LVFR

[bdillin]

LVFR is going to be switching over to digital within the near future. We were just notified that we would be rotating units through to have the radios worked on as the first phase of the switch over. When I hear more I will pass it on.

 

[SCPD]

Looks like I will have to upgrade my scanners soon, I also provide the feeds it will be costly to upgrade to keep providing the feeds.

All the fire unit in Clark County would have to upgrade to keep working together, unless the are linked to non digital TGs.

 

[bdillin]

I have not heard anything about CCFD but I think you are correct that SNACC will switch them over also. I'm not sure when my stations rigs are going in but if I'm working I will talk to the comm techs and get some details.

 

[bdillin]

Latest Update

Latest update from the Comm Supervisor-

"Motorola is programming all of the departments radio in preparation of switching over to the digital technology. The radios have been programmed with both analog and digital zones. Please stay on the analog zones until we are ready to switch the fire departments over to the new digital system. Digital zone had a D in the zone name such as Z 1 D. The analog zones will only have Z 1."

I was off during our units programming but from the e-mail, I get that the switch will be valley wide for the fire departments.

Bill

 

[br0adband]

Looks like I will have to upgrade my scanners soon, I also provide the feeds it will be costly to upgrade to keep providing the feeds.

All the fire unit in Clark County would have to upgrade to keep working together, unless the are linked to non digital TGs.

While having actual physical scanners capable of doing the digital decoding would indeed be a very costly expense not to mention a "waste" of such hardware since it would be dedicated to that purpose and not able to be used for anything else, perhaps you might consider a solution based on SDR using some of those "cheap USB TV tuners" which are more than up to the task with free software like DSD+ which is capable of the necessary P25 Phase I decoding that S.N.A.C.C. will be migrating to (already in progress at this time anyway) - only the LVMPD is/has gone P25 Phase II albeit in a few years S.N.A.C.C. and related users of that system might bump to Phase II. By that time I'm sure DSD+ will more than likely handle that as well, but currently it's just P25 Phase I capable and it does it quite well indeed.

P25 Phase II decoding is capable under Linux but it's a whole different ballgame with that so I won't get that involved in it in this thread - P25 Phase I is what S.N.A.C.C. and related users have on the board so that's what the focus should be for a few years.

For the cost of a cheap used PC of some kind or laptop, a few RTL sticks (like $10-30 each, the recommendation is to get a newer R820T2 tuner based model for a variety of reasons), free virtual audio cable software (that might not even be necessary depending on how you configure things) to route the signal from the SDR application to the DSD+ application, and a cable or two for each RTL stick for an antenna (some of them come with half-respectable telescopic whips that could be more than adequate depending), and some time and patience you could convert the entire system over to something that works just as well if not better than what you have now.

You could do all of this for $100-200 tops, if even that much needs to be spent. You might already have a PC that you could dedicate for this purpose, and other things as well since using this kind of setup with DSD+ for the digital decoding is barely anything on a modern PC. I can decode P25 Phase I, DMR, NXDN, etc, in real time and it's like 2-5% max on my i5 laptop, basically nothing at all in terms of resources.

And as a bonus: it would free up those physical scanners you're already dedicating to that purpose too so you can use them for something else, perhaps.

This is all based on the assumption that you're not doing SDR to some degree already, like using a physical scanner with a discriminator tap to get the baseband signal to DSD+ and so on.

It's where things are headed in the future so, it could be a nice project to convert the source of the audio feeds over in this manner.

Just a suggestion...

 

[3mary2]

Ccfd lvfr units

Earlier this month (09/08/2015 by 737 mech) there is a discussion on the changing of the SNACC to P-25. Don gave a conversion example of how to change the id's to match the new system. It is simple math and works as I am already listening to CCFD Station 11 on P25. Pahrump will be included on the system and I have heard them at work several times.

 

[br0adband]

There's been more and more activity on the P25 side of S.N.A.C.C. as the rollout and switchover continues, definitely, so sooner or later if you want to monitor it there's just not much choice anymore: it's either get a P25 capable scanner (still a pricey solution even after all these years because of the licensing issues involved) or set up a PC/laptop/tablet with an RTL stick and DSD+ (the "fast lane" donation version of DSD+) can even do trunking itself nowadays, but the public version can't (at least not yet), so that's still a viable alternative that can potentially do more and cost far less than even the cheapest P25 capable device nowadays.

It's amazing to see people using sub-$100 Windows OS powered tablets with $10 RTL sticks doing things that no modern scanner - regardless of price - is capable of.

 

[SCPD]

I have the 2 cheap usb tuners to listen to the system, works great for me may have to get a couple more and work something out if it all switch over to the new system digital and to analog system goes quiet.

 

[br0adband]

There is also the potential of getting one of these gadgets albeit they're vastly more expensive than using the RTL stick method I mentioned before (but that does require an actual PC of some kind to run the software so the costs could be similar):

http://forums.radioreference.com/all-other-scanner-manufacturers/305124-adcr25-p25-dmr-receiver.html

Those devices are apparently very tiny ones similar to a Raspberry Pi or something but they are fully self-contained receivers that are computer controlled (as I understand their operation) and they do native P25 decoding and the trunk tracking receiving as part of the hardware support itself - it's all done with firmware on the device.

Basically, as I understand it, you can get one of these devices and program it with the entire P25 trunked system and it handles the rest - mind you it's just P25 Phase I but that's what S.N.A.C.C. is moving to, not Phase II. So it's like an extremely tiny dedicated P25 Phase I and DMR receiver that also handles the trunking as required and can be programmed with the necessary talkgroup IDs, system info, etc.

It's just another potential solution but a more expensive one, but not nearly as expensive as an entire digital scanner being dedicated for this kind of purpose. Seems almost perfect for people that wish to stream their local radio comms since it's an all-in-one solution of sorts.

 

[bdillin]

Coming soon!!

I am temporarily assigned to admin (LVFR) for a bit (not by choice!!) and had to lend a hand with the Comm Center. The Vegas Valley fire departments will be switching all radios over to the digital system on Wednesday Feb 17, 2016.

 

[br0adband]

I heard word that NLVPD was already fully switched over and it's quite noticeable in terms of monitoring from the analog SNACC side of things (almost unreadable at some times because of the audio patch happening and digital noise on the transmissions). The changeover has been coming so it's no real surprise at this point, there's still a great deal of hardware to deal with for all of it to finally get moved over will still take time.

I've noted a lot of activity I've never seen before including the expected testing as well: I noted one RID the other day (15362) stepping across the talkgroups (no actual traffic, just joining them) and it went through every single one of the 534 TGIDs I have in Unitrunker, was pretty interesting to "watch" it as it was happening.

 

[KJ6HCB]

I am temporarily assigned to admin (LVFR) for a bit (not by choice!!) and had to lend a hand with the Comm Center. The Vegas Valley fire departments will be switching all radios over to the digital system on Wednesday Feb 17, 2016.

Thanks for the heads up - I come to Vegas often and will have to reprogram things. Coming next week and hope to catch some jobs to shoot!

 

[com501]

You think that's bad, they have been patching to northern Nevada and testing for the last few weeks. I finally had to turn my radio off and email the state office and tell them I was on cell.