HomePatrol-1 Extreme Upgrade Post-Release Thread

[OCO]

bgav:
When you set an alert on the HP1, the next screen it takes you to is to select 1 of 10 sample tones....In Sentinel you can select the tone by number (1-10), and volume (auto or 1-15) but you need to know the values beforehand from setting them on the HP1 itself..

[bgav]

Originally Posted by old_CJDC_ops

bgav:
When you set an alert on the HP1, the next screen it takes you to is to select 1 of 10 sample tones....In Sentinel you can select the tone by number (1-10), and volume (auto or 1-15) but you need to know the values beforehand from setting them on the HP1 itself..

Got it, thanks .

[rfaricy]

Originally Posted by N1HH

I experience confusing Active Site information when monitoring the San Diego-Imperial County Regional Communications System (RCS). This Trunked Radio system has many different sites. However, any one of three different sites are displayed as the Active Site obtained from the Advanced System menu:
North Zone
Campo (offline)
Brawley
I believe the North Zone site is the actual site I am scanning. The Campo site is supposedly offline, and the Brawley site is too far to the East of my location to expect any reception.
The plot thickens when I use the Trunked System Analyzer. If I select either the North Zone site or the Campo (offline) site I can monitor Current Activity corresponding to the correct SID, 470F. If I choose the Brawley site I observe activity corresponding to SID 2B2E which is a completely different system, the San Diego City 800 MHz System.
Is this a bug or might there be some other explanation?

Do you have Location Control set to "On"? If not, the HP1 will land on sites and mark them as Active (even if they're "red"/out of range) if any of them contain a control frequency that is shared in other sites. I turned location control on and this stopped.

[Jay911]

UPMan, if you're still following this thread, I do have some things that I'm going to raise in this thread, that if possible, I'd like to be addressed (please and thanks! ).

I went out on a field trip today to use LCN Finder and Discovery Mode on a trunk system and Discovery Mode (conventional) in two counties/towns where we haven't had much data submitted. I had a kind of a mixed bag of results.

LCN finder works very well for me. As I mentioned before, sometimes it seems to take a very long time to finish getting the last one or two LCNs (and may never get there), but I think my theory that having frequencies in the system that don't actually belong to it will cause the finder to never complete. I have never seen the multi-colored LCNs that the manual seems to imply - just white boxes. Maybe the red/orange ones are potential "wrong" hits, on a busy system?
And once again, I ask, about the LTR LCN finder - which is better, a completely idle system, or one with very few (but some) actual calls going on?

A lot of us are still having trouble with Discovery Mode crashing (rebooting) when we hit End on the screen. It saves the session name (i.e. "BANFF_RUN0010" in my case) but not any of the recorded/logged data. The "Please wait" screen comes up when you hit "End", then the screen goes blank, and acts as if you powered the scanner off and then on again. All data is lost. I've tried to figure out a common thread between the sessions/runs that failed for me (some do, some don't) and I can't. All of them in my case were conventional, but I don't know if that's the case for others. Some of mine had known frequencies logged, some don't (and some of my successful logs have known frequencies). Same for tones detected, bands in use, whether anything has been avoided or not, run names, length of time in use, and so on - nothing seems to jump out as being a culprit. One thing I didn't think to check today is if the scanner is actually recording/receiving when I hit End. I would think there would be some of them in there though.
Paul, do you have any idea what's going on and an estimate of when we might see a fix? (I see that you did ask others what some of their settings were - for the record, in all cases where I had a reboot happen, I had GPS connected and feeding data, was set to follow multiple favorites lists (and consult them during discovery), and sometimes there were some default settings overriden in discovery, and sometimes there weren't. When there were, it was usually that STEP was changed to 5 kHz (owing to the VHF bandplan not being 12.5 kHz in Canada). I always set my recording time to 180 seconds - sometimes I had instances where there were "full" recordings made, sometimes not.)

Others - I noticed when doing some file transfers off my HP1 tonight, in the discovery directory, there is a "temp" dir listed. Do you have anything in yours? (Mine didn't.) If a discovery failed, I wonder if you might be able to recover it by immediately hooking up to a PC and checking that folder.

