Station Paging & Voice Dispatch¶
Station Paging tones your Fire & EMS console like a station pager when a call comes in, then reads the call out loud in the same voice your radio uses.
It is CAD audio, played in the browser. That means it works for all communities (FiveM, ER:LC, or no game integration at all), and it needs nothing installed in game.
Which plan: Station Paging is on all plans and pages with PulseCAD's built-in tone. Uploading your hall's own tones is part of Customization, Pulse Pro and up.
This is not the in-game station alert
PulseCAD has two separate paging systems and they do different jobs.
| Station Paging (this page) | In-game station alert | |
|---|---|---|
| What happens | A station tone plays on the Fire & EMS console, then the call is read out | Bay doors open, lights flash and the call is announced inside FiveM |
| Needs | Nothing. Any browser, any plan | The Inferno Station Alert resource on your game server, and Pulse Pro |
| Works for ER:LC | Yes | No, and it never will |
| Set up in | Admin → Customization → Station Paging | Admin → FiveM → Station alerts |
| Dispatch control | Page Fire/EMS | Tone Out |
They sit next to each other on a call and you can use both. Neither one replaces the other.
Setting it up¶
1. Choose your tones (admin)¶
All plans page with the built-in tone, so there is nothing you have to upload. On Pulse Pro and up you can replace it with your own: go to Admin → Customization → Station Paging and upload two audio clips:
- Station Pager — Fire, played when a FIRE call comes in
- Station Pager — EMS, played when an EMS call comes in
Accepted formats are .mp3, .wav and .ogg, up to 5 MB — big enough for a real 20 to 60 second tone-out.
Built-in tone, or your own
Until you upload a clip, the built-in tone plays. Your own audio is better if your community has it — two-tone sequences, a recorded tone-out, an alert tone, whatever your crews already know — and that is the Pulse Pro part.
2. The pager switch (each operator)¶
The pager is per person, and it is on by default. Anyone who does not want the tones can turn it off.
Change it any time from Tools → Sound Settings → Station pager.
What a page sounds like¶
- The tone plays (the built-in one, or your community's own), in place of the usual new-call sound. It plays once, or more if your community set a repeat count.
- A short pause.
- The call is read out:
"Station one, Engine one, Battalion three, Medic seven. Station two, Ladder two. Respond to twenty twenty-four East Senora Road, for a structure fire. Time out, twenty twenty-two."
The house is named once and then its apparatus are read off, the way a real tone-out is read. Numbers are spoken as words — Engine 55 is "Engine fifty-five", 2024 E Senora Rd is "twenty twenty-four East Senora Road".
While it plays, the station page shows the call: your agency's patch (the logo set in Admin, or its abbreviation if none is uploaded), the call type, number, priority and address, the dispatch text, a timer counting from the tone, Full Text to read a dispatch too long to fit, and SILENCE. Where it appears depends on your console's look:
| Look | Where the station page appears |
|---|---|
| PulseSquare | A red band under the status tiles. The calls list moves down, so the status tiles stay clear. |
| PulseField | A red bar under the rig bar. |
| PulseMin | A docked panel under the CAD toolbar. The call and unit grids move down. |
| PulseMDT | A window in the middle of the map, and the right end of the status strip turns red. |
It reads STATION PAGE while the tone plays and DISPATCH while the call is read out.
Silence stops everything
SILENCE cuts the tone and the announcement immediately. The call stays on your board.
When it pages automatically¶
An automatic page goes out when all of these are true:
- the call is a Fire or EMS call
- that call type has Pages the hall ticked
- nobody has been paged for this call already
- it is not a call one of your own crews just typed in
- your server has not paged in the last 45 seconds (adjustable)
- and either nobody is dispatching, or your community has chosen to page automatically while a dispatcher is on
With a dispatcher on duty, the default is to wait for them
The thinking is that a dispatcher who is working the board should decide when to turn the hall out. If you would rather it page by itself even while someone is dispatching, change While a dispatcher is on duty to Page automatically in Admin → Customization → Station Paging.
A dispatcher who picks Fire/EMS units in Assign Units on New Call has made that decision: those units are paged as soon as the call is created, whichever way this is set.
