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Convincing employer to go digital...

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NavyBOFH

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Before I get too deep into everything - I want to disclose that my department is currently not the department that "owns" this radio setup, but we are talking to management about how to make it better for everyone.

I work at a large employer who uses about 200-250 radios throughout a 1.3 million sq ft facility. It is a fully open first floor, with a mezzanine second floor. The current setup has been "furnished" by a LARGE communications company, who is usually known for some... interesting... decisions. It is a UHF repeater system, with 16 channel analog radios - of which all 16 channels are used pretty consistently. I do not know what repeaters are currently in use, but I do know that we (my department) was the ones running the LDF4-50A cable (or similar equivalent) to Commscope DB404 antennas. We have almost all Icom and Motorola "cheap" business radios, but with a smattering of Vertex DMR mobiles and handhelds (mobiles being used as base stations).

My proposal has been to switch over to DMR, since with the 16 channels we have a HUGE issue of people talking over each other and individual departments having no "operations channel" for themselves to use. So with 16 repeater pairs, thought that either they can all be used and open it up to at least each pair with a TS1 and TS2 channel - or being able to cut the "purchased" frequencies in half and show the management some savings can be had as well.

As for infastructure - all repeaters are housed in a cabinet in the middle of the mezzanine. Problem is - the people (us) who were "directed from above" to install the antennas INSISTED they be installed with almost 35-50ft of cable coiled up before the antenna "in case the cable breaks", but didn't understand how much loss goes through that much unnecessary cabling, and the antennas are all hung vertically from the ceiling beams, but only about 50-60 feet away from each other. All the frequencies are minimally spaced, and there's FREQUENT de-sense issues and users keying up over someone else on a daily basis - training be damned.

In the end DMR is what I wanted to pitch for better efficient use of the spectrum allotted to us, MUCH clearer audio in an industrial environment, and with the right infastructure changes a more robust system which won't allow users to step over each other. I have been trying to put this together but coming from mostly HAM and military radio - have no idea how to manage that many DMR channels in a single building. Do we need an antenna for each repeater? Do we need a damn array of antennas hanging from the ceiling or will 2-3 across the building be sufficient? Does output power of the repeaters have to be more than 10w (pretty sure they're blasting 35-40w indoors)? And then lastly, how to justify moving the ENTIRE building to DMR radios (versus MagOne radios) and possibly 16 new DMR repeaters (if the ones installed aren't already). I am hoping to bribe an IT person here to open the cabinet and let me peek but chances are slim - so I am pitching this proposal trying to cover all bases with an emphasis on more timely, clear communication which will greatly help operations and be a safety asset in this environment.
 

krokus

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Instead of whip antennas, a distributed antenna system, using leaky coax, would be much better. A whip could be used on the roof, if external coverage is needed.

This location sounds like a prime candidate for a trunked system, which could cut down on repeaters.

A system designer should be consulted, not just a sales person from the radio company.

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jim202

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I would be a little careful of just jumping into your desire of a digital system without having a solid understanding of the users needs, amount of air time, number of users and areas of coverage each group might require. This is not a simple plop the radios down, hook them up to the existing antenna system and walk away.

With this many radios and users, it might be a good time to step back and get some industry consulting and engineering involved. I would hold off for a while before bringing in the radio vendors. They are going to try and up sell what ever they feel like and the customer gets it without any Vaseline.

Been in this industry a long time and hate to see a customer get a new radio system that doesn't really fit anything except the vendors bank account.
 

mmckenna

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I agree with the others.

I run a trunked system here at work. I've got almost 400 radios on our system, and about 50 talk groups.
What you are describing sounds like a prime candidate for a trunked radio system.

Don't decide on a brand/manufacturer/technology this early in the game. You really do need a non-manufacturer/sales/dealer to take a look at what your needs are and design a system. To try and do this piecemeal, on your own, or by just asking a shop to sell you something will not turn out well. It gets a little complicated designing a system of this size, and if you simply open the doors to a dealer, sales guy or specific manufacturer, you're going to be wasting a whole lot of money.

A trunked system will give you enough talk groups to do what you want while maintaining interoperability between all the radios. It'll also be the most cost effective.

I'd be really surprised if there were 16 individual repeaters in that cabinet, but it very well could be. That would be some serious overkill. I suspect what they have is one or a couple of repeaters and just putting different departments on different PL/DPL tones to divide up the system.

