dsd+ fastlane logging talker aliases 1 vs. 2 dongles?

[Ncfirewire]

Currently I track 1 p25 trunking system that has about 60 active talkgroups. I am only interested in tracking talker alises, I do not listen to this computer at all it just sits closed all day to track the talker alises for me. I am currently using only one dongle. Will using a 2nd dongle 1 for cc and 2nd for vc be any benefit for what i am trying to achieve?

A second thought was running the 2 dongle separately in combined mode and half the talkgroups on one dongle and the 2nd half on the second but i am not sure if this would help for what i am trying to achieve ?

thanks in advance

 

[RaleighGuy]

Currently I track 1 p25 trunking system that has about 60 active talkgroups. I am only interested in tracking talker alises, I do not listen to this computer at all it just sits closed all day to track the talker alises for me. I am currently using only one dongle. Will using a 2nd dongle 1 for cc and 2nd for vc be any benefit for what i am trying to achieve?

A second thought was running the 2 dongle separately in combined mode and half the talkgroups on one dongle and the 2nd half on the second but i am not sure if this would help for what i am trying to achieve ?

thanks in advance

The question is what is the frequency spread of the system you are using? A single dongle (depending on dongle type) will cover about 2.4 MHz or 1.2 MHz up/down from center point. If it is larger than that you might need 2 or more dongles to cover all the voice channels, which is what carries the RID aliases.

 

[Ncfirewire]

The question is what is the frequency spread of the system you are using? A single dongle (depending on dongle type) will cover about 2.4 MHz or 1.2 MHz up/down from center point. If it is larger than that you might need 2 or more dongles to cover all the voice channels, which is what carries the RID aliases.

voice channels are only 423.8375 to 424.1375

 

[RaleighGuy]

Then I do not believe having a dedicated CC dongle and a voice dongle will help, since you will still only have one dongle monitoring voice channels.

 

[slicerwizard]

The question is what is the frequency spread of the system you are using? A single dongle (depending on dongle type) will cover about 2.4 MHz or 1.2 MHz up/down from center point. If it is larger than that you might need 2 or more dongles to cover all the voice channels, which is what carries the RID aliases.

Your answer applies to SDRTrunk, not DSD+ FL, no??

 

[slicerwizard]

Currently I track 1 p25 trunking system that has about 60 active talkgroups. I am only interested in tracking talker alises, I do not listen to this computer at all it just sits closed all day to track the talker alises for me. I am currently using only one dongle. Will using a 2nd dongle 1 for cc and 2nd for vc be any benefit for what i am trying to achieve?

With a single dongle, set the monitoring threshold in DSD+ to a high value (like 10) so that it normally won't tune to any voice traffic. When a radio keys up that DSD+ doesn't yet have an alias for, DSD+ will immediately retune from the control channel to the voice channel and grab the alias (if one is being transmitted). After the alias is acquired, DSD+ will retune to the control channel, ready for the next alias.

I don't think that using two dongles in a CC/VC configuration can acquire aliases any faster.

A second thought was running the 2 dongle separately in combined mode and half the talkgroups on one dongle and the 2nd half on the second but i am not sure if this would help for what i am trying to achieve ?

That would require running DSD+ in two separate folders and disabling Alias Priority. You'd be tuning to every enabled group/call, even for those where an alias had already been acquired. Not good.

I could see using a second dongle if the system had more than one site. The second dongle might access different comms on another site.

 

[dave3825]

I am only interested in tracking talker alises, I do not listen to this computer at all it just sits closed all day to track the talker alises for me. I am currently using only one dongle

Will using a 2nd dongle 1 for cc and 2nd for vc be any benefit for what i am trying to achieve?

What exactly are you trying to achieve?

If your looking to increase the logged alias catch rate, you could try the latest UT preview on that system. Set a bunch of muted voice vfo's in addition to one signal vfo. This can be done with one dongle and will capture aliases faster than one dongle in DSDPlus.

Let it run a while and then export the users to a csv file and you will have alias data in a more manageable form if desired.

 

[Kazzaw]

Your answer applies to SDRTrunk, not DSD+ FL, no??

Slightly OT for this thread but along those lines, knowing I see your name pop up in a lot of DSD+ threads, do you think, knowing what you know about how the program operates, that we will ever see an SDRTrunk like functionality of using one dongle with a x MHz bandwidth being able to track channels within the bandwidth?

I love the resource usage of SDRTrunk and the Logging abilities of DSD Plus - To merge them would be great

 

[LeSueurC]

I use one dongle for DSD+, combined CC/VC monitor and it plucks away at the aliases. Having a strong internet signal and strong signal on the system you’re decoding is what makes the difference.