Why it did not page¶
| What you see | Why |
|---|---|
| Nothing at all, on any call | Your pager switch is off |
| Nothing, and a dispatcher is online | Your community is set to let the dispatcher page by hand |
| Nothing, on a call your crew created | A unit that types a call in is already at it, so it does not tone its own hall |
| Nothing, right after another page | The cooldown. It stops a burst of 911 calls toning the hall over and over |
| Nothing, on one particular call type | Pages the hall is unticked for that type in Admin |
| Only the usual new-call sound | The pager is off for you specifically — check Tools → Sound Settings |
| Only the usual new-call sound, while you are on a call | Your unit is already on another call, so it is not toned out for this one. A page for your own call still tones |
A dispatcher pressing Page Fire/EMS ignores all of these except the missing tone and a crew already on another call.
Paging by hand¶
From Dispatch¶
Open the call and press Page Fire/EMS. A picker lists everyone on duty on the fire side, already ticked, with a preview of what the announcement will say. Untick whoever is not turning out, then send.
Your selection decides what is said. The audience is still all Fire & EMS consoles with their pager on, the same way a real tone-out goes over the air whether or not it names you.
That lets you page several halls in one go: "Station 1 Medic 1, Station 5 Engine 55, Battalion 1…"
After sending, the button shows the time it went out, so a second dispatcher does not re-tone a hall that was just paged.
From the Fire & EMS console¶
Open the call and press RE-PAGE to send the tones again — for a crew that missed it, a second alarm, or mutual aid.
What the voice says¶
The announcement is built from a script you can reword in Admin → Customization → Station Paging:
| Token | Becomes |
|---|---|
{units} |
The apparatus being paged, grouped by station house |
{address} |
The call's address |
{postal} |
The postal, skipped when the address already states it |
{nature} |
What the call is — see below |
{station} |
The station house on its own |
{priority} |
The call priority |
{callNumber} |
The incident number |
{time} |
The time the page went out |
Anything between tokens is spoken as written. A token with nothing to say is dropped, along with the word that introduces it — a call with no units assigned opens on "Respond to…" rather than trailing an empty phrase.
Making call types sound right¶
A dispatch code read aloud is not much use: MVA-INJ comes out as letters. So each Fire and EMS call type has a spoken phrase — "a motor vehicle accident with injuries" — edited at the bottom of the Station Paging page.
The call-type packs already ship these, so a community that loads a pack gets sensible phrases for all fire and EMS types without typing anything. Leave one blank and the call type's label is used instead.
Hear it before you commit
The Station Paging page has a Hear the voice box. Type anything and play it.
In the call log¶
Each page writes a line on the call, in the wording of a real CAD:
Dispatch Alert successful: Station(s) Station 1; Radio(s) Engine 1, Battalion 3
Dispatch Alert successful: Station(s) Station 5; Radio(s) Medic 7 (Re-page)
It names the halls and the units that were toned. The line's time is when the page went out, and
Performed By is who sent it: the dispatcher's ID for a manual page, CAD for an automatic one. A
(Re-page) marks a second page of the same call, so a log read afterwards shows whether the hall was
toned twice. The spoken announcement itself is unchanged.
On a call with linked incidents, the page is written on the Fire/EMS incident and shared, so the police officers on the linked incident see it too.
Settings reference¶
All of these live in Admin → Customization → Station Paging.
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Station Pager — Fire / EMS | built-in tone | Your own audio clips (Pulse Pro and up). Until one is uploaded, the built-in tone plays |
| While a dispatcher is on duty | The dispatcher pages | Whether a qualifying call pages by itself while someone is dispatching |
| Play the tone | Once | How many times the clip plays per page (up to three) |
| Least time between pages | 45 seconds | Floor between automatic pages across different calls |
| Read the call out after the tones | On | The spoken dispatch |
| What it says | See above | The script |
| Pages the hall (per call type) | On | Whether that call type tones automatically |
Troubleshooting¶
The tones play but the voice sounds wrong — a different voice, no radio quality, everything run together.
That is the browser's own speech, which is what you hear when the proper audio could not be reached. Press F12 and look for a line starting [pager] — it names what it was waiting for.
The page takes a second or two to arrive. Expected the first time a street or a rig is announced: the audio is generated once, then kept. The page waits for it rather than toning first and speaking afterwards, because a hall toned and then answered in the wrong voice is worse than a page a moment later. Once your community has been running a while, almost all pages are instant.
A crew hears nothing at all and no error. Browsers block sound until the page has been clicked. Click anywhere on the console and page again. Any click on the console counts, so this normally sorts itself out the first time you touch it.
One apparatus is not named in the announcement. Only crews on duty are named on an automatic page. Anyone who went off duty, or whose console stopped responding, drops off.