Just about any new trunked system you'd find today would be digital, but DMR isn't the only game in town.

Also, for a facility like this, you might want to look into a WiFi based system. Might be a more cost effective approach and allow for more tailored coverage.
 

ElroyJetson

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DO NOT ASK ME FOR HELP PROGRAMMING YOUR RADIO. NO.
Digital is not always an upgrade. If a system that's not very good to start is changed over to digital, it can be an absolute disaster.

Digital seems to be, if anything, MORE demanding of proper system design and installation than analog.

You will need higher signal strength for equivalent coverage.

I would absolutely recommend that a professional and experienced RF engineering consultant with substantial experience with analog and digital radio systems in a variety of environments should be brought in for a professional analysis and recommendation.

Just buying digital radios and putting antennas where you think they should go is really not likely to yield optimal results.


Honestly for an indoor industrial environment, if you have full coverage with wifi networks, you might be best to go with VOIP radios rather than have a separate radio system.
 

cmdrwill

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But, the sales people would like you to believe that new 'Digital radios' will cure all your problems.
Not so as Elroy mentions.
 

NavyBOFH

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VOIP over wifi was my first thought since the entire facility has wi-fi in it - but there are dead zones that IT hasn't resolved and seems to have no desire to resolve. The current infrastructure is also for mobile terminals and about 750 Symbol scanner guns so the network is pretty saturated already.

I didn't want to step on anyone's feelings but the current system was purchased from BearCom and the radios are their BC130 models. The issue with the system is with the current 16 channels, there is no room for calling vs ops - so for instance the dock will call maintenance on our channel for an issue, but if we are currently coordinating a repair over the channel they will step on us and their call will sometimes be missed. The issue is coming from either de-sense or poor radios, since half the time if 6 radios are all in an area, only 2 or 3 might hear the call at all. That's sowing down response times and has been proven to be a possible safety issue.

I was thinking DMR since it would allow us to put a channel on each time slot and give us the ability to have a calling channel and then a "tac" channel for each department or area of the facility. Then the rest of it would be down to having the radio scan both time slots when set to a certain channel.

I pitched the idea of the DLR/DTR type radios but they will not go from one side of the facility to the other, and repeaters are not available to bridge that gap. A Harmony type system would be the next choice on that level but don't know if Motorola even sells it anymore.

A trunked system was also on my mind but my company's philosophy is to be "frugal" and in that sense will try to go with the cheapest repeaters and mobiles/portables they can afford - and I'm not sure there are many trunking systems with cheap enough radios right now.

In terms of usage, I know that at least half the channels are used all day and night long - with other channels being used about 60-70% of the time with messages being about 15 seconds long each time. Those are more "management I request assistance at the dock" and waiting for a reply.

If anyone wants to know the company at this point - it's Amazon. Who hold a contract with BearCom for every one of their facilities they have in the US right now. I'm not management, so I don't know the ability to ditch a vendor and get a local vendor to revamp our system - but I do know other facilities I've visited have gone over to Vertex DMR equipment running all-digital and they love the setup. When people come to see our facility the first thing they notice is "you can't hear anyone over all the background noise in the transmission". That's what I'm pitching to resolve first and foremost.


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galactic_star

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NavyBOFH, sorry to barge into the thread. im a beginner to using radios and im also looking for a solution to this type of scenario.

you said this " Then the rest of it would be down to having the radio scan both time slots when set to a certain channel. "

what kind of radio is this? can all digital radio do this?

the current problem i have is that we are using an analog radio and all are on one channel because we need everyone to hear the announcement but then we also need a dedicated channel so it wont disturbed other user. using analog you cannot listen to both of the channels at the same time. is this possible using a digital radio?
 

ElroyJetson

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DO NOT ASK ME FOR HELP PROGRAMMING YOUR RADIO. NO.
The bearcom BC130 is a rebadged Motorola Mag One BPR40.

The BPR40 is the very definition of garbage. I have never seen a worse two way radio in all the years
I spent as a bench tech. The correct response is to beat them to an unrecognizable state with a power hammer (a sledgehammer will do if a power hammer is not available) and throw the flattened remains into the trash.

