Layman terms
- Thread starter Jono40141
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br0adband
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Unitrunker is used to monitor and display the data flowing across the control channel of a trunked radio system. That's about as simple as it gets.
It will allow you to see visually what's happening on an entire trunked radio system because as you're well aware when you're listening to one specific talkgroup on a trunked system, that doesn't mean that's all that's going on. There's a lot more happening in the background that you typically don't get to hear, let alone see. So Unitrunker provides the visual representation of who's calling who on what talkgroup and on what system at any given moment.
You use Unitrunker with either the headphone/earphone output from a scanner (somewhat useful, but not entirely reliable) or use what's known as a discriminator tap, aka a tap, that provides the unfiltered unprocessed audio from the scanner's receive circuitry - as clean a signal as you can get - directly to your soundcard which then works with Unitrunker to decode the control channel data and show you what's going on.
Because sometimes just watching Unitrunker itself doesn't help without the scanner or the audio, I've made a few videos that can help demonstrate what's going on. Here's a link to a relatively short one that is a recording of the SNACC system here in Las Vegas (Clark County to be more specific) and I'll give you a tiny detailed description of what happens at key points so you can watch the video and stop it so you can see what the hell is taking place:
http://members.cox.net/br0adband/Test.wmv (438KB, 1 min 14 seconds long, Windows Media Video file)
Grab that and load it up in the player of your choice.
As soon as it starts playing, pause it so I can describe what you see. The orange colored area in the lower right hand side is another program, BC246T Advanced Scanner Control, used to control my Uniden BC-246T scanner. That software allows me to overlay the window on top of whatever I want, so I do that directly on top of Unitrunker and then record it (that itself, the recording process, is a bit more complicated so I'm not going to delve into all that, perhaps later on if you're interested). I also have the audio from the 246T patched in so it's recorded as well, that's the difference here: you can see and hear what's happening in real-time or at least as it was recorded.
I have most of the talkgroups on the SNACC system alpha tagged properly, those will display on the left side column under Destination Party. The right side column is the Calling Party, and this is where the individual radio IDs will show up when they transmit. Sometimes that information isn't shown, or a specific RID (radio ID) will "hang" on the display so it's not a major issue, it just happens.
If you paused the video at the very beginning, you can see NLV Police on the 246T window, and then South Patrol just under that. NLV Police is the actual Group in the 246T - it's programmed by System (the SNACC system), then the Groups (like NLV Police, Clark County FD, etc), and then those Groups have the individual talkgroups assigned to them. In this example, the South Patrol talkgroup is/was active and is about to finish transmitting.
At 2 seconds into the video you'll see the first full broadcast picked up and heard from NLV Police South Patrol. Note two things here:
1) On the top of Unitrunker in the Destination Party column, you can easily see NLVPD S Patrol - that's the North Las Vegas South Patrol. I haven't completely matched Unitrunker's database with how I have my 246T programmed, that's still in progress. Suffice to say if you look at the Destination Party ID you will see the talkgroup ID which is 36688.
2) On the 246T display, you can see the same basic name: NLV Police, South Patrol, and you can also note that the 246T is displaying the TGID aka ID: 36688. That's the talkgroup I'm currently listening to, at least how the scanner hears it. Also of note: my actual 246T scanner does not show the TGID down in the lower right corner, that's something that BC246T Advanced Scanner Control software does, and it helps because I can look at Unitrunker to see it's the same talkgroup ID (TGID again) and know I'm looking at and listening to precisely what the scanner says I'm listening to.
Since I made that video a few weeks ago I have since labeled the radio ID aka RID shown in the Calling Party ID column for that unit. If you listen to the voice speaking you'll hear him say "Control, 1-Adam-25 has arrived, 490, have a good night." That tells me the unit/person using that particular RID is 1-Adam-25, so I then added a proper alpha tag/label to the 23907 radio ID - that's what you see in the Calling Party ID column there - and now whenever that specific radio is used for transmitting, Unitrunker displays the name assigned to that RID which is 1-Adam-25.
Now, the problem with this is I don't know if that RID is specific to a handheld radio that officer was holding, or a radio unit mounted in his patrol vehicle - but it really doesn't matter. What matters is I caught the RID of the radio itself, and I caught an officer using that radio ID himself as 1-Adam-25, so from that point on I'll see 1-Adam-25 on Unitrunker until something changes (talkgroups can change, radios can be reassigned to new people or replaced entirely, etc).
Continuing on listening, you'll hear the Dispatcher (DISPATCH) come back and say "Good night" faintly. But notice the RID changed in the video because I've already noted that RID in question is most definitely a Dispatcher's console at the operations center. Dispatchers are always the easiest ones to spot when you're new to identifying particular radio IDs because they tend to transmit more voice traffic than any regular field or beat officer out and about. No matter what system I'm monitoring, my Dispatchers are always labeled as DISPATCH and they always appear in that light cyan color.
