Simoco SRM 9000 Scanner

Hey All,

I have recently aquired a new Simoco SRM 9000 along with the FPP programming software. I have been able to successfully program in VICPOL frequencies so that I can scan the VICPOL rural network but am having difficulty with one feature which I hope will be possible. I am trying to setup voting so that I can automatically lock into the appropriate repeater. I have considered using scan groups instead but the problem with scan groups is that with the VICPOL repeater network overlaps I sometimes hit a lower reception repeater and it locks to that until the end of the transmission. Has anyone played around with seting up vote groups and if so is this possible. I have all of the repeater transmit frequencies (radio receive frequencies) and all of the CTCSS tones transmitted by the repeater but I have tried doing a test of a vote group and it doesn't seem to want to work or even lock onto a transmitter.

Thanks in advance.

knightcon said:

Hey All,

I have recently aquired a new Simoco SRM 9000 along with the FPP programming software. I have been able to successfully program in VICPOL frequencies so that I can scan the VICPOL rural network but am having difficulty with one feature which I hope will be possible. I am trying to setup voting so that I can automatically lock into the appropriate repeater. I have considered using scan groups instead but the problem with scan groups is that with the VICPOL repeater network overlaps I sometimes hit a lower reception repeater and it locks to that until the end of the transmission. Has anyone played around with seting up vote groups and if so is this possible. I have all of the repeater transmit frequencies (radio receive frequencies) and all of the CTCSS tones transmitted by the repeater but I have tried doing a test of a vote group and it doesn't seem to want to work or even lock onto a transmitter.

Thanks in advance.

Click to expand...

Voting works by the simple process of multiple Sites listening for the same transmission from the Mobile. Each Site then sends its data to a central Voting Comparator, and the Comparator determines which Site should respond to the Mobile. So NO. What you are hoping to achieve is NOT possible.

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Comint

'Mobile' voting works great in the SRM9000's.

First, program all your base (163Mhz) TX frequencies into spare channels.
You can either hide these channels from your channel list, or have them accessible manually via the channel up/down buttons if you like.

Now, add a vote 'channel' (group) and add all the channels from the above list into the vote group.
If I remember correctly, the SRM9000 will only vote on up to 15 channels (or was it 12???) maximum per vote group. Regardless, it shouldn't be a problem because Vicpol only use up to 7 or 8 channels maximum per Region.

After you have done this, you need to go into the Scan/Vote page of the FPP and set up a few basic parameters.

Start with:

Vote without CTCSS - No or disabled
LET (Link establishment Time) = 300mS
Revote Dwell Time = 1 second
Fast Vote = -95dBm

Turn the radio on and go to your allocated vote channel/group and depending on which controller you are using, you should see a little rotating arrow on the LCD to indicate things are happening.

That should work pretty well, although you may need to increase the LET time to 500mS if you have problems.
The radio takes 50mS to scan across each channel in the list. As soon as the radios mute opens on a busy channel, it will complete a further scan of all other channels in the vote group. The radio will then decide which channel was the strongest, switch to that channel and start receiving.

The fast vote function speeds everything up because the radio will immediately start receiving on any vote group channel that is above the preset 'Fast Vote' setting (-95dBm in this case) and will not bother checking the other channels in the list.

You can fiddle around with channel names and things if you like (if you are using a 9030 or 9022 controller).

Make sure you set the correct CTCSS tone, which is usually 241.8Hz.

Let me know if you have any other questions

Hey guy's,

Thanks for your replies.

I managed to get it working. I didn't need the transmit frequencies, I managed to get caught by a newbie mistake. When I setup my testing vote group I was testing aganst "O" Districts repeaters and I am in "M" District. Once I picked up what my mistake had been it was a simple case of creating a new testing vote channel and attaching the "M" District channels to it. I don't have any need to have the transmit frequencies programmed in, rather what I have done is effectively used the vote channel as a scan group in that it scans through all of the channels in the group, but unlike the scan group option which locks to the first channel it receives a signal on which can be a very poor signal at times the vote group receives the signal then goes through again to try and locate a stronger signal and if it manages to find a stronger signal then it uses that channel to receive on rather than the first channel it detected the signal on.

So have the police programming working, am currently gathering marine, cfa, depi, and aviation frequencies to program in as separate zones.