User-programmable paging system controller having priority-based,

Abstract

A paging system controller is accessible from a plurality of input devices, such as an attendant's position, a telephone interface, telephone night bell, programmable switch devices and digital data communications devices, and is user-programmable to respond to signalling activity sourced from such accessing devices to establish a paging connection to and perform prescribed audio/visual output paging signal functions with respect to one or a plurality of paging zones served by the system. The output paging signal functions include the transmission of audio tone and voice paging signals via an audio signal path from a paging source to one or more controllably energized paging loudspeaker amplifiers, the generation of one or more alert tones to a paging zone, talkback audio signalling from the paging zone to a telephone interface, the playback of prerecorded (audio/visual) messages from either or both of audio output (e.g. loudspeaker) and visual output (e.g. silent radio) devices. Respective access inputs to which the paging system controller responds are given user-programmable priorities of access permission, with a higher priority access input always being given preference over a lower priority access input. A programmable access priority table, which may be customized by the user to assign respectively different access priority levels to respectively different classes or types of input access is stored in memory employed by the control system's processor.