 

[Forts]

How does a strong internet signal make any difference? I frequently run DSD+ on a laptop with no internet at all.

 

[LeSueurC]

How does a strong internet signal make any difference? I frequently run DSD+ on a laptop with no internet at all.

Belay my last. Not DSD+ itself but decoding talker aliases is what needs the internet

 

[mtindor]

Belay my last. Not DSD+ itself but decoding talker aliases is what needs the internet

Decoding talker aliases, whether it is in DSDPlus or SDRTrunk, does not require the internet. Early on (some months ago), DSDPlus required the internet to decode aliases. Now it does not. But there are benefits of still allowing the latest DSDPlus versions to connect to the internet and talk with the server. Since the server will often have aliases collected from multiple sources, which can in some instances help you fill in the aliases for some systems in your .radios file.

For instance, if I monitor system A and have 1000 radio IDs that haven't been seen on a voice call, but instead only seen registering, there are no aliases for them. If somebody else monitoring system A has seen some of those radio IDs during a voice call, they would have captured the alias and uploaded it to the server. My DSDPlus would then query the server to see if an alias exists for those 1000 radio IDs and would get results for some of them from the server thanks to somebody else having uploaded them. As you likely know, if a radio ID doesn't isn't active on a voice call while you are monitoring, you aren't going to get its alias since the alias is only sent during a voice call.

And, as somebody recently posted, IF you are not concerned about listening but ONLY want to collect aliases, set your CTRL --> Monitoring Threshold to 10, and it won't bother playing the entirety of every voice call to get an alias if that radio ID already has an alias captured. Speeds things up even more. But of course you'd want to remember to set Monitoring Threshhold back to 100 when you want to listen to everything again.

Mike

 

[dave3825]

Motorola Talker Alias decoding done in DSDPlus itself now. So internet is only for uploading/dowloading/sharing.

DSD+ 2.516

*** Make a backup copy of your DSDPlus.radios file. ***

Implemented a simplified version of the Motorola Trunking Talker Alias
decoding algorithm that Ilya Smirnov generously donated to the DSD+ project.
Motorola talker alias decoding is now done in DSD+ itself.

Decoded Harris trunking talker aliases and Motorola trunking talker aliases are
uploaded to the DSD+ talker alias server and are made available to other DSD+ users.

This update will query the DSD+ talker alias server for alias data.
This means that your copy of DSD+ does not need to see and decode every talker alias;
if another DSD+ FL user has already monitored transmissions from a given P25 trunking radio,
its alias data will be available to your copy of DSD+.
This can be helpful with radios that rarely transmit.

 

[inthesmoke]

I run single receiver setups, doing control and voice. I’ve been running on 2 sites for a while and yesterday added a third. The main reason for this is to pickup TGs that are mapped only to certain sites, or more likely to be carrying the TGs due to radios in the area.

The other benefit of doing this is that sometimes the timing of calls and mix of TGs in each site, is more likely to cover more calls and aliases. It will still pick up aliases even if the signal is borderline for audio

 

[LeSueurC]

Decoding talker aliases, whether it is in DSDPlus or SDRTrunk, does not require the internet. Early on (some months ago), DSDPlus required the internet to decode aliases. Now it does not. But there are benefits of still allowing the latest DSDPlus versions to connect to the internet and talk with the server. Since the server will often have aliases collected from multiple sources, which can in some instances help you fill in the aliases for some systems in your .radios file.

For instance, if I monitor system A and have 1000 radio IDs that haven't been seen on a voice call, but instead only seen registering, there are no aliases for them. If somebody else monitoring system A has seen some of those radio IDs during a voice call, they would have captured the alias and uploaded it to the server. My DSDPlus would then query the server to see if an alias exists for those 1000 radio IDs and would get results for some of them from the server thanks to somebody else having uploaded them. As you likely know, if a radio ID doesn't isn't active on a voice call while you are monitoring, you aren't going to get its alias since the alias is only sent during a voice call.

And, as somebody recently posted, IF you are not concerned about listening but ONLY want to collect aliases, set your CTRL --> Monitoring Threshold to 10, and it won't bother playing the entirety of every voice call to get an alias if that radio ID already has an alias captured. Speeds things up even more. But of course you'd want to remember to set Monitoring Threshhold back to 100 when you want to listen to everything again.

Mike

Ahhhhh I was unaware it didn’t need internet with the newest update. Good to know, good for road trips. Thanks