436HP - OK, this is weird...UPMan?

[AZScanner]

I'm going to assume operator error here, but just in case it's not I thought I would put a post up so that if this is a firmware bug, it can get fixed.

Long story short - I added a new department to the scanner so that it would just have 2 talkgroups in it that I would want to monitor for potential news stories: Mesa Fire Dispatch and Phoenix Fire Dispatch. I'm not near my home PC with Sentinel on it, so I went into the scanner's menus, set up this department, added the two channels, and set the service type to Fire Dispatch for both. I then put the scanner in "Department Hold" on my new "Fire Dispatch" department, expecting to hear just Fire Dispatch for both fire departments. The problem is, I hear nothing! The scanner won't stop on either one and both are quite active pretty much 24/7.

Now here's where it gets bizarre. I can HOLD on the channels and hear traffic on them (assuming when I stopped the scan I was on the right site of course). But when scanning, nada. What did I miss when I set this up? Thinking the department was the problem, I enabled the Custom 1 service type since that's what the new channels defaulted to when I set them up, but it's still not working. Avoids are off, location control is off, etc. These same talkgroups also come up fine when scanning other "Departments". Either I'm missing something here, or there's a bug that needs fixing. What else can I check?

Thanks,
-AZ

 

[Essexscan]

Sounds like it's a "services" not enabled situation AZ enable all the fire services and see if it helps

 

[AZScanner]

Sounds like it's a "services" not enabled situation AZ enable all the fire services and see if it helps

That's what I thought too, but they're all already on and it's still not working. I suspect that if I delete the department and recreate it in Sentinel it will work. I'm guessing that when programming from the scanner's menu it sets something you can't get to in the menus but can on Sentinel. I'll confirm this tonight when I download the scanner back into Sentinel and have a look at the department in question.

UPMan, this is looking more and more like a bug. When I get home I'll take a look at this department in Sentinel and update the thread on what I find out. I'm guessing that I'll find something different about it that explains why the scanner won't stop on any of the channels in it. As a test, I added another channel for Phoenix FD Dispatch and just specified the talkgroup only, leaving everything else to the defaults. I'll see how that looks in Sentinel also. So far, all quiet still, even with the new talkgroup added. To quote a popular Disney character, "Somethin wrong here..."

-AZ

 

[AZScanner]

OK, after tinkering around some more, the mystery is solved and now it's working. This is definitely a logic error in the firmware (unless this was done by design). I'll explain below:

Basically, it's a duplicate talkgroup issue. I had the dispatch talkgroups in other departments also, not thinking it might cause a problem but it did. Because I was holding on a different department, the scanner saw the dispatch talkgroups active, but in a department OTHER THAN the one I was holding, so it skipped them. I changed the TGID value in the other departments for the two channels in question and now my new "Fire Dispatch" department has come to life. So right now, you cannot have the same talkgroup ID in two departments and have it come up during ID Scan if you "Dept Hold" on the department that contains the second instance of the ID. Now the only question I have is, is this a bug or a feature?

Thanks,
-AZ

 

[RF23]

I'm going to assume operator error here, but just in case it's not I thought I would put a post up so that if this is a firmware bug, it can get fixed.

Long story short - I added a new department to the scanner so that it would just have 2 talkgroups in it that I would want to monitor for potential news stories: Mesa Fire Dispatch and Phoenix Fire Dispatch. I'm not near my home PC with Sentinel on it, so I went into the scanner's menus, set up this department, added the two channels, and set the service type to Fire Dispatch for both. I then put the scanner in "Department Hold" on my new "Fire Dispatch" department, expecting to hear just Fire Dispatch for both fire departments. The problem is, I hear nothing! The scanner won't stop on either one and both are quite active pretty much 24/7.

Now here's where it gets bizarre. I can HOLD on the channels and hear traffic on them (assuming when I stopped the scan I was on the right site of course). But when scanning, nada. What did I miss when I set this up? Thinking the department was the problem, I enabled the Custom 1 service type since that's what the new channels defaulted to when I set them up, but it's still not working. Avoids are off, location control is off, etc. These same talkgroups also come up fine when scanning other "Departments". Either I'm missing something here, or there's a bug that needs fixing. What else can I check?

Thanks,
-AZ

Some things you might double check on:

Did you put the new Department in a FL that has "Monitor" turned off?

Are you sure that the channels you want to hear are actually in the Department you are "holding on"?

Your idea of using Sentinel to get a visual picture of how things are laid out is a very good one!

Hopefully, you will find something when you get home using Sentinel other wise you may have to ask UPMan to get the "fly swatter" out.