And, most of them have a problem with the ceramic filters. The filters corrode internally and the radios go deaf. It's not really hard to replace them, if you're an electronics tech, but it takes half an hour per radio to do it if you ARE a tech. If you're not one, don't attempt it.

I'm totally serious about this. If you're stuck with BPR40s/BC130s, there is literally nowhere to go but up when it comes to two way radios. You are using the very worst radio you possibly could.



No, you can't simultaneously listen to two channels or conversations at one time. Not with any radio that I ever heard of. They can scan. Most all digital radios can hear either digital or analog in the same scan list. You COULD use a TRBO radio to scan both time slots at the same time, but you would have to have the right talkgroup information for each. I don't think you can just scan for "any" signal on slot A or "any" signal on slot B. That'd be the equivalent of carrier squelch scanning and I'm not sure that's possible on a TRBO or DMR radio.

You certainly should never attempt to mix analog and digital signals on the same channel. That's going to cause far more problems than it might solve.

Oh, as for digital radios and background noise, the performance of them is very dependent on both the level of the background noise and the quality of the noise cancellation systems in the radio. There comes a point where background noise is loud enough to make digital transmissions COMPLETELY unintelligible even though signal strength is excellent. Too much background noise picked up by the microphone in a digital radio turns the user's voice signal into mush.

Fortunately, most digital radios have extremely good noise cancellation systems. It's really a necessity in a digital radio. It's the nature of the audio encoding system in a digital radio. Put clean voice audio into the codec and you get clean voice audio out of the codec. But due to compression and lossy coding, if you put voice plus noise into the codec, you get mostly noise out of the codec. It's very important to get clean audio into the voice processor.
 

mmckenna

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In my own opinion, I think you are going to have a tough time convincing them to change the radio system to something you are recommending.

If their contract with BearCom is through corporate, you're going to have issues. Unlikely that the levels of management are going to want to allow a separate company to come in to do a one off solution at a single site without a really good reason.
Sounds like there are some issues with your system, but that doesn't mean it needs to be "ripped and replaced". I've never been impressed with anything BearCom has done. I'd bet that having someone with a bit of experience would probably solve most of your issues. I doubt you're going to get that from the average-Joe-tech that BearCom sends out.
And I'd agree, MagOne radio is only slightly above the quality of a Wal*Mart FRS radio. The fact that it's got a BearCom sticker on the front only lowers it's perceived value.

I'd recommend approaching it this way:
Talk to management. If this is a -documented- safety hazard and someone has that documented, you've probably got a case for having BearCom come in and take a look.
There should be someone at Amazon HQ that manages these contracts. That person should be made aware of the performance issues. Your local management might need to track that down and apply some gentle pressure to get them to push on BearCom.
It really sounds like you need a competent tech to come out and take a look at the system.

Expecting your local management to cough up the hundred or so grand needed to install 8 separate DMR/MotoTrbo repeaters, plus the cost of replacing all the subscriber radios is probably not going to happen on a local level.
Also, on a system that size, you are going to need some sort of longer term professional support. Maintenance contracts like that are not going to be cheap.
 

NavyBOFH

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Agreed. I spoke to one of the IT guys and as I assumed, without a "justifiable reason" we are stuck with BearCom. However we also have no real maintenance contract with them except "if you want to order more radios or accessories call this number". We have admitted defeat to the sense that we own cheap radios, and they are throw-always. I'm trying to come up with numbers alone on how many times radios are being replaced for being defective vs broken from physical abuse.

BearCom DOES do digital solutions - and something was hinted to me that we have DMR repeaters. I was told "when we first got the Vertex radios in they sounded so clear but the other radios couldn't hear them" when I asked more it was because "the new radios are digital and the old ones aren't". That flagged in my head that the site is operating in mixed mode and the IT guys don't even know how to use it - so everything is BC130s and the Vertex radios on analog.

That's the biggest hurdle - management and senior ops guys get Vertex radios - either on their belt or mounted in an Astron power supply as a "base". They talk to each other on analog and it sounds just fine - hell it sounds half decent through the BC130s - but when they get a call from a BC130 or overhear two techs talking on them - they complain "these guys just don't know how to use a radio". I went into an argument over how SOME might not know to not YELL into the radio and hold the radio a few inches away from their yap trap, but they still cannot comprehend. I mentioned I might not be a "radio expert" but working almost 10 years on military comms systems I might know how to at least use one.