Also in discovery mode, when one hits Avoid, the scanner behaves contrary to how Avoid functions in other places (like normal scanning). Instead of muting audio and putting up the avoid dialog (with "OK" and "Cancel") - it puts up the dialog and doesn't mute the audio until the dialog is closed (either with "OK" or letting it time out). Also, that one particular avoid dialog usually requires more than one tap of the "OK" button to make it go away. If there's a way to make this avoid feature behave like the others, it would be nice.

I also feel compelled to reiterate the UID "bug" (or whatever you wish to call it). My experience is with a Motorola trunk system and I'm finding that alpha UIDs are replacing the channel tag instead of appearing below them as the numeric UIDs do. I would expect (and I think others do too) the alpha UID to live where the numeric ones do, instead of migrating up one line. Some people (I presume to be beta testers or with knowledge of the code) have said that it's because alpha UIDs "over a certain length" get moved, but I haven't had a concrete definition of the length required to trigger that. In my case, a channel ID of "A1 Dispatch" (11 characters) gets replaced with a UID of "8-21" (4 characters). I can't fathom that 4 characters is considered too long to fit in the space where "UID:57741" (or bigger in the case of a P25 system) would go. Ultimately, this is something I think a lot of people would like changed, or at least an explanation of why it's doing what it's doing.

I have some other feature requests (or feature-finding requests, if I'm just too blind to see something that already exists and need to be led to it by someone else ) :

- When UIDs or tones are "found"/displayed on normal scanning (i.e. when CTCSS/DCS Search is in use), I'd like to see that stuff written to the metadata of the .wav file, just as the System, Department, and Channel info is now. I would suggest it would be ideal to append to the Channel.

- When tones are found during scanning, is there an easy way to cause them to be saved, as there is on the x96XT scanners? I am finding that I have to (1) remember what the tone is, (2) tap the edge of the system bar, (3) tap "Advanced", (4) tap "Edit current system", (5) tap "Edit Department", (6) tap the appropriate department (scrolling up and down as necessary), (7) tap "Edit Channel", (8) tap the appropriate channel (again, scrolling up and down as necessary), (9) tap "Audio Type", (10) tap the proper tone type, and finally (11) tap the actual tone in use (again, scrolling if necessary). And that's improved from when I didn't realize there was an "Edit Current System", and was going "Menu", "Advanced", "Advanced Options", "Edit Favorites", select favorite, then "Edit System", and choosing the system, BEFORE all the above.
Yes, I know this is what Discovery is intended for... I guess it will become irrelevant once Discovery can be trusted to not barf all the session away randomly.

- Can any consideration be made to allowing the user to define what step size should be used as "auto" in what ranges? As mentioned before, VHF "Hi" in Canada is 5 (or 15) kHz, not 12.5. It'd make it easier to do a Discovery across the scanner's entire band. I might want to let the scanner run from 137 to 956 MHz, and just pick up anything it finds. If I do that right now, I either have to live with incorrect frequencies in VHF hits, or not include VHF in the session.
- Another way to get around the above is if you allowed multiple ranges to be searched in a session somehow. If I could "chain" together "137 to 174 at 5 kHz steps" with "406 to 956 at auto steps", that would be perfect. (or even "137 to 143.995" and "148 to 174" and "406 to 956", etc)

- During Discovery, could the time being spent on the current recording (or time remaining before recording is automatically stopped) be fit in somewhere? Sometimes it might be nice to know if you're glancing at the screen during Discovery, if the on-screen frequency is about to be declared "found" and ignored, etc.

- Is there a way to change the name of the "Custom" service tags (i.e. "FRS/GMRS" instead of "Custom 6")? If so, where? If not, can it be considered for later?

- Question: In the detailed log on a trunk activity session, if a talkgroup is described as "Encrypted", does that imply that the talkgroup itself is mandated (strapped) to encryption all the time, or only that there is encryption being used at this particular moment? I ask because it might become useful to be able to use this to discover if certain TGs are full-time encryption or if it's user-selectable by radio.

I think that's all I had in my head for now (it sure as heck is enough!). It may seem like a bunch of griping and complaining, but I should point out that this is a pretty earthshaking update as far as I'm concerned. I've uncovered more about my local area's communications in the past 3 days than I have in 3 months, thanks to the new features. So I'm extensively grateful for the updates and upgrades!

