Unitrunker - Delay/Pause

Hey! Long time scanner enthusiast, and prior and returning user of Unitrunker. After using Trunk88 for years, and now investing in RTL-SDR I am back to Unitrunker. So neat that on a multi-site trunking system that you can monitor more than one control channel! So cool! Something Trunk88 doesn't have (though it does support RTL-SDR)

So Kudos to Unitrunker! Very impressed.

I know the subject of "holding" on a talkgroup has been brought up numerous times, and some great ideas many years ago were being considered. The current Voice Receiver hold appears to work slightly, but not really a "soft hold" which allows other traffic to be played while waiting for the channel to come live again

What my idea is would be a "delay" before jumping to another talkgroup of equal or lesser priority. Higher priority talk groups would still interrupt, but given communications on multiple channels of the same priority, it would be nice if we could set a "delay factor" before abandoning waiting for a response and getting new traffic.

Trunk88 does both of these function quite well, and it is well documented how it works. The current Hold Logic appears to "jump around" and get confused when a held talkgroup is on multiple sites that are monitored by multiple VCO's. Some work is probably required now with multiple control sources and audio output

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F1: Hold on current comm

- If you press F1 while the voice scanner is tuned to a comm,
TRUNK88 will hold on that group call, private call or
interconnect until you release the hold. If no trunk traffic
is being monitored when F1 is pressed, TRUNK88 holds on the
last monitored trunked comm. [Similar to Unitrunker Pause]

Pressing F1 again while holding on a comm toggles between
hard (only tune to held comm) and soft (tune to other comms
while held comm is inactive) hold modes.

F2: Scan / release hold

- The F2 key logic is similar to a scanner's SCAN key.

If TRUNK88 is holding on a comm, pressing F2 will release the hold,
but does not force the voice scanner off that comm if it is
currently active (unless a higher priority comm is also active)

If TRUNK88 is NOT holding on a comm when F2 is pressed,
any currently monitored comm is effectively locked out briefly
while TRUNK88 looks for other comms to tune to. [Same Unitrunker "Skip"]

- F3: Toggle talkgroup delay mode

- This hotkey enables and disables the TG Delay Time hold timer.
When the timer is enabled, TRUNK88 implements a hold delay at
the end of every voice comm

When the timer is disabled, TRUNK88 does not implement a delay
at the end of every comm,

I've spent a few hours documenting to demonstrate the issue i referred to above as "jump around". This isn't only related to the hold function, but happens all the time.

With multiple control channel VCO's, the problem is the different (small, but relevant) timing of detecting changes needed in controlling the voice receiver. This results in the voice receiver jumping around between channels right at the start of each transmission, between transmissions on the same talk group, and at the end of all transmissions.

This only confuses the voice receiver as it ends up receiving a bunch of channel change requests micro-seconds apart. If the receiver can't process these fast enough, this is only going to cause further issues. This also adds noise to the receiver as the channels change, and clearly messes up with any hold (pause) logic that is currently programmed

Solutions:
1) Once locked onto a talkgroup even if that same talkgroup is showing up on another site remain on the current site until that site no longer has the talkgroup
2) If there is a momentary logic to determine which site will start the voice channel, perform this logic prior to tuning the voice receiver instead of sending multiple frequencies in a short period to the voice receiver [this may confuse some voice receivers]
3) Only look for "better" sites with an active talkgroup that the voice receiver is locked onto if the squelch kicks in [signal too weak]
4) Pause and wait for a response on current site before searching on other sites for a response

I have done a detailed analysis including frame by frame analysis of the problem, with attached screen video recording of the issue. This is on my OneDrive and shared while this is worked out.

http://1drv.ms/1PtmGFl

It is a great new feature to allow multiple control VCO's and multiple audio VCO's. But this added issues related to tuning timing and allowing for logic such as a "Hold" or "Temporary Increase in Priority".

Are there any hot keys at all for Unitrunker anymore? I know prior version had some.

