Bus Installation Guide

Bus Installation Guide

This document is created to help guide appointed technicians in installing the Transportant system.

Equipment

The following is the list of tools, parts, and equipment needed for an initial installation.

Transportant-Supplied Equipment

  1. (1) Attendant (main computer, black box)
  2. (1) Copilot (touch screen tablet)
  3. (1) RFID reader or key pad (connects to copilot)
  4. (1) 4-in-1 antenna (GPS, 2 LTE, & WiFi connection)
  5. (1) Power loom (red, yellow, and black wires covered by a black loom)
  6. (1) Accessory loom (orange, light blue, blue, green, purple, tan, and brown wires covered in a black loom)
  7. (1) Audio loom (white, white/black, gray, gray/black, white/red, white/red/black, gray/red, & gray/red/black wires covered in a black loom)
  8. (1) Green or silver all-clear button
  9. (1) 12V to 5V Power Over Ethernet (POE) transformer (power converter for copilot)
  10. (quantity and length varies) Cat 5e patch cables for copilot and cameras
  11. (quantity varies) 2” round velcro pads to mount RFID readers or key pads

Customer-Supplied Parts and Consumables Needed

  1. 7” mounting hole cable ties
  2. Heat shrink butt connectors (AWG 16-14 or AWG 12-10)
  3. Ring terminal connectors (22-16 gauge)
  4. 12V water resistant add-a-circuit blade type in-line fuse holder
  5. Fuse holder add-a-circuit fuse tap adapter (optional; depends on bus)
  6. Male and female spade connectors (22-16 gauge or 16-14 gauge)
  7. Electrical pull tape
  8. DAP Ultra Clear All Purpose Waterproof Sealant, for sealing around antenna
  9. 18AWG 2 conductors (18/2) CL2 rated cable wire, for all-clear button wire run
  10. #8 x 3/4" self-tapping screws
  11. T-Tap splice connectors, 16-14 gauge (optional)
  12. Stranded Cat-5e Ethernet cable RJ-45s

Customer Tools Needed

  1. Impact drill (optional)
  2. Hammer drill (optional)
  3. ⅞” hole saw (Milwaukee Shockwave hole saw recommended)
  4. 1 ⅛” hole saw (Milwaukee Shockwave hole saw recommended)
  5. 2” metal hole saw
  6. #2 Phillips bit (for screws)
  7. #2 square head bit (for bus screws)
  8. 8’ ladder to gain access to the roof of the bus for mounting antennas
  9. Fiberglass fish tape (red conduit fish tape) helps for fishing wire in bus
  10. Metal fish tape helps to grab red conduit fish tape in places
  11. Thin fiberglass glow rods help to fish wire around some air conditioning units installed on buses
  12. Wire cutters/strippers
  13. #2 Phillips head screwdriver
  14. Wire crimpers (for crimping wire connectors)
  15. Wrench and socket set (for power, ignition, and ground tie downs)
  16. Probe tester (for testing wire locations)
  17. Cat 5e cable tester (for testing Ethernet cable)
  18. RJ-45 crimpers (for repairing Ethernet cable ends)
Note: Tools are best for the user's preference. There may be tools the user may want to use for better ease of practice. The tools are the basics to help get through some known obstacles installing different types of buses.

Attendant Placement

Depending on the bus, find the location you wish to place the attendant. Depending on the bus style and added packages, consider the following:

Front Bulkhead

If there is nothing placed on the front of the bus bulkhead, the attendant can be mounted in that location for ease of access and wire running to that central location. This is where the 2” hole can be made to fish all of the wire connections to.
Front bulkhead

Front or Side Overhead Compartment

Often there is plenty of room to mount the attendant in the front or side overhead compartment. The 2” hole isn’t usually needed for these locations.
Front or side overhead compartment

Ceiling Above Driver

Depending on state law, you may be able to place the attendant on the ceiling above the driver. The 2” hole would be a way to fish all wires through to the connection of the attendant. This would also be a good location to drill the ⅞” hole through the ceiling for the antenna.
Ceiling above driver

Driver Side Above Window and Side Railing/Channel

If there isn’t an overhead storage box in this location, and all other options are unavailable, the attendant can be placed there with the wiring run down into the bus harness channel.
Driver side above the windows

Post-Placement

After deciding the mount location, now is the time to run your wires for the attendant and the devices. Depending on the bus style and packages, you may not need to create a hole for some wire run connections to the attendant. Please refer to your local DOT laws for camera mount locations. In general, it has been okay for the camera to be mounted 5 rivets up from the bus harness skirt/channel.

Cameras and All-Clear Button Locations

Camera Locations

If you wish to fish your Ethernet runs down into the bus wire harness channel, you must first remove the harness side skirt. Then take your ⅞” - 1 ⅜” hole saw (installer's choice) and create your hole above the location to mount the camera, and also in the side channel aligned with the hole made above.

Cat 5e Patch Cords

After creating the holes for your cameras' locations, you would need to fish the Cat 5e patch cords up from the side to your above camera placement location. Run the proper length patch cables to meet your attendant location.

