P25RX P25 Phase 1/2/DMR Receiver With Bluetooth Audio Support
- Thread starter btt
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@btt If you need raw audio, IQ, whatever for your potential support of two tone decode, let me know.
Pierce County Fire still tones out units plus adds in a variety of alerting tones for things like commercial fire, cardiac arrest, monthly testing, all stations alerts, etc.
As it stands now, the P25RX cuts off the tones if I monitor Bravo/Charlie 1 on the South Sound system.
Pierce County Fire still tones out units plus adds in a variety of alerting tones for things like commercial fire, cardiac arrest, monthly testing, all stations alerts, etc.
As it stands now, the P25RX cuts off the tones if I monitor Bravo/Charlie 1 on the South Sound system.
Thank you sir! With Phase I, the audio tones are generated ok as far as I can tell. With Phase II, I made an attempt to decode some tones, but not in the proper way. The nice thing about Phase II, should be, once tones are decoded properly, it should be a direct digital decode. With Phase I, I think an FFT of the generated audio on the display module processor (or possibly directly on the P25RX) would probably be the best way to go. It is hard to say until I get to working on this. I will almost certainly need some help with collecting some audio / symbols to get any of this to work right. Feel free to e-mail any audio samples (wav files) of the tone sequences for analog or Phase I systems. Thank you.
phillydjdan
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Got mine today, and so far so good!
phillydjdan
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First impressions: This could very well be a game changer in the scanner market. For the most-part it just simply works. No bells or whistles. You want something that scans one set of talkgroups well? This is it. I have a couple of people reaching out via email to be alerted to the next batch. And I will likely get 1 or 2 more for running feeds.
The one issue that was already touched upon is the tones over Phase 2. I tested Phase 1 and any tone that's transmitted comes over no problem. Phase 2 does not. Completely muted. For some, I imagine that's a good thing, but most of the agencies I monitor use some sort of tones either for actual alerting or simply to get attention. Philly Fire Dept uses a single tone as an attention grabber before announcing runs. Since they use Phase 1, all is well. But Bucks County uses Phase 2, while also using a single tone for attention. Fire uses a 1000 hz tone, while EMS uses a 500 hz tone. Then there are dispatch channels that use 2-tone sets of varying frequencies. I personally could live without hearing the 2-tone pairs, but I definitely need to hear the 500 and 1000 hz single tones. One of these units will likely end up at my firehouse running through our building-wide PA system, and we would need to hear those tones. Right now we have a Motorola APX doing that job, but we need that radio in a vehicle, so we're looking to replace it with one of these. I know you said you would look into the tone issue, so I trust you are working on it, just wanted to offer my 2 cents. If you need logs I can probably provide some.
I do have a question. When roam is enabled, how long does the unit scan the control channel before moving on to the next control channel? It seems like it only stays on the CC for a second. It also appears to be a little slow in switching from one to the other, is there any way to tweak that? Another reason I got this was to replace a feed scanner that went dead once a county near me upgraded to Phase 2. The issue is that county uses 2 trunking zones (so 2 separate CCs) for each end of the county. I would need this to be able to flip back and forth relatively quickly. If it can't be adjusted that's fine, just figured I'd ask.
Other than that, I'm impressed. This sucker handles LSM better than any consumer scanner I've laid my hands on. I think anyone looking for a simple scanner or a feed scanner would be hard pressed to find something that works this well for this price point. Well done! 👍
The one issue that was already touched upon is the tones over Phase 2. I tested Phase 1 and any tone that's transmitted comes over no problem. Phase 2 does not. Completely muted. For some, I imagine that's a good thing, but most of the agencies I monitor use some sort of tones either for actual alerting or simply to get attention. Philly Fire Dept uses a single tone as an attention grabber before announcing runs. Since they use Phase 1, all is well. But Bucks County uses Phase 2, while also using a single tone for attention. Fire uses a 1000 hz tone, while EMS uses a 500 hz tone. Then there are dispatch channels that use 2-tone sets of varying frequencies. I personally could live without hearing the 2-tone pairs, but I definitely need to hear the 500 and 1000 hz single tones. One of these units will likely end up at my firehouse running through our building-wide PA system, and we would need to hear those tones. Right now we have a Motorola APX doing that job, but we need that radio in a vehicle, so we're looking to replace it with one of these. I know you said you would look into the tone issue, so I trust you are working on it, just wanted to offer my 2 cents. If you need logs I can probably provide some.
I do have a question. When roam is enabled, how long does the unit scan the control channel before moving on to the next control channel? It seems like it only stays on the CC for a second. It also appears to be a little slow in switching from one to the other, is there any way to tweak that? Another reason I got this was to replace a feed scanner that went dead once a county near me upgraded to Phase 2. The issue is that county uses 2 trunking zones (so 2 separate CCs) for each end of the county. I would need this to be able to flip back and forth relatively quickly. If it can't be adjusted that's fine, just figured I'd ask.
Other than that, I'm impressed. This sucker handles LSM better than any consumer scanner I've laid my hands on. I think anyone looking for a simple scanner or a feed scanner would be hard pressed to find something that works this well for this price point. Well done! 👍
Did it again, I think i did it right, set the CC in the first page, put in all the 20 TDIDs, wrote configuration then talkgroups out. Today I just plugged it back in to my laptop and after reading the device:
Also noticed the control channel is back to 853.xxx not the 774.xxx I had put in.
Checked enabled box, and Highlighted them all, then wrote them out.. before I could save them..
I entered dummy values to speed things up, enabled them, then highlighted them all, wrote them out, then read them back and only the first line comes back..
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First of all, thank you for posting your first impressions and requirements for the tones! Regarding your question, in the latest stable version (_1304), a 1 second rate is the maximum. If you would like to try the testing version, you can set the rate to 0. It will scan faster using the control channel idle/busy status bits. There will be more improvements to this in future updates.
When you perform a "Write Config To P25RX" on the first tab, it will cause the configuration, talk groups flash, and roaming flash to be read back into the BTConfig software from the P25RX device flash. This may be what is happening here?
When you first type in the talk groups to the editor, you have to transfer them to the P25RX flash with the "Write Talk Groups" button.
-edit, I just read the edit regarding the dummy values not working. You shouldn't need to highlight the rows for the write operation, but I don't think that is an issue either. Let me work on this and see if I can figure out how to reproduce the issue.
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I think I see the issue. You need the "0x" before the SYS_ID values.
I used the excel export and edited that and imported, seems to be pilot error and it worked. thanks
Glad to hear it is working for you there!
lowerslowerarizona
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Great system, no issues...
Thank you for the feedback!
Any ETA on when these will be back in stock?
Will Do. I have a dedicated receiver for the countywide VHF system that mirrors what goes out over the Phase 2 system. Will collect about an hour or so (after editing) and send it your way. Probably Sat or Sun in order to give me enough material to work with.
In the early days of your Phase 2 testing, I noticed that the unit "tried" to decode the tones. They just seemed to be clipped out...if that makes sense so thank you for explaining why. Again, no biggie on my end since I just keep a receiver parked and turned down to hear the tone sequence going out. If it's something note-worthy, I'll turn it up and catch the repeat.
It seems like this might be solid gold for fire/EMS given the tight funds that many fire departments have to work with. Reading what phillydjdan said about his initial experiences and proposed uses makes me see a bright future for Blue Tail Technologies!
Best of luck to you and your people. Getting one of these is tougher than getting a PS5 or ammunition.
Says a lot about btt and his product.
Hopefully by the end of next week. I ran out of stock on a component (thought I had more of them). It is supposed to ship tomorrow.
Thank you!
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