Announcing the BCD396XT and BC346XT Scanners

[DonS]

NO is right. That's a waste of money, resources, and likely would hurt the reception of my scanner.

How would a "dual tuner" hurt the reception of your scanner?

It's another "unintentional radiator" (i.e. another circuit that's blasting out RF noise, but isn't a "transmitter") in the same package as, and in close proximity to, the scanner's "main", wideband tuner. If it shares the main antenna, it also degrades the signal that's available to the main tuner (you don't get to split an antenna's signal between two receivers "for free").

(And before anyone gets any wild ideas: comparisons to cellular telephones that have the cellular radio, Bluetooth radio, and WiFi radio in a single package are not applicable. Those are all narrowband transceivers that don't suffer from the same interference problems as a scanner's wideband receiver. Sure, it could be done in a scanner, but the cost of isolating/filtering the two receivers would likely be much greater than $20; a dedicated weather radio would be cheaper.)

 

[Have_Teeth]

It's another "unintentional radiator" (i.e. another circuit that's blasting out RF noise, but isn't a "transmitter") in the same package as, and in close proximity to, the scanner's "main", wideband tuner. If it shares the main antenna, it also degrades the signal that's available to the main tuner (you don't get to split an antenna's signal between two receivers "for free").

(And before anyone gets any wild ideas: comparisons to cellular telephones that have the cellular radio, Bluetooth radio, and WiFi radio in a single package are not applicable. Those are all narrowband transceivers that don't suffer from the same interference problems as a scanner's wideband receiver. Sure, it could be done in a scanner, but the cost of isolating/filtering the two receivers would likely be much greater than $20; a dedicated weather radio would be cheaper.)

Excellent points, Don.

With my comments, I made the presumption Uniden would properly shield any additional RF circuits. Unfortunately it seems many hobby-grade radios (Kenwood, ICOM, Yaesu, etc) don't have any internal shielding and the cases are 100% plastic, so I guess the natural assumption is more noise would be introduced. Many hobbyists haven't seen the guts of a Motorola radio.

If WinRadio can make a receiver which fits inside of a computer's PCI slot (very noisy environment), I'm sure Uniden could incorporate a dual-receive option. At a cost.

 

[rdale]

When consumers chime in with feature suggestions, don't dump on them.

The featureset is already taken care of for the XT's... Make a "XT Future Requests" thread if you want to just throw up random ideas.

 

[bwilborn]

Instead, they give you useless features like a fruity mult-colored backlight.

Features are nice, but what is the point if they don't work.

Hey, I'm looking forward to the fruity multi-colored backlight as one of the features of the new radio. I didn't see anyone ragging on GRE for including a fruity multi-colored indicator LED on their scanners a year ago. As far as features, the ones that I use on my 396 seem to work just fine. This whole GRE > Uniden > GRE thing is getting a bit old. "The right tool for the job" seems to fit for this tired discussion.

-- B

 

[K8TEK]

Hey, I'm looking forward to the fruity multi-colored backlight as one of the features of the new radio. I didn't see anyone ragging on GRE for including a fruity multi-colored indicator LED on their scanners a year ago. As far as features, the ones that I use on my 396 seem to work just fine. This whole GRE > Uniden > GRE thing is getting a bit old. "The right tool for the job" seems to fit for this tired discussion.

-- B

Their LED provided a purpose and GRE's scanners actually work. Uniden simply added their multi-colored backlight for the wow factor. That and so they con uninformed consumers into buying their products by saying "look at me, I have that feature too now!" Same thing with the control channel output. A really neat "wow factor" innovation would be a factory installed discriminator tap. That way we can interpret the control channel data correctly, without modifying our scanner.

 

[Kumba]

Interesting discussion my rather innocent question sparked there...

The XT doesn't look like much more than an incremental upgrade of the 396T, so I figured it might still suffer the same problem as the 396T when background scanning for SAME codes (my apologies on getting that mixed up with priority scanning -- It's been quiet over the winter, so I haven't had to tune Wx stuff in yet).

That said, I figured it was worth a shot in asking, on the off chance the Uniden engineers cooked up some clever trick to doing random background checks of SAME data w/o causing a blip in audio. I guess a second receiver circuit sounds like the best approach, but would it really introduce such a terrible loss in quality? Especially if it was designed specifically for the frequency range of the Wx channels and included a switch to enable/disable it (say a firmware command or something)?

And yes, I already have a weather radio, Midland WR-300, that for some reason can't receive SAME data despite the audio coming in crystal clear. But that's besides the point; having Wx available on a portable scanner is quite handy, and the "blip" really only bugged me the few times there was a terrible thunderstorm while I was at work and trying to tune into a Skywarn frequency while background-monitoring the Wx channel.