All-Clear Button

In the rear of the bus you can choose where you wish to mount the all-clear button. Most choose to have the all-clear button mounted on the rear right corner of the bulkhead. This is where you use the 18/2 audio wire to run to the back of the bus, and you want the wire to run from the back of the bus to the front where it will meet your audio loom and power loom in the fuse panel.
The black gasket provided with this all-clear button is for buses that don’t have a removable plate for ease of maintenance for the rear lights. For this situation, it is recommended to use the 1 ⅛” hole saw, so that you can fish the 18/2 wire and mount the button. This hole can also be helpful in fishing the Cat-5e wire for a rear camera.
All-clear button

Ethernet Connection to Attendant

This photo below is an example of what you should see when connecting Ethernet cables to the attendant. The most important thing to remember is that the copilot’s Ethernet cable needs to be connected to the (copilot) labeled port, located next to camera port 1. Ports labeled 1-10 are all camera set ethernet ports. When the Ethernet cables are connected, for every connection you should see an orange LED, which is a network/link Indicator. The green lights for each ethernet port just represents that the switch and that port is powered. So if you have 1 copilot and 6 camera ethernet connections, you should see 7 orange LED link lights. This is telling you that the attendant is communicating with each device.
Ethernet connection to attendant

4-in-1 Antenna

Next, is getting the 4-in-1 Antenna mounted. The ⅞” hole saw is what needs to be used for the antenna mounting location. The antenna needs to be mounted where it faces the horizon and has about 2 feet all around metal contact. The most used location is above the front bulkhead, above and to the left of the front marker lights.
After mounting your antenna, for a bit of an extra seal, you can use the sealant around the antenna.
4-in-1 antenna location example 1
4-in-1 antenna location example 2
4-in-1 antenna wire bundle example

Audio Loom, Accessory Loom, Power Loom, & Copilot Ethernet

Run the looms from the attendant down the bus to their needed locations.
  1. The power and accessory looms both need to be run to the bus fuse panel.
  2. The audio loom needs to be wired to wherever the bus stereo is located. Some stereos are mounted above the drivers head, left of the driver's seat, or to the drivers right dashboard.
  3. The 25 foot Ethernet patch cable needs to be run wherever you have chosen to mount it.
Wire loom side panel example

Audio Loom

This step begins when you’ve successfully run the audio loom from the attendant over to where the stereo is located.
Take the exposed wires of the audio loom and separate the output wire pairs from the input wire pairs:
  1. Input wire pairs: white-red & black-white | gray-red & black-red. These two sets of wires will need to be spliced into the stereo/speaker wire harness. The splice connection would be towards the stereo.
  2. Output wire pairs: white & white-black | gray & gray-black. These two sets of wires will need to be spliced into the stereo/speaker wire harness. The splice connection would be towards the speakers.
Now you need to identify the bus speaker wires, behind the stereo in the harness connected to it. You would usually identify the following when looking at a stereo/speaker harness:
  1. White (L+) & white-black (L-) | gray (R+) & gray-black (R-)
  2. Green (L+) & green-black (L-) | purple (R+) & purple-black (R-)
Note: Some radio harnesses have no color coding, very light wire labeling, or none at all. Commonly the white and gray pairs represent the front speakers of a vehicle, and the green and purple pairs represent the rear speakers. Bus wiring however has been inconsistent. From the factory if one set is not used, usually you would notice that pair is cut out of the wire harness. Usually you would see just one or the other. It is less likely to see both pairs used in buses.

Loom to Bus Harness Splice Connections

Once you’ve identified the speaker wires in the wire harness behind the stereo system, you would need to cut the two pairs in half:
White (L+) & white-black (L-) | gray (R+) & gray-black (R-)
or
Green (L+) & green-black (L-) | purple (R+) & purple-black (R-)
Once cut in half, you should now have 4 pairs of wires. This is where the splicing the Audio loom to the speaker harness begins. Your input wires need to be spliced into the wire harness towards the speaker. For example:
  1. Audio loom [white-red] wire | splice into | bus harness [solid white (L+)] wire towards the stereo
  2. Audio loom [black-white] wire | splice into | bus harness [black-white (L-)] wire towards the stereo
  3. Audio loom [gray-red] wire | splice into | bus harness [solid gray (R+)] wire towards the stereo
  4. Audio loom [black-red] wire | splice into | bus harness [gray-black (R-)] wire towards the stereo
Next step is to splice the output wires of the audio loom towards the bus speakers or opposite end of the stereo. For example:
  1. Audio loom [solid white] wire | splice to | bus harness [solid white (L+)] wire towards the speakers
  2. Audio loom [white-black] wire | splice to | bus harness [white-black (L-)] wire towards the speakers
  3. Audio loom [solid gray] wire | splice to | bus harness [solid gray (R+)] wire towards the speakers
  4. Audio loom [gray-black] wire | splice to | bus harness [gray-black (R-)] wire towards the speakers

Copilot

This step begins when you have successfully run the Ethernet cable from the attendant location, down to where you would like to mount your copilot. You will need to ensure your bracket mount is tied to your copilot and the transformer POE adapter connected. The Ethernet cable connects to the POE adapter. The RFID reader connects to an open USB port on the side of the copilot. A hook and loop adhesive patch is provided to mount the RFID reader in a location of your choosing.
A mounted copilot and POE adapter

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