SDRTrunk vs. OP25?

[KN4XW]

My local police went to P25 Phase 2 from phase 1 and my DSDplus set-up with 2 dongles no longer works.
I'm looking at replacing it with either SDRTrunk or OP25 for my Windows 10 PC.
Do these both work for phase 2? What are people's experiences?
Thanks,
Larry KN4XW

 

[dimab]

I'm listening to a p25 phase 2 system in CT with OP25 with 1 dongle, and works great. SDRTrunk requires at least 2 dongles, has a slick UI and no command line arguments to figure out.
I only have 1 dongle so no SDRTrunk for me.

 

[KN4XW]

I'm listening to a p25 phase 2 system in CT with OP25 with 1 dongle, and works great. SDRTrunk requires at least 2 dongles, has a slick UI and no command line arguments to figure out.
I only have 1 dongle so no SDRTrunk for me.

Thanks for the info. Any tricky parts to the install of OP25? And you're using Windows, right? Most of the install videos are using Linux.

 

[maus92]

My local police went to P25 Phase 2 from phase 1 and my DSDplus set-up with 2 dongles no longer works.
I'm looking at replacing it with either SDRTrunk or OP25 for my Windows 10 PC.
Do these both work for phase 2? What are people's experiences?
Thanks,
Larry KN4XW

OP25 requires Linux, so you would need to set up a Linux VM if you want to run it on Windows 10 - which will require intermediate computer skills. SDRTrunk is fairly easy to set up, and there is a Windows version. DSD+ Fastlane also does Phase 2.

 

[JimD56]

I run SDRTrunk No problems with 2 dongles, works great with just a stubby 800mhz antenna on each.

 

[KN4XW]

I tried Fastlane when it first came out and didn't have a great experience with it so I went with 2 dongles and DSD+. I was hoping someone would have a windows version for OP25 that works without much problem. I've seen SDRTrunk videos and the install seems easier than my first DSD+ install.

 

[KN4XW]

I run SDRTrunk No problems with 2 dongles, works great with just a stubby 800mhz antenna on each.

On windows or Linux?

 

[JimD56]

Windows 10

 

[maus92]

OP25 is a Linux program - so it does not run natively on Windows 10.

DSD+ Fastlane works well once you set it up properly, but it's not easy to do.

SDRTrunk is pretty easy to install on Windows 10, and IMO has better audio decoding than DSD+ FL.

 

[KN4XW]

OP25 is a Linux program - so it does not run natively on Windows 10.

DSD+ Fastlane works well once you set it up properly, but it's not easy to do.

SDRTrunk is pretty easy to install on Windows 10, and IMO has better audio decoding than DSD+ FL.

Thanks for the insight. Looks like SDRTrunk is the way to go.

 

[JimD56]

The dongles are cheap less than $25 for the RTL-SDR Ver 3. I run a 3rd for all the analog stuff using SDSharp with the Scanner Plug-In

 

[boatbod]

I was hoping someone would have a windows version for OP25 that works without much problem.

op25 relies on the GNURadio framework which is what essentially limits it to Linux. In reality it's not much of a limitation considering there is some really cheap Linux hardware out there (e.g. RPI4) or the ability to run Linux in a virtual environment on any Win PC.

 

[BM82557]

The main problem some people have with SDRTrunk is that they try to run it on a system that does not meet the minimum requirements --

 

[KN4XW]

All helpful info. Thanks.

 

[jjbllitz]

Just to expand on this thread...
I love SDRTrunk, but it is very resource intensive on Windows. I have it running currently on my Win10 box that I use for other tasks around the house. It is a 4-5 year old i7 with 16GB of RAM, and I still drop the control channel and have audio issues if I try to do other things on that box (surf the web, etc). I'm only tracking one site with 5 voice channels, and doing Calls and 2 low-volume streams. Kind of disappointing from that perspective. But I love the sound and ease of setup. I'm running the output through Thimeo Stereo Tool and have it sounding amazing.

Does anyone know if SDRTrunk needs the same level of resources on Linux? Been thinking about getting a refurbished i5 with 8GB (about $100 on Amazon or ebay), putting Linux on it and giving it a try. That machine would be dedicated to SDRTrunk.

Also been experimenting with OP25 on a pi 4, and so far just don't feel like it is as good as SDRTrunk. You can only hear one talk group at a time (without multiple instances), the sound doesn't sound as good (still trying to get liquidsoap filtering working and producing the same level of audio as Stereo Tool). And not sure it will even do Calls at this point.