[kruser]

Ia addition to Jay911's post, Im hoping my findings in this thread can also be fixed HP-1E Problems after Extreme Upgrade

One other annoyance I'd like to see is the addition of a button to resume scanning when a channel comes alive with lengthy traffic right after you heard something important on another system! Or a fix to the current method of tapping to hold and then tapping to release.
I'll scan several system when I hear something interesting. It never fails that some other channel will come alive in another system and my HP1 will not get back to the interesting system fast enough.
I know to tap to hold the third line and then tap it again to resume but that does not really work. All that does is cause the HP-1 to resume scanning the current system (from the beginning) so it will just start over on the current system and instantly find the same channel that I wanted to resume past quickly. It will not advance to the next system until all traffic on the current system has stopped. So either a screen button you can hit that forces a scan to resume with the next system or even the next channel in the current system would work as long as it does not cause it to rescan the current system from the beginning which is exactly what it is doing now or fix the current tap to hold and tap again to resume method so it works. The only way I can get back to the system with important traffic is to avoid the current unwanted channel or entire system and that is time consuming.
I do love my HP-1 but there are a lot of little quirks that one must learn to work around if you are used to older conventional scanners.

[kruser]

Originally Posted by ka3jjz

Thanks KOJ. I will upload this to the wiki and email Marshall to include this in his article

best regards..Mike

So is there a link to the Wiki page that has these HPE files listed for download that people are submitting?
I'm missing it if there is such a thing. I go to the Home Patrol wiki page but no mention of these filles to be found on that wiki page.
I've been getting them from the actual thread but it was my understanding that there was a wiki addition made that also has the files listed there. Or has that part not been completed yet?

I always seem to have a hard time finding things in the wiki so maybe I'm just missing it!

[MtnBiker2005]

You can also view/download the files on this page.

Wiki Upload Log page
http://wiki.radioreference.com/index...ial:Log/upload

[DaveNF2G]

FTR, the bandplan is not 12.5 kHz spacing on all of VHF-High in the United States, either. It is 7.5 kHz.

The trouble with bandplans on VHF High is that there are at least two breaks in the band where the channel spacing is not 7.5 kHz. 12.5 kHz works somewhere above 156, where the Marine band is, but the railroad band is back to 7.5 kHz.

[ka3jjz]

As these files are currently unattached to an article, you can see (and download) the files from here;

Unused files - The RadioReference Wiki

When Marshall's article is ready I'm sure he'll announce it

best regards..Mike

[newcastlescan]

I'd also like a settable auto recording for TGID/UID/conventional frequencies so could review night on a any of the channels, Maybe change to a compressed audio format also?

Cheers upman and team uniden
Mike
Newcastle's premier scanning website since 2001

[SDavis90]

The only thing I can contribute at this point would be what Jay911 pointed out. I would like to see the UID's on the bottom line also. It just appears to me that there is plenty of space on that line to make it work.

Stating the obvious here, it makes it nearly impossible in some cases to see what channel they are talking on.

I'm certainly enjoying it though because I am also finding new TGIDs and comms out there that I didn't know about before.

[b52hbuff]

Originally Posted by Jay911

When tones are found during scanning, is there an easy way to cause them to be saved, as there is on the x96XT scanners? I am finding that I have to (1) remember what the tone is, (2) tap the edge of the system bar, (3) tap "Advanced", (4) tap "Edit current system", (5) tap "Edit Department", (6) tap the appropriate department (scrolling up and down as necessary), (7) tap "Edit Channel", (8) tap the appropriate channel (again, scrolling up and down as necessary), (9) tap "Audio Type", (10) tap the proper tone type, and finally (11) tap the actual tone in use (again, scrolling if necessary). And that's improved from when I didn't realize there was an "Edit Current System", and was going "Menu", "Advanced", "Advanced Options", "Edit Favorites", select favorite, then "Edit System", and choosing the system, BEFORE all the above.
Yes, I know this is what Discovery is intended for... I guess it will become irrelevant once Discovery can be trusted to not barf all the session away randomly.

I'll start this with a request, continue with a story and then end with the request again.

Please, please, please allow the discovered tone to be written into the metadata of the recording file.

