Best practices for feed with multiple departments

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mgeyman

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Jul 22, 2009
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South Euclid, Ohio
I just purchased a SDS200 and am providing a feed for police dispatch in my local adjacent (4) communities. I am curious as to what the best practices are regarding making the listening experience as smooth as possible for the listening audience. In particular, are there a best/optimal settings for delay, squelch level, priority settings and any other settings I should be aware of? I have a Favorites list I use by importing from the Sentinel software to narrow down the number of departments which 3 are digital P25 Phase1 trunked systems and one being a conventional UHF system. I'm trying to reduce missed/choppy dispatch conversations between departments when scanning as much as possible. Any thoughts/input would be greatly appreciated! Thank you.
 

sacscorpio

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Mar 1, 2008
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Northern California
I was looking at the same thing, and I ended up purchasing two more SDS200. I have a very busy PD area that I wanted to broadcast and then the Sheriff's Department as well. I also wanted the CHP frequency for the area because there wasn't someone broadcasting it. Before I went live, I tried with one scanner and then two, and realized I would need three. I dropped the $$$ on all SDS200 because of the "low" maintenance of it once you have it setup.
 

fredva

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Feed Provider
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Mar 19, 2007
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Virginia/West Virginia
One thing you're dealing with is the relatively long time to scan each trunked system (a second or more for each), which means you'll miss the beginning of conversations on other systems. If those trunked systems happen to be Motorola systems with static control channels, you could scan the systems' voice channels conventionally for personal listening and speed things up. However, you can't do that on Broadcastify because you would be broadcasting everything on the trunked systems, including prohibited transmissions (TAC talkgroups, etc.) And even for personal listening, conversation following can go out the door.

So basically, the only way to provide better coverage for each of those systems individually is to have multiple scanners. You wouldn't necessarily need an expensive SDS-100/200 for any system that isn't simulcast digital.
 

mgeyman

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Jul 22, 2009
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South Euclid, Ohio
Thanks so much for your responses. Also, is it better to have the Sentinel default 2-second Delay or not have any delay per talkgroup or frequency scanned? Would that help?
 

JimD56

KO9JAD/Fire Lieutenant/Paramedic
Feed Provider
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Nov 18, 2004
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777
Location
Davie, FL (Miami/Fort Lauderdale Metro)
I use 2 Scanners for 2 Different Feeds of the same system in ((STEREO))
Left are Dispatch Channels and Right are Tac Channels.
I get no complaints and I have the most coverage and frequencies for my system among the 3 different feed providers I compete with.
 

M67248Ski

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Premium Subscriber
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Oct 5, 2019
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Why not try a Software defined radio. I'm just getting started on it but plenty of information out there. If done right combined with the stereo audio suggestion could have one feed for two departments, one on left on on right and another feed set up same way.
 
Joined
Jan 4, 2005
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1,738
Location
Soledad, CA
I was looking at the same thing, and I ended up purchasing two more SDS200. I have a very busy PD area that I wanted to broadcast and then the Sheriff's Department as well. I also wanted the CHP frequency for the area because there wasn't someone broadcasting it. Before I went live, I tried with one scanner and then two, and realized I would need three. I dropped the $$$ on all SDS200 because of the "low" maintenance of it once you have it setup.

You could of saved $$$ on analog scanner for CHP
 

SDWolfman

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Feed Provider
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Apr 12, 2002
Messages
58
Location
San Diego County, CA
I use a Software Defined Radio - SDRTrunk to feed two trunking systems and an old scanner with ProScan to feed conventional CHP channels. The SDRTrunk program receives, with three Nooelec SDR tuners, two trunking systems and feeds two seperate audio feeds and a calls node. The SDRTrunk program is even able to mix calls from the two trunking systems for an area LE audio feed. Another thing the SDRTrunk program will do is simultaneously record every call from every talkgroup on multiple trunking systems and play back the calls from selected talkgroups, in order, on the audio feed(s). The audio feed will never miss any calls like you would on a scanner that only receives one talkgroup at a time.
 

M67248Ski

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Oct 5, 2019
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SDwolfman what are you running the SDRs on. I've tried PI4 and really only had success with windows.
 
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