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Sage Digital ENDEC Quick Start Rev 2.0
6. Is the ENDEC Set Up Correctly?
Correctly is a combination of your settings and filters, all the hardware connections, and access to your
LAN. These seems complicated, but the ENDEC is accepting alert messages from other local stations via
audio inputs, as well as using the Internet to find alerts and download audio. The ENDEC needs to check
any alerts it finds against your list of optional alerts, as well as the FCC’s list of required alerts. It interacts
with other equipment at your station to get the alert on the air.
You need to check to see if all this has the desired result, and you need to check it periodically to make sure
it is still working as expected.
Here is a typical checklist.
1) Are alerts getting on the air? Even if you hear the alerts on the ENDEC’s front panel speaker, you
need to check to see if they actually get on the air –can you hear the data tones? You can send a
weekly test any time you like. You must send a weekly test each week unless you relayed another
alert in that week.
2) Is the ENDEC receiving alerts and relaying them correctly? Are you monitoring the sources
required by your State EAS Plan. You must relay the Required Monthly Test. These tests are
almost always scheduled in advance on a State or local level. Find out when they occur in your
area.
3) You must relay the National Periodic Test. This has occurred yearly since 2016, but might not
happen every year. The FCC announces the test two months in advance.
Alerts should appear in your log. The ENDEC should receive a weekly test or any other alert from each of
your monitor assignments once a week. If an alert is missed, you need to find out why. It might be that
one wasn’t sent, or that it was and you didn’t receive it.
The ENDEC can email log reports, but the ENDEC also keeps an internal log of each received alert.
Access this from the ENDEC’s web page, click the “logs” button. It will show you each alert sent, and
each alert you receive from an analog monitor source. Audio alerts that don’t match your filters will show
up with a type of “ignored”. Alerts from CAP are logged only if they are specifically selected by a filter.
FEMA sends a Required Weekly Test each Monday, usually at 11:00am local time for your state.
FCC rules require that you maintain a log of EAS activities, review it regularly, noting missed alerts and
why they were missed.
The ENDEC’s home page will also give you an indication of problems. The top status line should always
show “CAP: OK”. If not, you need to find out why – use the displays on the Tools page to help.
The dashboard on the right side of the main page will also show if there are any error conditions such as
self test failure, the last alert sent and received, the local and UTC time at the ENDEC, and other items.
7. About the Emergency Alert System
The Emergency Alert System (EAS) allows the President of the United States to automatically access the
nation’s broadcast outlets and directly speak to the country in times of national disaster. Other originators
are:
• the National Weather Service and
• State and Local officials to disseminate other types of emergency information.
Your EAS encoder/decoder (ENDEC) receives alerts from:
• Over the air directly from the source of the emergency information, or from other broadcasters in
your area that relay information from the primary source
• At least one Common Alerting Protocol alert server
FCC licensed EAS Participants are required to monitor and process alerts from both input types.
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