Record the system(s) you're interested in capturing the ID's for. Import the messages into the Message Backup software. The radio ID along with the TG alias and audio are captured and displayed for review.
-
To anyone looking to acquire commercial radio programming software:
Please do not make requests for copies of radio programming software which is sold (or was sold) by the manufacturer for any monetary value. All requests will be deleted and a forum infraction issued. Making a request such as this is attempting to engage in software piracy and this forum cannot be involved or associated with this activity. The same goes for any private transaction via Private Message. Even if you attempt to engage in this activity in PM's we will still enforce the forum rules. Your PM's are not private and the administration has the right to read them if there's a hint to criminal activity.
If you are having trouble legally obtaining software please state so. We do not want any hurt feelings when your vague post is mistaken for a free request. It is YOUR responsibility to properly word your request.
To obtain Motorola software see the Sticky in the Motorola forum.
The various other vendors often permit their dealers to sell the software online (i.e., Kenwood). Please use Google or some other search engine to find a dealer that sells the software. Typically each series or individual radio requires its own software package. Often the Kenwood software is less than $100 so don't be a cheapskate; just purchase it.
For M/A Com/Harris/GE, etc: there are two software packages that program all current and past radios. One package is for conventional programming and the other for trunked programming. The trunked package is in upwards of $2,500. The conventional package is more reasonable though is still several hundred dollars. The benefit is you do not need multiple versions for each radio (unlike Motorola).
This is a large and very visible forum. We cannot jeopardize the ability to provide the RadioReference services by allowing this activity to occur. Please respect this.
Alias IDs
- Thread starter beerad4
- Start date
- Status
lsh1885
Member
My apologies but I am not trying to push any issue I guess I was just making conversation.
Ed6698
Active Member
This is the first time I have tried doing this and I am still new to my G4. One thing I noticed in the "From Name" field this has no information. Is there a setting somewhere in PPS I am missing to have this information?
Upon inspecting my entire list of 1000 entries in the Message Backup software, I also found many with no entry in this column. Interestingly, all the messages with the missing radio ID's in the "From Name" column occurred after I upgraded the firmware to 1.3! After upgrading, the only messages with entries are those that I assigned aliases to. The only exception to this is where "P25T" is displayed. That said, the numeric radio ID's still show on the G5 display even where no alias has been assigned.
N6ML
Member
- Joined
- Sep 26, 2008
- Messages
- 1,283
Yeah. The message format is different with the new firmware - specifically conversations are recorded as a single message. I suspect that they'll have to update Message Backup to understand the new format.
Ed6698
Active Member
I would like to setup aliases for radio ids, I think without the information from the "From Name" field, this could become a more involved project for me, as there are probably 150 or more radio ids.
I'm running the 1.3 firmware. I downloaded the Message Backup software just today, so there's no newer version yet available.
Unless, as I did, you have older messages still in the pager that can be downloaded to the Message Backup, then setting aliases will be more time consuming. Instead, you'd have to review every recording from within the pager. However, when reviewing recordings, you can pause and display greater detail to enable you to read the entire radio ID number.
Ed6698
Active Member
I do not have any older recordings, so I am going to do just like you suggested, review the recordings and go by the details. This will allow me to setup aliases the way I want.
I've found that in some cases, multiple radio ID's may be associated with the same transmitting PD unit. Since that doesn't make sense, I'm wondering if the pager is reading the ID number incorrectly. Anyone else experiencing this?
A police car is likely shared by many officers, some units are pairs of officers, if the channel is patched from from another system(trunked, VHF, UHF, etc), then that might happen. I'm sure there are other reasons. Many fire apparatus have more than one radio in the vehicle.
Yes, I’ve seen this periodically. I see the Radio ID doesn’t change sometimes in a conversation and happens more often when on Hold mode. I also see some erratic, invalid Radio IDs sometimes. I think is just mis-decoding from the pager. I also see sometimes when there’s a lot of encrypted traffic happening in the system where a known encrypted TG gets “superimposed” with clear audio from another TG.
So then what you're saying is that the radio ID may not specific to the car, but to the officer transmitting? Were that to be the case, there may be one ID for each shift. The PD units I have been monitoring and adding aliases for are my local town PD and County Sheriff. Neither are currently patched from their old VHF systems.
I've noted the same behavior. When a second transmission begins on the tail of the first, the radio ID may not always change accordingly.
Don't forget handhelds. Just do the best you can. I usually just label it by the agency name. I don't listen to fire much, but I would try to ID trucks for the fun of it.
For an agency using these pagers, they can probably get an id list from their radio dealer.
The use of handhelds did occur to me after my earlier post, and makes the most sense in this case. Your suggestion to label the alias generically using a common designator makes sense. Instead of a specific patrol unit number, just use a common entry such as "Patrol" or similar. Any alias would be more descriptive than a seemingly random set of digits. Thankfully, the Member List Setting will accept multiple identical aliases.
There are too many scenarios to try to explain them all. Unless you're a member of the department or have some access to the information, you'll really just need to monitor a lot to figure them out. If you're a civilian, I'd encourage going to a Citizens Police or Fire Academy to learn more about how your departments operate.
Ed6698
Active Member
I noticed after the first day of messing with aliases putting PD unit numbers on radio IDs would not be the way to go as they were changing after a shift change, I will probably just put a generic tag of some sort .
I think that's the best approach. I can't imagine the work involved in determining aliases for a large department. I have noticed, however, that there can be similarities among the numeric radio ID's per department. Perhaps, in a future PPS, the use of wildcard entries would be possible if the ID's all began with the same series of digits. So, instead of entering an ID of 13047723, and then 13047735 etc., entering 1304**** would cover any unit beginning with 1304.
- Joined
- Dec 22, 2005
- Messages
- 1,994
Ditto wildcard please. xxxx**** perfect
- Status
