NEXEDGE Trunked System - Phone Patch Problem

CERT808 · Oct 24, 2016

Hello all, I'm having problems with a Kenwood NEXEDGE trunked system's phone patch. The trunked system was delivered to us with a Zetron Model 30 and a Kenwood KTI-4.

CURRENT SETUP...
For Outbound Telephone Calls - Currently, only a single radio at a time is able to initiate the telephone patch. Once the patch is initiated, only that specific radio is connected with the telephone call. No other radios on the same talkgroup is able to talk/listen with the telephone call.

For Inbound Telephone Calls - Currently, the Zetron M30 will ringout via the KTI-4M on the Security talkgroup. The KTI-4M will automatically answer the inbound call and allow the telephone caller to go live on the Security talkgroup. The telephone caller is able to have a two-way conversation with all users on the Security talkgroup.

OUR GOAL IS FOR THE SYSTEM TO DO THE FOLLOWING....
Outbound Telephone Calls
- Any radio on the security talkgroup should be able to access a telephone dial tone by pressing the "*" key.
- Once telephone dial tone is obtained, the radio user can DTMF dial whatever phone number they need.
- All other radio users on the security talkgroup is also able to talk and listen along with the telephone call.
- While telephone call is active on the security talkgroup, any radio user on the security talkgroup should be able to terminate the telephone patch by pressing the "#" key.

Inbound Telephone Calls
- Incoming telephone call needs to ring out to all radio users on the security talkgroup.
- Incoming telephone call cannot automatically be answered.
- Any radio on the security talkgroup should be able to answer the telephone call by pressing the "*" key.
- All other radio users on the security talkgroup is also able to talk and listen along with the telephone call.
- While telephone call is active on the security talkgroup, any radio user on the security talkgroup should be able to terminate the telephone patch by pressing the "#" key.

Any assistance from anyone to help us reach our inbound/outbound telephone patch goals will be appreciated, thank you.

kd4efm · Oct 25, 2016

CERT808 said:
Hello all, I'm having problems with a Kenwood NEXEDGE trunked system's phone patch. The trunked system was delivered to us with a Zetron Model 30 and a Kenwood KTI-4.

CURRENT SETUP...
For Outbound Telephone Calls - Currently, only a single radio at a time is able to initiate the telephone patch. Once the patch is initiated, only that specific radio is connected with the telephone call. No other radios on the same talkgroup is able to talk/listen with the telephone call.

For Inbound Telephone Calls - Currently, the Zetron M30 will ringout via the KTI-4M on the Security talkgroup. The KTI-4M will automatically answer the inbound call and allow the telephone caller to go live on the Security talkgroup. The telephone caller is able to have a two-way conversation with all users on the Security talkgroup.

OUR GOAL IS FOR THE SYSTEM TO DO THE FOLLOWING....
Outbound Telephone Calls
- Any radio on the security talkgroup should be able to access a telephone dial tone by pressing the "*" key.
- Once telephone dial tone is obtained, the radio user can DTMF dial whatever phone number they need.
- All other radio users on the security talkgroup is also able to talk and listen along with the telephone call.
- While telephone call is active on the security talkgroup, any radio user on the security talkgroup should be able to terminate the telephone patch by pressing the "#" key.

Inbound Telephone Calls
- Incoming telephone call needs to ring out to all radio users on the security talkgroup.
- Incoming telephone call cannot automatically be answered.
- Any radio on the security talkgroup should be able to answer the telephone call by pressing the "*" key.
- All other radio users on the security talkgroup is also able to talk and listen along with the telephone call.
- While telephone call is active on the security talkgroup, any radio user on the security talkgroup should be able to terminate the telephone patch by pressing the "#" key.

Any assistance from anyone to help us reach our inbound/outbound telephone patch goals will be appreciated, thank you.

I will have to dig out my manual, but this sounds like a 110SM setting. The radio making the call, is doing so as a private call to the patch, and not a group call to the patch. So that part would have to be looked at also. If I may, what area are you located? (East, Central, Mountain, Pacific) I went to Kenwood for my system training, but our state system is not a FB8C/FB6C setup. Just voice.

Who controls the system operation, you (company) or the vendor (dealer)?

Thanks.

kd4efm Evans, sent using TapTALK on my HTC M9

kd4efm · Oct 25, 2016

So I took a look at our 110 files.

There is a COS that is for telephone lines, setting up the telephone console (inbound calls) and what you state is correct, all users can hear the call is true. I have to dig for the outbound part. I have some classroom material on that somewhere.

I will look more into it later in the day, it's 3am here almost and I'm under the weather.

kd4efm Evans, sent using TapTALK on my HTC M9

danman_0627 · Oct 25, 2016

We had the exact same needs at work when our Nexedge system was installed (in 2013). Security needed a dedicated phone patch that all users on the Security talk group could use, and all users on the group needed to hear the call ring-out and call, We wanted it to work as our old system did (using * and # for answering/hanging up calls…as you mentioned). When the new system arrived and was ready to be deployed, it became apparent that the system design techs/ salesman did not understand our needs.