Perhaps any hot keys should only affect the "default VCO" for those who have multiple VCO's. We don't necessarily need hot keys for each and every VCO. At least just one of each type of VCO could be a default and controllable with shortcuts/hotkeys/special hold logic.

I am able and willing to test any changes to the logic prior to going public. Let me know if you want assistance.

Cheers!

Geoff

CompKing said:

1) Once locked onto a talkgroup even if that same talkgroup is showing up on another site remain on the current site until that site no longer has the talkgroup

Click to expand...

This should be the behavior you see today. The only reasons to leave a voice call are (a) the call ended or (b) a more important call begins.

2) If there is a momentary logic to determine which site will start the voice channel, perform this logic prior to tuning the voice receiver instead of sending multiple frequencies in a short period to the voice receiver (this may confuse some voice receivers)

Click to expand...

The risk here is the resulting delay might cause you to miss the start of a conversation. There has been discussion of adding site affinity where you pick which signal role VCOs will trigger a voice role VCO to follow a call. This has not happened yet.

Site affinity is part of a handful of features that will make life easier for users that like to record audio or stream the audio online.

3) Only look for "better" sites with an active talkgroup that the voice receiver is locked onto if the squelch kicks in (signal too weak)

Click to expand...

Site affinity should fix this.

4) Pause and wait for a response on current site before searching on other sites for a response.

Click to expand...

One of the items on my TODO list is to shorten the hang time rather than increase it.

Are there any hot keys at all for Unitrunker anymore? I know prior version had some.

Click to expand...

F3 and F4 were removed a while ago. Ian Gilmore (aka mm6dos) - the other half of the SDR# development team - greatly objected to hot keys. No one seems to miss them.

The current hold key logic actually has a much bigger problem that you might not have noticed. Each SDR has a finite amount of bandwidth. The hold feature ties a call to a specific voice role VCO. A "hold" call might resume on a channel out of reach of the VCO's SDR.

As you pointed out, the program supports multiple signal role VCOs. It also supports multiple voice role VCOs. Adding logic to allow the held call to transition to a different VCO is under consideration. This will require some UI changes to accommodate.

I am able and willing to test any changes to the logic prior to going public. Let me know if you want assistance.

Click to expand...

Thanks Geoff. I hope to have a new preview release soon. If you sign up to the google group, you can interact with the other preview release testers.

As an after thought, I'm wondering if part of the problem you see is actually a bug in the held call logic. A held call takes precedence over ordinary traffic. There might not be logic to prevent the same held call - on a different site - from pulling the rug from underneath the currently held call.

Thanks Geoff! I need to add a unit test for this.

I don't know much about site affinity yet. I will research.

I have requested to join the google group. Please approve. Also, please review the documents I posted to OneDrive as it is probably better to understand my issue by seeing it vs my explanation.

For my Item #3 idea with Squelch, a better idea would only be to tune to a new channel if the signal strength is better than the current channel. This may be what you are calling Site Affinity.

Cheers. See you on Google Groups

Geoff

Just to be clear - site affinity as a feature does not exist yet.

Rick:

I was figuring Site Affinity was a general concept, not a new concept you are developing. Now I know.

Were you able to understand the screen captures and video captures I provided? It shows an issue you described in prior lists as "8.6.7.4 Multiple control channels report the same voice call; voice role VCO goes nuts. (Task ID: 449) "

From what I can tell, this is still an open issue. I have broken this down screen by screen for you to see what's up here.

The problem may be more obvious to me as my Voice VCO is going to an external receiver (by choice for digital decoding reliability). Maybe it isn't an issue for internal Voice Receivers.

I assume anyone with "Trunking Recorder" linked with multiple internal voice SDR's would be complaining about this issue as it would have a bunch of unnecessary channel changes that would clog up the interface. I will do some further testing and get back to you..

As for Hot Keys, why were these an issue? I'm not too sure what SDR# has to do with UT now that it directly supports RTL-SDR cards.

Thanks again!

Geoff

From what I can best tell the channel hopping I noted also happens on an internal voice VCO. If you need video evidence of this, please let me know..

Thanks

Geoff