That's another aspect to Unitrunker: color coding. All my Police traffic is in light blue, all my fire traffic is in light red, the Las Vegas Water District (LVWD) is in the brown color (the Sewage dept is in the same color... get it? Brown? Sewage? hehe), the McCarran Airport traffic (LAS is the 3 digit designator for this airport) is in light magenta, etc. It makes it much easier to spot what's going on.
So what does Unitrunker do? Well, as the video shows (minus my 246T overlaid on the display, of course), it adds a new side to the hobby. You might be listening to just one talkgroup at any given time, stuck on hold and not scanning for others, but with Unitrunker running in the background you now have a visual representation of the basic traffic on a trunked system as communications are happening. You'll typically need two scanners to use and set it up properly as I have, but you can use just one if necessary, it's just tough to see and hear what's going on at the same time. I have the 246T for monitoring the voice communications and an old Uniden BC-700A tapped so it provides the trunking control channel data to Unitrunker directly through my soundcard.
Hope this helps, somewhat... if you have more questions, just ask. The person that created and maintains Unitrunker, Rick, aka Unitrunker here at this forum, is quite active and always helpful.
ps
I believe the PSR-500 can supply control channel data to Unitrunker using the USB cable actually - no soundcard needed if it's set up properly, or at least that's what I keep reading. Perhaps someone else can chime in here and offer the specifics, but I'm sure it's not all that difficult to do and would provide a great signal to Unitrunker.
pss
Also, keep in mind everything in that video in terms of labels on the talkgroups and radio IDs was typed in by me by hand - you have to manually do all this kind of stuff yourself, and I still have a lot of data to keep adding so my Unitrunker data files are as complete as I can make them.
It will allow you to see visually what's happening on an entire trunked radio system because as you're well aware when you're listening to one specific talkgroup on a trunked system, that doesn't mean that's all that's going on. There's a lot more happening in the background that you typically don't get to hear, let alone see. So Unitrunker provides the visual representation of who's calling who on what talkgroup and on what system at any given moment.
You use Unitrunker with either the headphone/earphone output from a scanner (somewhat useful, but not entirely reliable) or use what's known as a discriminator tap, aka a tap, that provides the unfiltered unprocessed audio from the scanner's receive circuitry - as clean a signal as you can get - directly to your soundcard which then works with Unitrunker to decode the control channel data and show you what's going on.
Because sometimes just watching Unitrunker itself doesn't help without the scanner or the audio, I've made a few videos that can help demonstrate what's going on. Here's a link to a relatively short one that is a recording of the SNACC system here in Las Vegas (Clark County to be more specific) and I'll give you a tiny detailed description of what happens at key points so you can watch the video and stop it so you can see what the hell is taking place:
http://members.cox.net/br0adband/Test.wmv (438KB, 1 min 14 seconds long, Windows Media Video file)
Grab that and load it up in the player of your choice.
As soon as it starts playing, pause it so I can describe what you see. The orange colored area in the lower right hand side is another program, BC246T Advanced Scanner Control, used to control my Uniden BC-246T scanner. That software allows me to overlay the window on top of whatever I want, so I do that directly on top of Unitrunker and then record it (that itself, the recording process, is a bit more complicated so I'm not going to delve into all that, perhaps later on if you're interested). I also have the audio from the 246T patched in so it's recorded as well, that's the difference here: you can see and hear what's happening in real-time or at least as it was recorded.
I have most of the talkgroups on the SNACC system alpha tagged properly, those will display on the left side column under Destination Party. The right side column is the Calling Party, and this is where the individual radio IDs will show up when they transmit. Sometimes that information isn't shown, or a specific RID (radio ID) will "hang" on the display so it's not a major issue, it just happens.
If you paused the video at the very beginning, you can see NLV Police on the 246T window, and then South Patrol just under that. NLV Police is the actual Group in the 246T - it's programmed by System (the SNACC system), then the Groups (like NLV Police, Clark County FD, etc), and then those Groups have the individual talkgroups assigned to them. In this example, the South Patrol talkgroup is/was active and is about to finish transmitting.
At 2 seconds into the video you'll see the first full broadcast picked up and heard from NLV Police South Patrol. Note two things here:
1) On the top of Unitrunker in the Destination Party column, you can easily see NLVPD S Patrol - that's the North Las Vegas South Patrol. I haven't completely matched Unitrunker's database with how I have my 246T programmed, that's still in progress. Suffice to say if you look at the Destination Party ID you will see the talkgroup ID which is 36688.
2) On the 246T display, you can see the same basic name: NLV Police, South Patrol, and you can also note that the 246T is displaying the TGID aka ID: 36688. That's the talkgroup I'm currently listening to, at least how the scanner hears it. Also of note: my actual 246T scanner does not show the TGID down in the lower right corner, that's something that BC246T Advanced Scanner Control software does, and it helps because I can look at Unitrunker to see it's the same talkgroup ID (TGID again) and know I'm looking at and listening to precisely what the scanner says I'm listening to.
Since I made that video a few weeks ago I have since labeled the radio ID aka RID shown in the Calling Party ID column for that unit. If you listen to the voice speaking you'll hear him say "Control, 1-Adam-25 has arrived, 490, have a good night." That tells me the unit/person using that particular RID is 1-Adam-25, so I then added a proper alpha tag/label to the 23907 radio ID - that's what you see in the Calling Party ID column there - and now whenever that specific radio is used for transmitting, Unitrunker displays the name assigned to that RID which is 1-Adam-25.