The system ended up being reconfigured by the installation tech, He ended up pulling one of the repeaters out of the stack, and reconfigured it as a conventional repeater with its separate phone patch. That worked for our needs. We have all other departments on the Nexedge trunk system, with a KTI-4 and Zetron 30, to make individual calls to radios using the system, and "Security" as a separate repeater (not having to worry about call priority etc.). The system works great for our needs. Security can go on the Nexedge system “Emergency” talkgroup (which calls all radios on the trunking system, and advise of an emergency situation, and ask all first-responders to switch to the SECURITY channel.

I was told by a tech, that new firmware released in 2014 would allow for what we wanted, but we figured “if it aint broke don’t fix it”…..

It might not be a solution for your needs, but I thought I would pass along our experience….

CERT808 · Oct 25, 2016

Hi Evans,

To answer some of your previous questions, this system is located in Hawaii. I am the assistant system administrator for our NEXEDGE trunked system (Single Site) and we have full access to our system. We have both Grade 1 and Grade 2 system keys, 110SM, 111, 141, and 109 software for our infrastructure and subscriber units. Between myself and my boss, we handle 100% of our system and subscriber programming "in-house".

Regarding Our Outbound Telephone Call Problems:
In the KPG111DN - The only option I found was for the NX300 to activate the phone patch by making a Private Call. I couldn't locate any option in KPG111DN to make this happen as a Group Call instead.

Regarding our Inbound Telephone Call Problems:
In the KTI-4M web browser interface programming... the only option I could find was the KTI-4M would automatically answer and patch through an Inbound Call within XX seconds if not manually answered before the auto-answer time-out. I did notice that there was a field where a custom code could be written for the KTI-4M to possibly behave differently. Maybe this is the solution to disable the auto-answer?

CERT808 · Oct 25, 2016

danman_0627 said:
We had the exact same needs at work when our Nexedge system was installed (in 2013). Security needed a dedicated phone patch that all users on the Security talk group could use, and all users on the group needed to hear the call ring-out and call, We wanted it to work as our old system did (using * and # for answering/hanging up calls…as you mentioned). When the new system arrived and was ready to be deployed, it became apparent that the system design techs/ salesman did not understand our needs.

The system ended up being reconfigured by the installation tech, He ended up pulling one of the repeaters out of the stack, and reconfigured it as a conventional repeater with its separate phone patch. That worked for our needs. We have all other departments on the Nexedge trunk system, with a KTI-4 and Zetron 30, to make individual calls to radios using the system, and "Security" as a separate repeater (not having to worry about call priority etc.). The system works great for our needs. Security can go on the Nexedge system “Emergency” talkgroup (which calls all radios on the trunking system, and advise of an emergency situation, and ask all first-responders to switch to the SECURITY channel.

I was told by a tech, that new firmware released in 2014 would allow for what we wanted, but we figured “if it aint broke don’t fix it”…..

It might not be a solution for your needs, but I thought I would pass along our experience….

Hi danman_0627,

Thank you for your reply. I appreciate any real world experiences from others who have a similar problem.

The solution provided to you by your vendor is what we are currently doing as a work-around to our problem. Over vendor too didn't understand our phone patch need and resulted in them installing NXR-810 conventional repeater. Our current Security channel is operating on a Stand-Alone conventional repeater with another phone patch attached to it.

Herein lies our problem. The ability to scan doesn't work between scanning both conventional and trunked systems at the same time on the subscriber unit (at least not that I'm aware of). The other less pressing issue (but still an issue) is just the matter of having all users on one (trunked) system rather than maintaining two (conventional repeater & trunked system).

baycomm · Oct 25, 2016

Funny, I just spent all day today trying to work out a Nexedge phone patch issue.
Calls can be made to a specific group instead of to individual radios according to KW tech support.
However, there is no way to directly connect in incoming call to either a specific user or group.
The KTI-4 is looking for the caller to enter a UID or GID that corresponds to who you want to call.
KW did not seem to understand that it would be impossible for all of the possible callers to know how to do this. What is needed is either a programming function that specifies who gets the incoming calls or a phone patch that will dial the numbers into the KTI-4. I will be checking around tomorrow concerning the latter option. The Zetron model 30 has no provision for this.

On the outgoing call end. What you want to do is fairly easy with the exception of having other users able to listen in on the call. Program the radios for "Selcall on PTT" to initiate a private call to the KTI-4's UID. I will be sending an e-mail to KW engineering regarding this. Hopefully, they have a solution or work around.