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SCPD

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A few thoughts

... and as I assumed, without a "justifiable reason" we are stuck with BearCom ...

Well first off, my condolences. I've dealt for a few years with a Bearcom salesman who thought that two repeaters 5 miles apart would key each other up even if the PL was different. I kid you not. My supervisor repeated the question three times to make sure he understood what we were saying. I can't speak for every salesman, but this guy knows NOTHING about radio.

It's too bad you can't get some itinerant simplex frequencies programmed into those radios. You say your plant is huge, but I'm guessing a lot of the comms are localized in small areas of the plant. That would relieve some congestion.

And last, and you may not like this, pick your battles. From all you've posted, it just don't sound like you're gonna win this one, so you may want to step back and determine if it's worth the time and energy. I know the feeling, not in just radio, but with any big projects, where someone high up is getting wined, dined and getting took to games by a vendor peddling an inferior project.
 

krokus

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Sadly, you may have to wait until something goes badly, before getting attention drawn to the radio problem. I am sure you saw it in the Navy, that anyone worried about safety was just getting in the way of getting work done. (I have a few stories from being part of the Safety Dept, on a carrier.)

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jeatock

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There is one major advantage to RoIP systems for in-building coverage scenarios. If (when) you find a coverage hole or dead spot, the solution is for IT to toss up another $300 WAP. Easier and cheaper than a properly designed, installed and maintained several thousand dollar change in repeaters, coax or antennas. In addition, every talk group benefits from the better coverage, not just the ones using a particular RF channel.

You can also do the change over in stages, and keep the RF systems in operation. All you have to do is tie a RoIP talk group to a traditional radio through a RoIP interface box making a RoIP group and RF channel one seamless group.
 
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Project25_MASTR

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There is one major advantage to RoIP systems for in-building coverage scenarios. If (when) you find a coverage hole or dead spot, the solution is for IT to toss up another $300 WAP. Easier and cheaper than a properly designed, installed and maintained several thousand dollar change in repeaters, coax or antennas. In addition, every talk group benefits from the better coverage, not just the ones using a particular RF channel.

You can also do the change over in stages, and keep the RF systems in operation. All you have to do is tie a RoIP talk group to a traditional radio through a RoIP interface box making a RoIP group and RF channel one seamless group.

Works assuming you don't have interfering channels in use on the APs. Then stuff gets complicated as you are beginning to get into things your average IT guy just doesn't understand.

Before even considering a digital migration, you really need to find out what repeaters are already in place. For example, if you have Motorola XPR's, a trunking system might work...but you'll have to buy Motorola Capacity+/Connect+ capable subscribers to take advantage of digital trunking with existing equipment. Spreading the repeaters out in a Tier 2 setup (regular MotoTRBO) and then using roaming wisely might provide a better solution (and act as a more distributed antenna setup) by distributing repeaters throughout the building (assuming there are 5+ repeaters at play here).

There are other DMR vendors (Tait, Hytera, Simoco, Harris, etc) that have more standardized trunking setups (so a Tier 3 subscriber from one brand will work with a Tier 3 repeater from another brand) but that does you no good if you're already stuck with Motorola TRBO repeaters. (I think Simoco currently has the best deal on DMR infastructure but that may be going away soon).
 

freddaniel

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Local Interference?

All very good suggestions. However, no one has considered local interference between the 16 existing repeaters. With antenna spacing averaging 60 feet, the isolation is about 55 dB at UHF. Bearcom most likely used mobile duplexers on each channel, that only provides receive isolation from it's own repeater transmitter. It is also likely there are no isolators installed. Good LMR practice holds the minimum [any transmitter to any receiver] isolation required to prevent intermod is 95 dB.
Therefore, it is very likely the site is a real mix-master and a lot of local interference is occurring, adding to the confusion. Going to digital will only mask these problems, as more drop-outs will occur without any reasonable cause.
The first rule of any system performance evaluation is to review the antenna system for proper isolation. If the bulk of the users have handhelds, a single receive antenna inside the building with preselector, low-noise amplifier and distribution splitter would likely work better. If the receive antenna is more than 50 feet from the equipment, consider placing the preselector and preamp near the antenna. Depending upon frequencies, using one to 4 transmitter combiners, with dual isolators on each transmitter with the antennas on the roof might improve the repeater receiver isolation.
 
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