Pagers for Apco 25 system?

[llllllllll]

Im trying to get some research info for the fire dept.

The county fire where i live went with the APCo25 digital system. It has been running for about a year know. The fire dept still pages out on the low band VHF system. When your responding to the station all you hear is the dispatcher.

I was told (3rd party info) that motorola will be making there mintor pager 5 capatible to the apco 25 system? to be able to hear everything.

anyone with such info.

Thanks!

[rdale]

Pagers will not work on trunked systems.

[FPO703]

What system are you talking about?

There might be a new Minitor coming out that will allow you to monitor the P25 digital. That might be what they are talking about. But, they would not work on any trunked system as rdale stated.

[ncarpenter]

A new pager that could run on a P25 system would be a frickin' awesome! (Too bad pagers already cost $300-500 for a new 5 model, so I could only imagine the pricetag on a P25 pager would be!!) Of course with the digital signal of P25 trunked, gone would be the days of two-tone paging. It would most likely be a digital signal that would activate the pager. But yea, I haven't seen anything like that.

[Jay911]

Any P25 voice pager - Minitor VI or whatever - is a long ways off yet. Motorola is/was looking at such a beast as early as 2002, but you're not likely to see it for a while to come. Having said that, there are contracts out there for wide area P25 systems in which paging/alerting of volunteer crews is a mandatory subset of the contract, so, you might find someone like Motorola much more willing to build such a device if they have the contract and know they are guaranteed to sell a (large) quantity of them right off the bat.

[rdale]

Originally Posted by ncarpenter

Of course with the digital signal of P25 trunked, gone would be the days of two-tone paging.

Again - you won't see it on a trunked system. Not viable. Can be done at GREAT expense, emphasis on the word "great"

[mancow]

Why would it be at a great expense? What would be so hard about building a pager to monitor the control channel or one talk group for certain data packets?

[hoser147]

Not sure if its just an alert tone or what but Ive heard a 2 tone signal along with Putnam Co. Oh on the MARCs net.............Hoser

[fwradio]

Originally Posted by mancow

Why would it be at a great expense? What would be so hard about building a pager to monitor the control channel or one talk group for certain data packets?

I don't think that monitoring the control channel or a talk group for certain data packets is the problem. That would be pretty easy. But, most P25 trunked systems are multi-site. The radios have to be logged on to the system. If no radios are logged on to a particular site, the system will not send the messages to that site. Since the pagers are RX only, they cannot log on.

I think it would take a lot of $$$$. Easy way = use analog channel w/2-tone multicasted with P25 fire dispatch channel.

[Jay911]

Originally Posted by mancow

Why would it be at a great expense? What would be so hard about building a pager to monitor the control channel or one talk group for certain data packets?

A trunking pager would have to have two receivers, which would push the cost most of the way up towards double that of existing pagers.

Hopefully a reasonable engineer would come to the conclusion that "paging" on a trunk system would be much better acheived by sending some kind of selective call signal over the control channel instead of audio tones.

I'd rather see the expenditure of coming up with a trunking pager (and the high cost it would be to purchase one) directed towards mimicking the functionality of a pager on a two-way portable radio. I have just finally convinced my department's pager lovers that they can have their portable set to AND signalling on a "paging" channel, so they can have it remain quiet (at night) until our station is called, thus eliminating the need for a pager whatsoever.

[mancow]

I see, I didn't think about the whole roaming issue.

Originally Posted by fwradio

I don't think that monitoring the control channel or a talk group for certain data packets is the problem. That would be pretty easy. But, most P25 trunked systems are multi-site. The radios have to be logged on to the system. If no radios are logged on to a particular site, the system will not send the messages to that site. Since the pagers are RX only, they cannot log on.

I think it would take a lot of $$$$. Easy way = use analog channel w/2-tone multicasted with P25 fire dispatch channel.

[Unitrunker]

Originally Posted by Jay911

A trunking pager would have to have two receivers, which would push the cost most of the way up towards double that of existing pagers.

More like one synthesized PLL receiver rather than two. The novelty behind a "trunked" pager is the need to chase the control channel.

[wa8pyr]

Originally Posted by rdale

Again - you won't see it on a trunked system. Not viable. Can be done at GREAT expense, emphasis on the word "great"

Actually it can and has been done, at least on a test basis with an analog trunked system. It requires that a specific talkgroup always be steered to a specific frequency. Only problem is that frequency then either has to be set aside for that specific use, or dispatching has to wait until another user has left the frequency.

In a practical sense, it just isn't feasible to have a trunked pager, and on a P25 system tone paging won't work well (or at all) anyway, since the audio tones aren't clean enough to activate a pager.

[wa8pyr]

Originally Posted by hoser147

Not sure if its just an alert tone or what but Ive heard a 2 tone signal along with Putnam Co. Oh on the MARCs net.............Hoser

You're hearing a multicast of their VHF frequency.

[trooperdude]

Originally Posted by llllllllll

Im trying to get some research info for the fire dept.

The county fire where i live went with the APCo25 digital system. It has been running for about a year know. The fire dept still pages out on the low band VHF system. When your responding to the station all you hear is the dispatcher.

P25 conventional or trunking ?

You didn't specify.

I don't see any reason why a P25 conventional pager couldn't be done today.

As for trunked, the local FD here that runs trunking patches the output to their old VHF channel to their trunked main fire channel, which they use to send out two-tone for their volunteers.

Standard VHF pager works fine, and the volunteers hear all of the reports on their way to the fire.

[rdale]

Could be done - but 1) I'm sure he is referring to trunked as I can't imagine many FD's use conventional digital and 2) the added cost of licensing digital makes no sense.

[llllllllll]

Originally Posted by trooperdude

As for trunked, the local FD here that runs trunking patches the output to their old VHF channel to their trunked main fire channel, which they use to send out two-tone for their volunteers.

Standard VHF pager works fine, and the volunteers hear all of the reports on their way to the fire.

Thanks everyone for answering my question... This will help greatly since everyone in the dept thinks that they will be making a system by next year.

The county FD patches the output out on VHF...

[hoser147]

Originally Posted by wa8pyr

You're hearing a multicast of their VHF frequency.

Thanks Tom

[K8TEK]

Originally Posted by wa8pyr

You're hearing a multicast of their VHF frequency.

I'm not sure why they are doing that!

[obijohn]

Originally Posted by llllllllll

Im trying to get some research info for the fire dept.

The county fire where i live went with the APCo25 digital system. It has been running for about a year know. The fire dept still pages out on the low band VHF system. When your responding to the station all you hear is the dispatcher.

I was told (3rd party info) that motorola will be making there mintor pager 5 capatible to the apco 25 system? to be able to hear everything.

anyone with such info.

Thanks!

Why don't you just call your area sales rep. for Motorola? They'll be happy to give you the correct info. They're listed in the yellow pages in your telephone directories under radio.

Why rely on speculation from people who are just guessing, although most of what they have told you is true?