CERT808 · Oct 27, 2016

baycomm said:
Funny, I just spent all day today trying to work out a Nexedge phone patch issue.
Calls can be made to a specific group instead of to individual radios according to KW tech support.
However, there is no way to directly connect in incoming call to either a specific user or group.
The KTI-4 is looking for the caller to enter a UID or GID that corresponds to who you want to call.
KW did not seem to understand that it would be impossible for all of the possible callers to know how to do this. What is needed is either a programming function that specifies who gets the incoming calls or a phone patch that will dial the numbers into the KTI-4. I will be checking around tomorrow concerning the latter option. The Zetron model 30 has no provision for this.

On the outgoing call end. What you want to do is fairly easy with the exception of having other users able to listen in on the call. Program the radios for "Selcall on PTT" to initiate a private call to the KTI-4's UID. I will be sending an e-mail to KW engineering regarding this. Hopefully, they have a solution or work around.

Hello baycomm,
Regarding the inbound calls you seem to be having problems with... I was able to come up with a solution. Within the 110SM programming (I forgot what the actual options were labeled as) you would need to tell the 110SM software to route the incoming telephone patch call to "ALL" talk groups. Also within the 110SM only allow the phonepatch option to be enabled for just the ONE talk group you want the patch to connect to. I will need to look at how I programmed our system the next time I'm at the site, but it is currently able to do what you are trying to accomplish... inbound calls are automatically routed to one talkgroup.

Our problem is that the KTI-4 is automatically answering the incoming telephone call. We do not want this feature. We want the security guard to have the manual choice to answer or ignore the call. I mentioned in a previous post that in the KTI-4 programming there appears to be a data entry field for a custom code to be written to tell the KTI-4 what to do. My question, what would that custom code string be to tell the KTI-4 to not auto-answer an incoming telephone call?

baycomm · Oct 27, 2016

While the KTI-4 does actually answer the phone line & forward the call to the radio system. The caller will hear ringing until someone with a radio answers the call. The radio will need to be able to recognize that a call is incoming on a group & generate a appropriate alert tone. This is standard on an NX-5000 but may require special firmware on other models.

I did find out that Kenwood has custom firmware that takes care of eliminating the need to over dial a number by the incoming caller. It lets you specify which group you want the calls to go to via programming. If you have your dealer PM me, I can give him a copy of the paperwork needed to get the custom firmware. Also, Connect Systems makes a phone patch that can be programmed to automatically generate the over dial digits.It was originally designed for systems that use DTMF selective calling

CERT808 · Nov 3, 2016

baycomm said:
While the KTI-4 does actually answer the phone line & forward the call to the radio system. The caller will hear ringing until someone with a radio answers the call. The radio will need to be able to recognize that a call is incoming on a group & generate a appropriate alert tone. This is standard on an NX-5000 but may require special firmware on other models.

I did find out that Kenwood has custom firmware that takes care of eliminating the need to over dial a number by the incoming caller. It lets you specify which group you want the calls to go to via programming. If you have your dealer PM me, I can give him a copy of the paperwork needed to get the custom firmware. Also, Connect Systems makes a phone patch that can be programmed to automatically generate the over dial digits.It was originally designed for systems that use DTMF selective calling

Hello baycomm,
Our NEXEDGE trunked system automatically connects the incoming telephone caller to the correct talkgroup on the system. For our system, there is no need for the telephone caller to punch in any extra buttons to connect to the correct talkgroup on the system. I forgot what I did to make that happen but I know it was a combination of settings that I had to change in both the 110SM (system) and 111DN (subscriber) software programming.

Our problem regarding the incoming telephone is that the KTI-4M is automatically sending the "Connect Code" to the Zetron Model 30 phone patch. This automation in turn is allowing automatic connecting of the incoming telephone caller to the talkgroup.... something which we don't want.

I finally made it back to the system site and was able to capture the following screen shots from the KTI-4M programming. As you can see, my problem is with the setting I circled in BLUE. This current setting of 5000ms for the "Incoming Call Response Delay Time" is the maximum value allowed. From what I can tell is that there is no way to disable this option. This option is what is causing the unwanted automatic connect of the incoming telephone caller. Any ideas or workarounds to this?

Also on the other image I included, the area circled in RED shows a "Customization Code"... maybe this is an option for a workaround to my problem I circled in BLUE? Know of any codes I can try?

Thanks for your time!

CERT808 · Nov 9, 2016

Hello all,

I was thinking of ways to resolve the problems I mentioned above. I'm looking for feedback regarding the following concept I have in mind...

Use a NX800 mobile radio (configured as a desktop unit) and connect via patch cable to Zetron M30 phone patch. The NX800 will be programmed for standard group call on our Security talkgroup on the NEXEDGE trunked system. I'm thinking this concept should work as follows...