 

[AZScanner]

Hopefully, you will find something when you get home using Sentinel other wise you may have to ask UPMan to get the "fly swatter" out.

See my previous post - I fixed it, but now I'm left to wonder if the scanner was designed this way on purpose or it's just a logic error that no one thought of checking for during Beta.

-AZ

 

[Essexscan]

gotcha, AZ it does seem strange possibly a simple can of RAID fix not a Call the ORKIN man we have Skittering in the Air Ducts ( Alien) problem LOL

 

[policefreak]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 4.1.2; en-us; LG-LS720 Build/JZO54K) AppleWebKit/534.30 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/534.30)

AZ try putting those 2 TGIDs in a new SYSTEM on the same FAVORITES LIST that you usually have activated. Then create a Quick key for that system. Activate the FL and SQK and see what happens. Does this go along with what youre asking?

 

[UPMan]

Ok, what you've done is confuse the poor thing.

When you have the same TGID in the scanner twice, once avoided and once not avoided, what should it do?

There is a good possibility it will use the state of the first instance of the TGID. Try unavoiding the other (or the department it is in) and then avoid the one you put in a separate department.

There really is no good answer to this, other than programmatically disallowing duplicate TGIDs.

 

[UPMan]

Unlike frequency scanning, where the scanner steps to each channel and programs the receiver to tune to that frequency (thus, you could have many instances of the same channel in a system and the scanner will treat each one individually), with trunked scanning the scanner sits on a single frequency (the control channel) watching for channel grants and channel updates. For each one that comes across, it looks in the system to see what it should do:

TGID not in any channel? Ignore it.
TGID in a channel but the channel is avoided? Ignore it.
TGID in a unavoided channel but the department is avoided? Ignore it.
TGID in an unavoided channel which is in an unavoided department? Jump to the voice frequency and monitor until the end of the comms.

TGID in two different channels with two different avoid states: ???

 

[Essexscan]

Uh-Oh the scanner might get confused like the HAL-9000? LOL but I do understand how is the scanner supposed to react when it receives conflicting programming

 

[AZScanner]

Ok, what you've done is confuse the poor thing.

Hooray! What do I win? :lol:

When you have the same TGID in the scanner twice, once avoided and once not avoided, what should it do?

There is a good possibility it will use the state of the first instance of the TGID. Try unavoiding the other (or the department it is in) and then avoid the one you put in a separate department.

There really is no good answer to this, other than programmatically disallowing duplicate TGIDs.

Well this is *almost* what's happening. Let me clarify a bit:

Scenario: Talkgroup 1795 is in two departments located in the same System. The two departments are "Phoenix" and "Fire Dispatch". Both are active, i.e. not avoided, service types are on and all that wonderful stuff. Scanner is placed into Dept Hold mode on the second department, called Fire Dispatch.

Expected behavior: TGID 1795 should come up during scan when Dept Holding either department.

Actual behavior: TGID 1795 only comes up if scanning both departments, or Dept Holding on "Phoenix". If channel holding on TGID 1795 in the "Fire Dispatch" department, transmissions are heard, but not when scanning. If Dept Holding on the second department ("Fire Dispatch") the scanner does not stop when the TGID is active. What clued me into this was the fact that every time TGID 1795 was active, it was in the "Phoenix" department, not the "Fire Dispatch" one.

Workaround: Do not have duplicate ID's in more than one department. If the TGID of 1795 is removed from the "Phoenix" Department, it will then become active when Dept holding on the "Fire Dispatch" department.

Speaking solely for myself, if the duplicate ID is avoided (either at the channel or department level) in the first instance but not the second, the desired behavior would be to stop on the second instance of the duplicate ID. So it would see the "Phoenix" instance as avoided but stop on it when checking the TGID's in "Fire Dispatch". Right now it sees it as an avoided ID due to the Dept Hold and dumps out of the routine that checks against the list of programmed TGID's.

If I was part of the Beta team we could have had this conversation months ago.... ahem. PM me if there's an opening - I really want to help you guys out with this stuff.

-AZ

 

[redburgundy]

Does it behave the same way if the TGID is in two different Favorites Lists?
I think what you described has the TGID in two different Departments in the same System in the same Favorites list.

 

[AZScanner]

Does it behave the same way if the TGID is in two different Favorites Lists?

Just checked... I loaded up another FL, avoided the talkgroup in that list's copy of the system in question, and then did a Dept Hold on the "Fire Dispatch" dept in my original list. It came up fine. So this only applies to the same FL, same system, different departments.

I think what you described has the TGID in two different Departments in the same System in the same Favorites list.

Yep, that's the scenario exactly.

-AZ