USB control for HomePatrol

[cuppa-joe]

I have been working on a command-line program to control the HomePatrol-1 (Extreme) over the USB serial port.

A public test version of HPe-rc is ready to download at hp.xoynq.com. It is Windows only at this time. There's no reason it would not work in Linux, but it has not been tested yet.

The entire remote control protocol is implemented. The Audio Feed Mode is probably the most useful feature at this point. The files from the HomePatrol's recording buffer can be downloaded, renamed to a different date format, and put in directories based on the available system information - channel, department, system, service tag or favorites list.

This project started in order to explore using the raw discriminator output. Right now, the program will write the data to a file or another serial port, but it's not in a useful format. (It can be read as raw audio data in a audio processing program.) I am hoping to be able to emulate the RS232 interface described at RS-232 Interface, but I am at a loss what the data should look like or how to convert the HP's output. Any help or pointers would be great.

Questions, comments and bug reports will also be greatly appreciated.

[cuppa-joe]

For anyone interested, the next release of my HP utility program will include a working "software data slicer" that emulates the hardware version linked above. It is working very well in testing, and I hope to have a new version out by the end of the week.

Thanks to everyone who has checked out my project. I appreciate the interest.

[SYOTT]

Is it possible to use this WITHOUT having the extreme upgrade?

[cuppa-joe]

Originally Posted by SYOTT

Is it possible to use this WITHOUT having the extreme upgrade?

I'm afraid not.

[rgore]

Nice, have it working on my Raspberry PI ok.

Any suggestions on how to get audio passed to my browser so I can use it remote?

[cuppa-joe]

Originally Posted by rgore

Nice, have it working on my Raspberry PI ok.

Any suggestions on how to get audio passed to my browser so I can use it remote?

The scanner doesn't support real-time audio over the USB connection - the files are available to transfer from the recording buffer only after the transmission ends.

The next version of the program will support playing those audio files with a web browser - just not in real-time.

Very cool that it's working on the Raspberyy Pi. Please let me know about any problems or suggestions you have.

[NYRHKY94]

cuppa-joe:

I was considering buying the extreme upgrade and giving your program a try, but based on the post above about no real time audio....now I'm not so sure. Bummer.

[Forts]

Is hp.xoynq.com down? Thought I would check this out, but can't connect

[cuppa-joe]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; en-US) AppleWebKit/528.5+ (KHTML, like Gecko, Safari/528.5+) Version/4.0 Kindle/3.0 (screen 600x800; rotate))

Originally Posted by NYRHKY94

cuppa-joe:

I was considering buying the extreme upgrade and giving your program a try, but based on the post above about no real time audio....now I'm not so sure. Bummer.

It's not all bad - the delay from real-time is the length of the transmission plus the time to download from the scanner. This delay would add up on a busy system, but as long as the scanner has some idle time and we have a way to catch-up if needed, it should work OK. It's all theory until I get the code written, of course.

[rgore]

Originally Posted by cuppa-joe

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; en-US) AppleWebKit/528.5+ (KHTML, like Gecko, Safari/528.5+) Version/4.0 Kindle/3.0 (screen 600x800; rotate))



It's not all bad - the delay from real-time is the length of the transmission plus the time to download from the scanner. This delay would add up on a busy system, but as long as the scanner has some idle time and we have a way to catch-up if needed, it should work OK. It's all theory until I get the code written, of course.

Agree, the delay should be acceptable. Should only notice the delay if you are sitting next to your scanner.