Now for the story...
I would like to agree and expand on what you have said. I experienced the same issues with respect to tones. In the RF-dense area in which I live, tones are a necessity to help cut down on noise and truly identify what you are monitoring. As I went through the same thought process as you did, I kept thinking about how easy it was to save tones on the Pro-96. (A radio I hear that UPman had some involvement with. ). I would love to see a quick UI path towards saving a tone monitored during scanning.

But even more importantly...

Here is a typical usage scenario... I am going to visit some monitoring target that doesn't have a fully populated database entry. I go to the FCC database lookup on RR.com. So I know I have a set of good frequencies, but I have no idea of the tones. I scan these frequencies at my target site, and when I hear expected traffic with a strong RF, I tag the frequency with the tone. As I said, there is so much RF here, that Discovery mode to log a tone for a particular user would be very cumbersome. You'd have so many non-target hits between what you were listening to make logging almost useless.

We need to be able to store the tone from the scan mode. Which brings me back to my experiments yesterday...

I took my HP1EE to the Monterey Bay Aquarium to help me flesh out a submission I'm working on. I had a profile derived from the FCC database, and it was partially populated with tones from past visits. I was looking forward to some hands off monitoring of frequencies without tones. So I put the radio in scan mode, and enabled recording.

When I would occasionally look at the radio, I noticed that the newly discovered tones would flash as expected. When I went back to review my recordings on the HP1EE, imagine my disappointment to see that instead of displaying tone information on the channels marked for 'search', it showed the service tag instead?

Please, please, please allow the discovered tone to be written into the metadata of the recording file.

[BearMan54]

I'm starting to think we've run the Uniden team off..... Haven't heard from Paul in a couple days...... haha

I would really like the discovery mode get fixed.....!

[EJB]

Hello. I did not purchase the extreme upgrade however I dont understand a few things here.

I have figured out how to scan 2 or more fave lists at once and by pressing MENU- DISPLAY OPTIONS I can use the UID display function


I.E. I would like to use the 'per channel delay and UID tagging feature. I dont see anywhere in this manual how to play around with per channel delay, Emergency list or UID tagging

On page 9 it says the following but does not explain HOW to use the upgrade (free ) features:

" Even without the registration key, you can take advantage of these advanced features, many of which can be programmed using HomePatrol Sentinel software:"

Per‐channel delay – lets you determine how long the HomePatrol‐1 stays on a channel after the transmission ends. Longer delays help prevent missing replies. Shorter delays improve overall scanning speed.

Better location precision for systems – allows you to define a department’s location and range using multiple rectangles instead of a single circle (circles are still supported).

Multi‐Favorite List Support – lets you monitor up to 256 Favorites List at a time, or combine Favorites Lists and the Full Database for monitoring.

Channel Alerts – sounds a programmable alert when a channel set to alert becomes active.

Unit ID Tagging – displays an alpha tag showing the information about a specific radio unit being received.

ID Search – stops on all unavoided radio traffic, even if the channel is not in HomePatrol‐1’s database.

Emergency Alert – sounds an alert when a unit triggers their emergency status (on compatible radio systems).

When I click MENU then ADVANCED MENU then ASVANCED OPTIONS I am asked to submit a REGISTRATION KEY. That I realize, I have to pay for but I cannot for the life of me figure out which steps I can take to use the Upgrade features above

I would appreciate any and all help on how to use these features.

Thank you in advance


Eric

[UPMan]

"Even without the registration key, you can take advantage of these advanced features, many of which can be programmed using HomePatrol Sentinel software:"

i.e. These functions are in the HomePatrol Sentinel software.

Start here: HomePatrol Sentinel Update - YouTube

[scancapecod]

I just added three more .zip files full of search range favorites lists to the Wiki page. These include federal searches from 163-174 MHz, UHF searches in the 450-454 and 460-465 ranges, and some 2M and 70cm ham searches.

