TwoToneDetect Beta

[aaknitt]

I've put together a program for detecting two tone pages and upon detection, recording 30 seconds of audio and sending it to a specified email address as a .WAV file. I wrote this for my own use, but am making it available for others who might find it helpful. It's not very polished at this point, but it does what I need it to do. Requests for new features may or may not be acted on, depending on complexity and the time I have available.

Features include:

• Audio frequency counter for finding tone frequencies with PC sound card
• Decodes up to 5 two-tone pairs and 3 long tones
• Upon detecting a valid tone set, records 30 seconds of audio and emails it to a specified address as a .wav file attachment
• Provides limited serial port control of BCD396T and similar scanners to provide fire tone out functionality on multiple frequencies at the same time by skipping transmissions that are not valid tones

Installation is somewhat of a pain in the neck because of the large runtime engines that have to be downloaded in order to make the program run. I wrote it in LabView because that made it easy. I'm starting to play around with C# programming, and if I figure that out, I may make a version in that language that should be much easier to install.

Install instructions, basic instructions, and a rudimentary download are at http://radioetcetera.googlepages.com/twotoneprogram

Feedback through this thread is welcome.

Regards,

Andy

[rdale]

WOW! Impressive feature set... I'll be installing this soon - in the meantime, fix your URL

[aaknitt]

Originally Posted by rdale

...in the meantime, fix your URL

Whoops, got it, thanks for the catch.

[webstar22]

This kicksass.

I run a streaming scanner so I wonder if it's possible to have it play a wav file depending on the tones and to add more tones then the current 5.

I'm just looking for a way to announce the dept being paged over the stream. I was going to ask for it to mute a select port while the wav plays but thats just asking too much. :-p/

[aaknitt]

Supporting tone sets won't be too much trouble...it's planned in the future. Playing a .wav file upon tone detection is certainly possible, but doesn't the dispatcher say the name of the department right away anyway? I'll put it on the list, but lower down.

Right now I'm still working out some bugs in the tone detection algorithm, so it's not 100% where I want it to be...getting there.

Andy

[webstar22]

Thanks for the extra tones. I think we have 17 different depts county wide and also EMS paging too.

As for the wav on tones. I've attached one of them and I think they go long enough to play something if the file starts to play just as the 2nd tone starts.

[aaknitt]

For anyone who's already downloaded it, I just uploaded a newer version that should work better. Someday I might get organized to attach version numbers and create revision notes, but for now this is kind of a fly-by-night endeavor.

Andy

[DaveNF2G]

Is there another way to get the drivers for it? I don't want to have to create little accounts all over the place for one-time downloads.

[aaknitt]

Sorry, I wanted to post an installer that includes all of the drivers built in to it, but googlepages has a max file size of 10 MB.

Andy

[brandon]

Use the BugMeNot extension for Firefox. You'll never have to create an account again

[webstar22]

Why not host the project on something like http://sourceforge.net/.

[aaknitt]

Originally Posted by webstar22

Why not host the project on something like http://sourceforge.net/.

Because then I'd have to create another account

I just uploaded a new version with a fix that should reduce some falsing. Working on another update to further improve.

[LordJ]

Are you able to make this detect any tone to give a readout of what the tone is?

[aaknitt]

Yes, it does that already. It displays the most dominant frequency of the sound card input in the "Tone Freq" field on the display. When a tone is coming across the air, it will display the frequency of that tone.

[webstar22]

Thats how I got my freqs for it.

[Saint]

First thank you for taking the time to make a program that will help us find these tones,

#1 I am running Windows Home Premium Edition, Will your program work with this.

#2 There are several downloads we need to get to run your program, do all these programs install into the control panel of Windows and install a Uninstall program so we can easily uninstall these downloads.

#3 Will this program run without setting up the email notification side of the program.
Thanks for any information you can provide.
Steve

[aaknitt]

Originally Posted by Saint

First thank you for taking the time to make a program that will help us find these tones,

#1 I am running Windows Home Premium Edition, Will your program work with this.

#2 There are several downloads we need to get to run your program, do all these programs install into the control panel of Windows and install a Uninstall program so we can easily uninstall these downloads.

#3 Will this program run without setting up the email notification side of the program.
Thanks for any information you can provide.
Steve

1) Yes, it should, that's what I'm running at home
2) The VISA runtime engine is removable through the Windows control panel. Select "National Instruments Software". To uninstall the Labview runtime, rerun the installer and select uninstall, or follow other instructions as shown here: http://forums.ni.com/ni/board/messag...read.id=288533
3) Yes it will run, but it may throw an error when it tries to send the email. If it does, I can add an error handler to eliminate that, or make emailing a user selectable option.

I'm also working on an update that will play the audio in real time as it records, rather than waiting until the 30 second WAV file has finished recording before starting playback.

Finally, if all you want to do is find the tone frequencies of certain pages, I've created a document that explains how to do this with Audacity. There is a link to it at the very bottom of the TwoToneDetect page under "Additional Resources"



Andy

[Saint]

Originally Posted by aaknitt

1) Yes, it should, that's what I'm running at home
2) The VISA runtime engine is removable through the Windows control panel. Select "National Instruments Software". To uninstall the Labview runtime, rerun the installer and select uninstall, or follow other instructions as shown here: http://forums.ni.com/ni/board/messag...read.id=288533
3) Yes it will run, but it may throw an error when it tries to send the email. If it does, I can add an error handler to eliminate that, or make emailing a user selectable option.

I'm also working on an update that will play the audio in real time as it records, rather than waiting until the 30 second WAV file has finished recording before starting playback.

Finally, if all you want to do is find the tone frequencies of certain pages, I've created a document that explains how to do this with Audacity. There is a link to it at the very bottom of the TwoToneDetect page under "Additional Resources"



Andy

Thanks Andy for answering all my questions, I know your busy with trying to get the program up and running, I'll download your program and install it and do some bata testing for you I have several fire departments to test it on down hear in Ontario Canada, I did try to get Audacity working but could not, I received a lot of wrong tones from the software but I think it was because I did not have the program set up right or something.
Steve

[Saint]

Everytime I shut down your program I get an error box that comes
Error 8 occurred at Open/Create/Replace File in Write Spreadsheet String.vi->Write To Spreadsheet File (string).vi->TwoToneDetect10.vi
and any changes I have made to the program are lost when starting the program again.
Steve

[Saint]

I must be doing something wrong, I have your program set up with my 396t scanner and the program is decoding the tones, I have (play wave file after recording check off) and it's playing a 30 second clip after it catches a tone but the program is not sending anything to my email box.

is there a way for your program to save the frequency, tone, and the .wav file and send this information to either a directory on your computer or send the information to you email address so then you have all the information pertaining to the frequency and tone. Many times there are several tones on the same frequency to tone out different fire departments and this way you can figure out what tone belongs to what company.
Steve