Outgoing Telephone Call - Call originated from a security subscriber unit (Lets say a NX300). The security officer would TX a group call normally over the security talkgroup on the NEXEDGE trunked system. All other subscribers including the NX800 mentioned above on the security talkgroup would then RX the group call. While the NX300 is TXing the group call, the NX300 user will hot dial the DTMF Connect Code over the group call. The NX800 would RX the DTMF Connect Code and simultaneously send the audio (including the DTMF Connect Code) to the Zetron Model 30 via the patch cable. The Zetron Model 30 would then detect the DTMF Connect Code and send the dial tone back to the NX800 via the patch cable to TX. The Zetron Model 30 would control the telephone line TX/RX via it's VOX settings and TX/RX control of the NX800 via the patch cable. When the call is complete, the NX300 user can transmit the DTMF Disconnect Code over the current telephone patched call over the Security talkgroup.

Thoughts and feedback appreciated from anyone, thanks.

baycomm · Nov 9, 2016

We tried this & it did not work. Being connected to a PTT mobile the model 30 needs to switch between TX & RX. The trunking delay plus the digital audio latency made it nearly impossible to get the switching to work properly. Also the audio quality as very poor.

CERT808 · May 8, 2017

Hi all,

Over the last several months, I've still been rattling my head over this.... how to do "group call" with the KTI-4:M phone patch. I just recently updated the firmware of the KTI-4:M to version 3.13.00. Regarding the firmware release notes (see below), it says that it "Enables Telephone Interconnect with Group Call for NEXEDGE Trunking System." However, I'm still struggling on making this happen.

I noticed that the release notes stated "SN: B71~".... I'm working with a KTI-4:M that has a serial number starting with a "B23~".... is this the problem?

Any input appreciated. Thanks.

CERT808 · Jul 19, 2017

SOLUTION... Finally got this figured out and working. We ditched the KTI-4M completely!

Instead, using a NX800 mobile (in a desktop configuration) connected via Zetron patch cable to a Zetron Model 30 (with Zetron Model 30's digital voice delay module add-on installed). The NX800 is setup to only have access to the one specific talkgroup on our system that needs the phone patch.

Works as needed. Basically the NX800 is the direct replacement for the KTI-4M.

When a telephone call comes in. The Model 30 senses and pushes the call to the NX800 for ring out on the entire talkgroup on our NXDN Trunked System. Any subscriber on the talkgroup can use their handheld to start, communicate, and end the telephone call while all other users on the talkgroup have the ability to monitor both sides of the conversation and jump in to the call if needed.

When a subscriber needs to call out, they can use their handheld to activate the telephone line on the talkgroup. All subscribers can hear both sides of the conversation and jump in to the call if needed. Any subscriber can also terminate the phone call with their handheld.

Regarding voice clarity, works good enough... no major complaints.

kd4efm · Jul 19, 2017

Bravo! Thanks for the insight.

Sent from my SM-G935P using Tapatalk

CERT808 · Jul 19, 2017

kd4efm said:
Bravo! Thanks for the insight.

Sent from my SM-G935P using Tapatalk

Thanks... additional note regarding the patch cable between the Model 30 and NX800.... we're using the Zetron OEM cable meant for the TK-8180 series radios. Looking at the schematics, it followed the same pinout (TK-8180 DB25 same as NX800 DB25 pinout). Also followed Zetron's programming application note for the TK-8180 and applied the same app note to the NX800 we used.

Just don't forget the Zetron digital voice delay add-on module. We bought ours from Zetorn... they sell it as a "field add-on".... simply open up the model 30 and plug in the module directly onto the board... then play with the rotating switch on the add-on board to find your flavor of delay.

Happy tweaking! =)

CERT808 · Jul 23, 2017

A member on this forum asked if I could share the Zetron and Kenwood application notes that I used for this. Please see attachments.

The Zetron parts that we ordered were Zetron Part # 950-9411 and Zetron Part # 950-0957.

Also note, you will need to modify settings in your KPG-150SM trunking system to ensure that the voice channel is held for XXX time (to your liking).

Also final note, I can't remember if it was in the radio setting itself or if it was somewhere in the M30 settings, but the application notes called for using "COR", however since we're using it in a trunked system, we programmed it "TOR". Keeping it with a "COR" setting was causing performance problems. Changing it to a "TOR" setting resolved that.

Firebuff880 · Jul 24, 2017

You should look at replacing both the KTI an Zetron with an Asterisk based IPBX. You would have many more functions an capabilities. Look, at this side for some ideas - iaxRpt - PTT Radio Dispatch Client | XIPAR - Open Source Amateur Radio Over IP

NEXEDGE Trunked System - Phone Patch Problem

Member

Member

Member

Member

Member

Member

Member

Member

Member

Member

Attachments

Member

Member

Member

Attachments

Member

Member

Member

Member

Attachments

Member

Similar threads