Now, the problem with this is I don't know if that RID is specific to a handheld radio that officer was holding, or a radio unit mounted in his patrol vehicle - but it really doesn't matter. What matters is I caught the RID of the radio itself, and I caught an officer using that radio ID himself as 1-Adam-25, so from that point on I'll see 1-Adam-25 on Unitrunker until something changes (talkgroups can change, radios can be reassigned to new people or replaced entirely, etc).
Continuing on listening, you'll hear the Dispatcher (DISPATCH) come back and say "Good night" faintly. But notice the RID changed in the video because I've already noted that RID in question is most definitely a Dispatcher's console at the operations center. Dispatchers are always the easiest ones to spot when you're new to identifying particular radio IDs because they tend to transmit more voice traffic than any regular field or beat officer out and about. No matter what system I'm monitoring, my Dispatchers are always labeled as DISPATCH and they always appear in that light cyan color.
That's another aspect to Unitrunker: color coding. All my Police traffic is in light blue, all my fire traffic is in light red, the Las Vegas Water District (LVWD) is in the brown color (the Sewage dept is in the same color... get it? Brown? Sewage? hehe), the McCarran Airport traffic (LAS is the 3 digit designator for this airport) is in light magenta, etc. It makes it much easier to spot what's going on.
So what does Unitrunker do? Well, as the video shows (minus my 246T overlaid on the display, of course), it adds a new side to the hobby. You might be listening to just one talkgroup at any given time, stuck on hold and not scanning for others, but with Unitrunker running in the background you now have a visual representation of the basic traffic on a trunked system as communications are happening. You'll typically need two scanners to use and set it up properly as I have, but you can use just one if necessary, it's just tough to see and hear what's going on at the same time. I have the 246T for monitoring the voice communications and an old Uniden BC-700A tapped so it provides the trunking control channel data to Unitrunker directly through my soundcard.
Hope this helps, somewhat... if you have more questions, just ask. The person that created and maintains Unitrunker, Rick, aka Unitrunker here at this forum, is quite active and always helpful.
ps
I believe the PSR-500 can supply control channel data to Unitrunker using the USB cable actually - no soundcard needed if it's set up properly, or at least that's what I keep reading. Perhaps someone else can chime in here and offer the specifics, but I'm sure it's not all that difficult to do and would provide a great signal to Unitrunker.
pss
Also, keep in mind everything in that video in terms of labels on the talkgroups and radio IDs was typed in by me by hand - you have to manually do all this kind of stuff yourself, and I still have a lot of data to keep adding so my Unitrunker data files are as complete as I can make them.
Last edited:
FlashSWT
Member
Unitrunker lets you "visually scan" a trunked system as opposed to "audibly" scanning it as you would traditionally do with a scanner. When you listen to a trunked system and the scanner stops on an active talkgroup, you have no idea who else is talking while you are listening to the current conversation. Unitrunker shows all frequencies for a given tower site and displays which talkgroups are active on each frequency at any given time as well as which individual user (or radio) is doing the talking.
Well never mind, Br0adband types much faster than me! (Especially when I stop to eat dinner in the middle of writing a post.) =)
.
Well never mind, Br0adband types much faster than me! (Especially when I stop to eat dinner in the middle of writing a post.) =)
.
br0adband
Member
Well to be honest, it's not user friendly to most anyone but the guy that created it (hope that's not a bad thing to say, but... it does seem to be the consensus) because he can use it without even thinking about it, obviously.
I don't have a PSR-500 so I can't provide the steps to get the signal over the USB link, sorry, but I'll bet someone else might know. If you read back through some of the postings in this forum, or perhaps try searching for psr-500 and unitrunker you might get more info or at least pointed to a specific post where someone has spoken of the procedure to take the control channel data from the PSR-500's PC interface and feed it to Unitrunker.
Rick is currently working on a true GUI version of Unitrunker, due out any time now for maybe beta testing or as a full release. We'll see what happens...
I don't have a PSR-500 so I can't provide the steps to get the signal over the USB link, sorry, but I'll bet someone else might know. If you read back through some of the postings in this forum, or perhaps try searching for psr-500 and unitrunker you might get more info or at least pointed to a specific post where someone has spoken of the procedure to take the control channel data from the PSR-500's PC interface and feed it to Unitrunker.
Rick is currently working on a true GUI version of Unitrunker, due out any time now for maybe beta testing or as a full release. We'll see what happens...
It dont know how to input FM in the mode section. I also don't know how to enter 99 in the Threshold section. I tried to type F and it would change it and I tried to press up and down on the arrow keys. No luck. After I have all these settings do I do anything or will it just work?
Tab over to the field and use the backspace key to erase what's there.Jono40141 said:
Actually, don't bother - those are listening criteria which doesn't apply in this setup. Make sure the first two "Listen" and "control" are set to "No".
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