San Luis Obispo, CA - Mixing smartphones, radios gives new life to dispatch system

[Thunderbolt]

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. — The San Luis Obispo County, Calif., Sheriff’s Department this year replaced its end-of life radio dispatch system with a digital IP platform that links commercial smartphones with its traditional land mobile radio network. From a PC console, dispatchers are able to click and drag smartphone users into talk groups on any available frequency, giving them push-to-talk radio functionality anywhere they have cellular coverage.

Mixing smartphones, radios gives new life to dispatch system -- GCN

 

[SCPD]

Now that's cool!

 

[rapidcharger]

Haven't phone patches been around for decades?

 

[fdscan]

Anyone ever heard of Zello... Zello@Work... Same theory.

These guys, WAVE, I'm pretty sure have some affiliation with Zello, although I MIGHT be wrong. I think they're the more beefed up version for applications like public safety/much larger companies. Seems to have a better UI as well as the whole mapping technology.

Now is this cool... Of course. But who wants to rely on a cell phone for mission-critical communications. As a backup, it's awesome. But as a primary method of communicating... I'm not so sure. The cell phone just presents so much more that can go wrong, if you ask me. How many times has anyone with a smartphone noticed an app crashing, the phone freezing, the battery draining faster than you can blink, and so on. Sure radios have their flaws, but they are really designed for one purpose, radio communication, while the phones just have so much other stuff going on at once and are so much more complicated that they are just basically more likely to screw you over in terms of glitching out. There's ALWAYS an issue with an app, sooner or later. Sure, it will work awesome at first, maybe, but over time something usually screws up. Personally I use Zello all the time, as an example, and every once in a while the button will freeze up and won't let me hit it, or it won't key up because it can't find a strong data signal, the list goes on.

Sure I think it's cool...

But I mean there's a lot that can go wrong. Then again, this still is a secondary mean of communication, I think, because it says LMR is still in use.

Just my two cents.

 

[scaredpoet]

Haven't phone patches been around for decades?

This is different from a phone patch. An old school phone patch links up a dedicated radio channel to a dedicated phone line. The San Luis Obispo system lets the smartphone act as a radio, and interact with talkgroups. It also uses data, not the circuit switched voice channel.

Now is this cool... Of course. But who wants to rely on a cell phone for mission-critical communications. As a backup, it's awesome. But as a primary method of communicating... I'm not so sure.

There's a companion article on the same site that basically says the same thing:

3 reasons smartphones aren't ready to replace police radios -- GCN

It definitely looks like this more an extension/companion add-on, not intended as a permanent replacement.

 

[N9NRA]

This sounds like what they (the old Sprint/Nextel) had where one could link a Direct Connect handset to a LMR system (at least that`s how it was `SPOSED to work anyway, but AFIK it never got off the ground and eventually the network went away, and so did this system too), This does sound kinda neat though, wonder how it`ll all shake out, guess we hafta wait and see . N9NRA

 

[fdscan]

There's a companion article on the same site that basically says the same thing:

3 reasons smartphones aren't ready to replace police radios -- GCN

It definitely looks like this more an extension/companion add-on, not intended as a permanent replacement.

I really hope so. I fear the day public safety start using that as their primary method, without radios or some other "tough/proven" method of communication.