the same dedicatied PC.

• Part 1
  • The RAS application itself
• Part 2 (optional)
  • An application called TextAloud and the Australian Voice called Karen

Why are there two parts to the system?

It's this simple... RAS does all the processing and TextAloud just handles the speech. TextAloud is a cheap application to purchase and you can purchase any of the voices to use with it (TextAloud = $32.74 and Karen = $49.18 the last time I checked). TextAloud also allows you to edit the pronunciation of words and some other fancy stuff like translating something like "/SMITH ST //JONES ST" to be spoken as "Nearest road, Smith Street, next nearest road, Jones Street"

Consider the following ficticious example of CFA pager mesage:

@@ALERT F100100123 ALARC1 HOPP6 HOPP002A ABC PLASTICS ADMINISTRATION ASE - INSIDE FIP, INPUT - FRONT FOYER ENT 47 LOW  ST MELTON /EDWARD DR //HENRY HWY M 206 F10 HOPP [HOPP]

Listen to Karen announce the example pager message.

Click the image to see the example screen from this alert message

How does it work?

When a pager message is received the application does the following:

• Breaks down the message into specific parts and displays these, and a map image, on screen
• Sounds an alert over the PA system and then announces the page as spoken English
• Prints a copy of the alert and map for crew leaders use
• Counts down a timer that indicates how long remaining before failing our Service Delivery Standards (SDS)