Sim Cards For Scanners

[khoelldobler]

I JUST THOUGHT OF AN IDEA... not sure if its ever been thought of before, or if its even feasable to do. Many cell phones and cameras have information stored in them on thier removeable sim cards. Might there ever be a scanner mfr that may accept such a concept? My wifes digital camera has a removeable sim card which holds 64MB and she removes the sim card after a day of picture taking, inserts the sim card into a reader thats plugged into a USB port on the PC, and downloads all of her photos onto our computer at home.

My idea is that a scanner that accepts individual sim cards may come in very handy. For example, an over the road trucker wants to take his scanner on a long trip, say from N.Y. to California... he has an individual card for all of his favorite frequencies from N.Y. stored on his N.Y. sim card, and the states he drives through in between each have a sim card with stored frequencies on them individually, by state or city. When ever he pulls over for gas, he pops out one card, and inserts another. He can keep all of his programmed sim cards in one neat little leather pouch or a hard carry case of appropriate size. Granted, the state laws governing scanners vary from state to state, but what do you think about the concept.

At home, in your spare time, you can download frequencies according to specific areas, cities, or states... download them to sim cards, and carry them with you when you travel. It might really come in handy on long trips. It would sure beat having to reprogram from state to state. Its like having V folders on cards. Could there be such a use for a removeable memory card on a scanner, especially if your on the run, or if your model scanner ever breaks down like cell phones often do, you just have to swap out the sim card into the new radio.

I do not know that much about sim cards, or if they can even be used in this manner, I was just thinking about the possibilities. Just my own thoughts, and something to ponder...

 

[iMONITOR]

It could be done, might add to the price of the scanner somewhat. GRE does something similar on their digital scanners using additional internal memory space called V-Scanners.

 

[khoelldobler]

sim card technology for scanners

It could be done, might add to the price of the scanner somewhat. GRE does something similar on their digital scanners using additional internal memory space called V-Scanners.

While I currently do not own a GRE scanner, I have read a little bit about V folders. Nothing in great detail, but do they actually have enough memory or room to store that much information... talkgroups, trunking, ID's etc. for as many places as one could travel or entering 10 to 15 states worth of programming? I do not know, but I just thought that the idea was cool enough to give RR members something to wonder about. I know it would most likely be an expensive ordeal to overcome during the R&D and MFR processes. But ya never know.

 

[iMONITOR]

While I currently do not own a GRE scanner, I have read a little bit about V folders. Nothing in great detail, but do they actually have enough memory or room to store that much information... talkgroups, trunking, ID's etc.

The Radio Shack PRO-96/2096 mfg by GRE have a total of 5,500 channels. The GRE PSR-500/600, and Radio Shack (clones) PRO-106/197 have 39,000 channels.

But a removable SD type memory card (or similar) would still be nice!

 

[khoelldobler]

I wasnt sure how many channels they each had, I understood it as objects... or 39,000 object oriented items which would include tags, groups, ID's, etc. Also, some of the newer scanners already have major metropolitan areas pre-programmed, so I guess my idea was not as creative as I thought it would be.

 

[dougr1252]

Current scanners have lots of memory space, and they're not limited by banks anymore, so that plus software like ARC to edit/upload/backup your config probably meets the need. But it's still a neat concept. Reminds me of the old SBE Optiscan with the punch cards. You could store 8 or 10 channels on each card, and who would ever need more than that?

 

[khoelldobler]

your right, but the sim card idea could eliminate the need for having to have the laptop with ya everywhere ya went to do the config reprograming.

 

[ScanManQSL]

I JUST THOUGHT OF AN IDEA... not sure if its ever been thought of before, or if its even feasable to do. Many cell phones and cameras have information stored in them on thier removeable sim cards......

You should patent your idea so you can take all the credit!!!!

 

[khoelldobler]

I didn't really mean that sim cards were my idea or invention... I just wondered if they could be used somehow by the scanner industry. I thought it sounded good at the time, I figured it could be sort of neat to just swap out cards with stored frequencies for large areas or maybe even by state while traveling. Gosh maybe even have them to store stuff for other countries for those international flights, LOL. Have a great holiday.

 

[N_Jay]

With memory getting so cheap, why not just get 10x the memory.

 

[bezking]

A SIM Card (Subscriber Identity Module - a smartchip) or a MicroSD card (for memory and data storage)?

 

[JnglMassiv]

I think that the RR.com database (text )could probably fit on a single card. Why change them out when you can simply have it all?

I think a useful feature might be to be able to record rx'd audio to a removable media card of some type. This would make it easy to sort recordings and backup files.

 

[SquierStrat]

i think a scanner should have an SD card slot (or whatever ya call it) but for a completely different reason
i dont wanna add more channels, i wanna record audio to mp3!

 

[khoelldobler]

YEH, I LIKE THE MP3 IDEA, cost of installing the cards reader might be expensive, maybe they can just double the size memory that they currently install in the scanners now, for example, instead of 39,000 objects, make it somewhat like 50,000. That increase would be splendid. Then install a card that can record audio and playback on the fly. Another cool feature, since scanners receive so well, would be to see if they could have a transmit push to talk button for one simple, non private frequency. The PTT button on the side would make it look like a professional two way radio, and it would be... just a one channel party-line so to speak, a frequency for the scanner community to keep in touch with each other. When traveling thru cities or towns, you could press an alert tone button and transmit it on that single freq to see if other scanner buffs are out there or around in close proximity. If you and a friend were near or at the scene of a big event or close to an emergency scene or bldg fire, you could communicate from all sides of the area and buff the job. You could even be hailing someone ya dont even know, but ya both got something in common... an expensive scanning radio. ya can chat it up with local nieghborhood scanner enthusiasts too, and share information, kind of like we do here on RR. The possibilities are endless, but if your going to create such a scanner radio to do all of these super fine things, ya might just as well purchase a 3000.00 dollar Motorola 2 way radio with scan features already built in. I guess ya could go either way if money was no object. I would love to have 39,000 object oriented dollars.

 

[davidmc36]

With the newly announced BC396XT and it's memory size you could likely program half of the stuff in the lower 48 and have it do the switching for you with attached GPS. Being able to record on an SD card is an idea though.

 

[blueangel-eric]

i agree with these ideas but also wonder why we can't update the software on the radio for features or updates like we can with cameras and other computer hardware. so instead of buying a whole new scanner everytime they come out with new trunk systems we can just make an update. like when i bought my BC785D. i no more got it in the mail and then found out it won't do all the digital so then there was the newer model released to fix that problem. what was the 9600 baud rate? i forget.

 

[iMONITOR]

i agree with these ideas but also wonder why we can't update the software on the radio for features or updates like we can with cameras and other computer hardware.

The newer GRE PSR-500/600 and Radio Shack PRO-106/197's allow you to do exactly that. Not only is the DSP firmware user upgradeable, the CPU firmware is also user upgradeable.

 

[rdale]

...as does the Uniden line... His question related to why it isn't done, and so far it hasn't, but Uniden announced the ability to maybe do it in the future.

 

[crayon]

I JUST THOUGHT OF AN IDEA...

If you hang out around here often enough, stuff like this floats to the top on a regular basis. Especially, when a new radio is released. A simple search would have returned three or four pages of results like this thread:

http://www.radioreference.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16173

and this one:

http://www.radioreference.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2789

or this one:

http://www.radioreference.com/forums/showthread.php?t=20409