Whelen Legacy IO Board question

[ffjwhite]

Looking to see if the whelen Legacy or even Liberty 2 duo boards are negative swtiched like the old Liberty IO Boards. Does anyone know this? I see the duo and trio boards are have 4 wires for each module. I know some of the newer stuff has been positive switched instead of negative.

 

[ffjwhite]

Well after purchasing an Legacy IO board I did some testing. It seems that they have constant ground and constant power when given power. Did Whelen happen to make the models and boards digital signals within the ground and power?

 

[JohnMarcson]

Well after purchasing an Legacy IO board I did some testing. It seems that they have constant ground and constant power when given power. Did Whelen happen to make the models and boards digital signals within the ground and power?

There are versions with data only input requiring wecan etc. I thought they had power, ground and data lines. There are so many version changes Whelen made a guide.

Use this guide

Legacy WC and Mini Bar I/O Board - Whelen Engineering Company, Inc.

www.whelen.com

Then absolutely contact Whelen about it. They are super helpful and will not just read from a script. I talked to an actual service tech and engineer about a halogen arrow bar controller that was discontinued almost ten years prior and they were able to troubleshoot it with me and we found an issue that the literature didn't mention. The bar hadan additional option because it was for a version exclusive to a specific DOT contract. It seemed like the guys there were enjoying the problem solving as much as me.


e-mail: custserv@whelen.com

Phone: (860) 526-9504

 

[NoLimitSquads]

Well after purchasing an Legacy IO board I did some testing. It seems that they have constant ground and constant power when given power. Did Whelen happen to make the models and boards digital signals within the ground and power?

Ive had WeCan bars just turn on solid the first time I power them up. Then I have to cycle the power to get it to flash correctly. So when testing, make sure that you cycle the power a couple times and repeat the same testing, you may get different results.

 

[ffjwhite]

There are versions with data only input requiring wecan etc. I thought they had power, ground and data lines. There are so many version changes Whelen made a guide.

With the Duo Board there are 4 wires for each module. 2 black and 2 white colored wires.

Then absolutely contact Whelen about it. They are super helpful and will not just read from a script. I talked to an actual service tech and engineer about a halogen arrow bar controller that was discontinued almost ten years prior and they were able to troubleshoot it with me and we found an issue that the literature didn't mention. The bar hadan additional option because it was for a version exclusive to a specific DOT contract. It seemed like the guys there were enjoying the problem solving as much as me.

I never thought in a million years that a company would do that as it would be proprietary tech and wouldn't give that kind of info out.

Ive had WeCan bars just turn on solid the first time I power them up. Then I have to cycle the power to get it to flash correctly. So when testing, make sure that you cycle the power a couple times and repeat the same testing, you may get different results.

I will have to give this a try and see if it works. Thanks for that.

 

[JohnMarcson]

I never thought in a million years that a company would do that as it would be proprietary tech and wouldn't give that kind of info out.

As the one guy put it, paraphrased; 'We would rather tell you how it works, have you keep it, and then have you keep buying Whelen than try to reverse engineer it yourself and break it. Then you decide our stuff is no good. Other companies already reverse engineered it on day 1 anyway, and if they could make it as the same they would, but they don't.'

For the time being Whelen is still keeping their new an old software open to their customers and they have no problem helping you understand how it works. They do their own engineering in house so they are pretty proud of their designs, but they also have no delusions that other companies aren't copying it. They know that their designs are either too much trouble to replicate, already being replicated, or under patent. I give suggestions to them via a few different local and direct channels and it gets back to their engineering. Whelen has so many versions of stuff because they consider their products to be engineered not just "made". If you have a negative impression of their design they want to know why and either help you understand why it is the way it is or fix it. This attitude is why I love Whelen stuff and have since I was a teenager tinkering. No other company I bothered back in the late 80s early 90s sent a kid the schematic to their lightbar and hand wrote on it why a specific section seems overly complicated. I'm not kidding that's where I go some of my 8000 bar info.