Going through that
book, I realized that we actually are just running the
system of of PS-22 only.....
So you have no Master Station, but you do have a two
channel power supply and I also assume you currently have at least two beltpacks. That means that you have the basic
foundation for a
system but one that would truly be a simple party
line system.
The PS-22 supports up to 30
headset stations or 10
speaker stations (or some mix with one
speaker station being equivalent to three
headset stations). Along with deciding where the
power supply would be located (a central location is often beneficial), a typical starting
point would be to determine where you want wall plates for beltpacks, where you want wall mount stations, where you want wall mount
speaker stations,
etc. It might be common to use
speaker stations in dressing rooms and the Green Room and wall plates most everywhere else, but you decide what works for you. And since you are dealing with an existing, repurposed building, this effort may require considering both your functional needs and the physical cabling paths, device locations,
etc. available. When you establish the locations and cable paths you may want to consider how penetrations of fire rated walls, runs through
plenum space or risers and so on may affect the cabling and/or
conduit required.
The basic wiring is fairly simple, you essentially 'loop' or
daisy-chain between locations. The
power supply has three connections per
channel so you could have up to three loops per
channel direct to the
power supply. One possible consideration is that the
power supply can support two channels and has a
switch that can tie or separate the channels. You don't have to operate as two channels if there is no real advantage to it, but you could essentially have two 'subsystems' that could be tied together with one
switch on the
power supply. If you wanted to have even greater flexibility with the two channels you could incorporate a two
channel master or remote station (you can use a remote station since you already have the
power supply) and/or you could use two
channel speaker and
beltpack stations. But that does get more complex to
wire and use as well as being more expensive.
The
beltpack wall plates are really nothing special, a single
channel beltpack station connection is simply a standard
XLR. I tend to use male connectors on the wall plates as that allows using a standard male-to-female cable to the
beltpack and helps differentiate the intercom connections from
microphone inputs.
Used
Clear-Com and
Production Intercom beltpacks, headsets,
etc. are usually fairly easy to find. Beltpacks can live a hard life but the metal ones are usually very durable and if you're not worried about how they look you may be able to find some used ones at a good price. However, one challenge you apparently
face is that since you don't actually have a budget, your probably not in a position to
purchase now. So be careful of assuming that the great deal on some used items that you see today will still be available when you actually have the funds and are ready to
purchase. You may be better to establish a budget based on new or readily available equipment and then later be able to actually
purchase more, or have some budget left for other things, by getting some deals on used equipment. And don't forget that as you add more locations and users, the chances of a
headset, cable or even
beltpack needing repair or replacement grows, so you might want to plan on maintaining some spares of those items.