 

[davidmc36]

Copied this from a blog:

• "Control Channel Data Output – allows the analysis of control channel data without the need to perform invasive modifications to the scanner

GRE did it first, and probably does it best [although I have no way of comparing]. It’s a great feature, and Uniden users deserved it. Not everybody likes to open up a brand new $500 scanner and add a discriminator tap. With this feature, you don’t need to modify your scanner to monitor control channel data. The data is converted internally to a sensible output suitable for various programs to take that data from the serial port and display trunked system details. Again, great feature - and kudos for Uniden. But to be fair, GRE did it first "

It appears that the person believes that it will output the disc to the rs232 for use with "trunker" programs. I saw a thread somewhere that people were discussing this and some indicated that it would just be some basic trunking info displayed on the scanner. Which is true?

 

[rdale]

The blog copied it from the very first post here

Data Output means more than just showing some fancy numbers on a display.

 

[KE4ZNR]

David,
Rumor has it that the CC Output will work great when released with decoders such as Unitrunker & Such. From the BCD396xt Uniden Wiki:

Choose how you want the scanner to handle control channel data:

• Off : The scanner will not output the control channel data.
• On : The scanner will output the control channel data.
• Extend : The scanner will output the control channel data along with any description.

This is the only information available at this time.
Happy Monitoring!
Marshall KE4ZNR

Copied this from a blog:

• "Control Channel Data Output – allows the analysis of control channel data without the need to perform invasive modifications to the scanner

GRE did it first, and probably does it best [although I have no way of comparing]. It’s a great feature, and Uniden users deserved it. Not everybody likes to open up a brand new $500 scanner and add a discriminator tap. With this feature, you don’t need to modify your scanner to monitor control channel data. The data is converted internally to a sensible output suitable for various programs to take that data from the serial port and display trunked system details. Again, great feature - and kudos for Uniden. But to be fair, GRE did it first "

It appears that the person believes that it will output the disc to the rs232 for use with "trunker" programs. I saw a thread somewhere that people were discussing this and some indicated that it would just be some basic trunking info displayed on the scanner. Which is true?

 

[davidmc36]

The blog copied it from the very first post here

Data Output means more than just showing some fancy numbers on a display.

The part beside the bullet is the part he copied from here, the rest is his comments. I can't seem to find the thread where it was being debated how much info would be available. So what is the true nature of the output going to be?

 

[davidmc36]

David,
Rumor has it that the CC Output will work great when released with decoders such as Unitrunker & Such. From the BCD396xt Uniden Wiki:

Choose how you want the scanner to handle control channel data:

• Off : The scanner will not output the control channel data.
• On : The scanner will output the control channel data.
• Extend : The scanner will output the control channel data along with any description.

This is the only information available at this time.
Happy Monitoring!
Marshall KE4ZNR

Yeah I saw that too. The question is where will it be output to, the screen or the control port? I guess you could say the screen is not an output then is must be going to the control port. I was just a little confused as to where and how much would be output. Guess we will just have to wait unless UPMan has any more info that he can release.

 

[KE4ZNR]

The part beside the bullet is the part he copied from here, the rest is his comments. I can't seem to find the thread where it was being debated how much info would be available. So what is the true nature of the output going to be?

Unless Paul (UPMan) wishes to say more about it I guess the option will be to wait until release as those involved with Beta testing are not allowed to discuss specific features.
Maybe Paul will share more details of what appears to be a great feature!
Marshall KE4ZNR

Edit to say: rumor has it the ouput will be to the serial port.

 

[davidmc36]

Maybe Paul will share more details of what appears to be a great feature!
Marshall KE4ZNR

Edit to say: rumor has it the ouput will be to the serial port.

That sure would be a very great feature if is was full disc out the serial port.

 

[UPMan]

It is fully documented at:
http://info.uniden.com/twiki/bin/view/UnidenMan4/BCD396XT
Check out the "Software Reference" link, page 121.

 

[davidmc36]

It is fully documented at:
http://info.uniden.com/twiki/bin/view/UnidenMan4/BCD396XT
Check out the "Software Reference" link, page 121.

What am I trying to see under that link "Software Referencs" It seems to lock up my browser when I click on it.

 

[UPMan]

It is a PDF. Try right clicking and "save target as." Then opening.

 

[davidmc36]

It is a PDF. Try right clicking and "save target as." Then opening.

I see the info now, switched back to IE from Firefox and it shows at the bottom. 5mb will take a bit of time on my connection!

 

[KE4ZNR]

Once you have the pdf open look at pages 121-125.
Happy Monitoring!
Marshall KE4ZNR

 

[davidmc36]

Once you have the pdf open look at pages 121-125.
Happy Monitoring!
Marshall KE4ZNR

OooooKaaaaay I see what it says there. That is still not an answer to my question. Is it "output" to the scanners screen, or will it actually "output" to the control port of the scanner so you could hook it up to say a data slicer or other gear neccessary for detailed decoding of the control channel?

 

[mikey60]

OooooKaaaaay I see what it says there. That is still not an answer to my question. Is it "output" to the scanners screen, or will it actually "output" to the control port of the scanner so you could hook it up to say a data slicer or other gear neccessary for detailed decoding of the control channel?

Based on the sample output that Upman posted in the Pro96Com yahoo group, I would say it goes out the serial port similar to what the GRE radios do.

Mike