[KE4ZNR]

Thanks for the hpe contributions Scott and others
I have gotten preoccupied with a couple of work & social situations but my plan is to sit down this weekend and get a darn good looking Wiki page with instructions
on how to import & export hpe files along with links to said files.
Everyone is welcome to submit hpe files (zipped up please) to be
included in the Wiki article. If it is a local file please give specific info
about what exactly is included in the file. If it is a generic radio service file please also give us some idea of what is included.
You can (of course) upload the files to the Wiki yourself and I will include them in the Wiki site or you can email them to me directly
at KE4ZNR-at-Radioreference.com if that is easier for you.
I hope to have the site ready by Sunday.
Thanks to Mike for his help and thanks to everyone that has (or will have) contributed hpe files!
Happy Monitoring
Marshall KE4ZNR

[UPMan]

While awaiting an official answer, I've done a quick unscientific check. I got a raw output for 30 seconds sitting on a P25 control channel. File size is 1967kB which would be 65566 B/sec or 32783 samples/second.

The sampled file is at:
http://info.uniden.com/twiki/pub/Hom...Raw_115200.zip

[UPMan]

For the shared "service search" hpe files, you might cosider adopting one of the Custom tags as the standard "service search" group (to make them easy to turn on/off with a single switch).

[Jay911]

I just found something interesting which may be related to the Discovery crashing problem.

A brief story is required. For those who haven't already heard me say this, I review recordings my scanner has taken by copying/moving all the folders in user_rec (the folder in the scanner which contains the recordings saved when you do a "record" session) to my PC, and then browsing them with an MP3 sorting/review/playback application called MediaMonkey. This allows me to sort and/or browse them by system, department, and channel, since Uniden is saving this information to the metadata of the .wav file (artist = system, genre = department, title = channel, among other things).

Today when I went to review the files I took from my HP1 from yesterday's expedition, I found some oddly-labeled ones. For example, I see ones with Artist = Banff Springs Hotel, Genre = Unknown, Title = taff/Security?. The actual title (channel name) is Staff/Security?. This is definitely from a failed Discovery session. Interestingly enough, when I navigate to that actual file on disk, the Title field is blank (under Windows Explorer/Properties).

I see similar files from other, older failed discovery sessions - with even weirder metadata. As an example, I have several recordings with a title (channel) value of 3 District 3, which should be A3 District 3 from the Calgary Digital Radio trunk system. In MediaMonkey, these audio files show Genre (department) of Unknown, and varying Artist (system) values - some Calgary Digital Radio, some NextCom, some Sekom PC, and some TAC Mobility (all various local trunk systems, some of which are Motorola like Calgary Digital Radio, some of which are LTR). The files which are listed as being for systems other than Calgary Digital Radio do not have audio from "A3 District 3" - it is from some other TG in that actual system (for example, something from the TAC Mobility system). I thought maybe it was the "same" TG, i.e. 33680 (or whatever) on both systems - but that would not correspond to anything valid in the LTR systems. Once again, for what it's worth, viewing the actual wav file in question via Windows Explorer shows that the "title" metadata field appears to be blank.

Here are my thoughts on this.

1. Something is quirky with how the HP1 is saving these audio files as it's not writing the right metadata. Besides the titles being blank, the department is not "Unknown" for many of them - for example for the "A3 District 3" channel, the department (genre) should be "Police Dispatch".

2. Every "bad" file I have found in the user_rec folder shows a blank "title" field in Windows Explorer, and a "title" field in MediaMonkey with the first character clipped off.

3. Every "bad" file I have found seemingly corresponds to a Discovery session that did not save properly (caused the scanner to crash/reboot).
3a. I had some conventional files which displayed this trait, but I deleted them (and emptied the Recycle Bin) before I noticed the pattern. I suspect the same is true for them as well.

4. All of the above was done with the scanner set to listen to multiple favorites lists (I don't use the full DB when in my local area).

5. Question for Paul and his staff: How does the scanner decide which system/dept/channel to "compare to" when "compare to DB" is checked? On a trunk discovery session I would expect it to limit its comparison to that trunk system. If I am doing a conventional discovery session, is it comparing to the system I was in when I entered discovery mode, or everything in my active list(s) (i.e. all favorites activated)? For a specific example: If conventional discovery mode finds frequency 413.8375, and there are multiple 413.8375's in my currently active favorites, which one does the scanner decide it's listening to?
EDIT: 5a. Could this crash problem have something to do with Record mode being "on" when Discovery Mode is entered initially?

6. Question/suggestion to everyone experiencing this problem: Has the crash ever happened when you have set "compare to DB" to "no"?