 

[boatbod]

Also been experimenting with OP25 on a pi 4, and so far just don't feel like it is as good as SDRTrunk. You can only hear one talk group at a time (without multiple instances), the sound doesn't sound as good (still trying to get liquidsoap filtering working and producing the same level of audio as Stereo Tool). And not sure it will even do Calls at this point.

You absolutely can do multiple talkgroups and even multiple P25 systems concurrently with just one instance of op25 (multi_rx.py). The only requirement is to have either (i) as many RTLs as you want concurrent streams, or (ii) continuous sdr coverage as wide as the bandwidth of th system(s) you are monitoring.

Not sure what aspect of the "sound" is better from SDTTrunk than OP25 but it's probably subjective and dependent on so many factors. At least on my system I can run op25 next to a Unication G5 and a Motorola APX 6000 and they all sound as good as each other.

 

[jjbllitz]

OK boatbod you are starting to convince me. I put a recommended setup I found on here to compress and normalize in liquidsoap and it is sounding much more like my SDTrunk/Thimeo setup. Been listening to a local stream all day off OP25 and liking it. Hearing much less missing audio and less digital breakup than on SDRTrunk.

I will investigate multi_rx a bit further. My goal is to have a local stream with quite a few talk groups, then 2 Broadcastify streams with only 5 talkgroups in one and one talkgroup in the other. I think I understand how to do that. And finally, I'd like to continue to send everything to Calls. Does anyone have a way to do Calls from OP25?

 

[boatbod]

OK boatbod you are starting to convince me. I put a recommended setup I found on here to compress and normalize in liquidsoap and it is sounding much more like my SDTrunk/Thimeo setup. Been listening to a local stream all day off OP25 and liking it. Hearing much less missing audio and less digital breakup than on SDRTrunk.

I will investigate multi_rx a bit further. My goal is to have a local stream with quite a few talk groups, then 2 Broadcastify streams with only 5 talkgroups in one and one talkgroup in the other. I think I understand how to do that. And finally, I'd like to continue to send everything to Calls. Does anyone have a way to do Calls from OP25?

I run three streams on a headless nuc7 which runs multi_rx and monitors two different P25 systems. Each stream has it's own whitelist so you can readily limit which tgids get picked up by each feed. For local listening I use a separate PC (my regular laptop) which has a more expansive whitelist that include med consult channels and other things which don't go out to broadcastify.

At the current time I do not support the Calls interface. If you want to go that route you might be better off with Trunk Recorder, which is itself an evolution of a heavily modified op25.

 

[LethalDosage]

Just to expand on this thread...
I love SDRTrunk, but it is very resource intensive on Windows. I have it running currently on my Win10 box that I use for other tasks around the house. It is a 4-5 year old i7 with 16GB of RAM, and I still drop the control channel and have audio issues if I try to do other things on that box (surf the web, etc). I'm only tracking one site with 5 voice channels, and doing Calls and 2 low-volume streams. Kind of disappointing from that perspective. But I love the sound and ease of setup. I'm running the output through Thimeo Stereo Tool and have it sounding amazing.

Does anyone know if SDRTrunk needs the same level of resources on Linux? Been thinking about getting a refurbished i5 with 8GB (about $100 on Amazon or ebay), putting Linux on it and giving it a try. That machine would be dedicated to SDRTrunk.

Also been experimenting with OP25 on a pi 4, and so far just don't feel like it is as good as SDRTrunk. You can only hear one talk group at a time (without multiple instances), the sound doesn't sound as good (still trying to get liquidsoap filtering working and producing the same level of audio as Stereo Tool). And not sure it will even do Calls at this point.

On windows you can change the priority of a program. Set sdrtrunk to high. I use Linux and don't recall how to set the priority on windows, but I know you use taskmanager. There might be other ways to do it. This should make sdrtrunk work much better when you use the computer for other tasks.

 

[boatbod]

On windows you can change the priority of a program. Set sdrtrunk to high. I use Linux and don't recall how to set the priority on windows, but I know you use taskmanager. There might be other ways to do it. This should make sdrtrunk work much better when you use the computer for other tasks.

On Linux, priority is controlled by the niceness of a process and ranges -20 thru +20. The related commands are "nice" and "renice". Be careful! You may cause the GUI to become a lower priority and become unresponsive if you boost the app too much,