Avoiding Filtering By Service Type on SDS100

[Joe_Blough]

A combination of talkgroups on two different trunked systems, and a few standalone analog freqs actually. Toggling the service type is far more convenient than toggling a dozen avoids.

A dozen snowplow talkgroups? I'm not buying that.

 

[jonwienke]

A dozen snowplow talkgroups? I'm not buying that.

One per township on the county system, plus 3-4 more on a trunked multi-business system, plus a couple analog freqs.

 

[Joe_Blough]

One per township on the county system, plus 3-4 more on a trunked multi-business system, plus a couple analog freqs.

Who would want to listen to snowplow crews for what seems like the entire USA?

 

[jonwienke]

Someone snowed in curious how long it will be before their road gets plowed? Or considering going out in a storm, and wanting firsthand road condition info?

Regardless, there are plenty of other scenarios where filtering by service type is useful.

 

[KevinC]

How about we take the Joe and Jon show to private conversations as I'm sure the OP probably doesn't care about your snow plow obsessions.

 

[stront233]

What I have found to be the easiest thing to do is to use the Custom Service Types for my Favorites Lists. Since "Custom #" are not used on the Full Database they would only apply to the Favorites Lists. This way you can use Service Types to help segregate your targets. Turn off all the "normal" Service Types and leave on the Custom service types you set in Sentinel on your Favorites Lists.

While it is still better to turn off the Full Database when you want to listen exclusively to Favorites Lists, using the Custom Service Types is another way to easily set your listening to the Favorites Lists.

Yes I'd thought about this as a stop-gap, and I could see it being a good suggestion for some situations trying to get around this problem. So thanks for the tip.

Unfortunately for me, my main favorites lists involve over 1000 talk groups across multiple departments, and since the Sentinel software doesn't really handle bulk changes well, it would take a whole lot of clicking to change them all to Custom. I'll admit that I've already made some scripts to handle the .hpd files, so I could cut through the whole list and change them all. But then I'd be stuck not being able filter by service types for those times when it does come in handy.

Bottom line it it would be nice to not have to do these kludges.

 

[stront233]

How about we take the Joe and Jon show to private conversations as I'm sure the OP probably doesn't care about your snow plow obsessions.

Thanks. Just to sum up for anyone like me with a similar problem searching for solutions to my original question:

- There is no option to avoid filtering by service type in a favorites list. Post #12 has a work-around that could be useful for manually setting up favorites lists to avoid filtering.
- There is no way to turn on all service types from the unit. Post #2 shows how to accomplish this when connected to a PC via the Sentinel software, albeit with having to upload/download the whole profile.

I think the discussion points out that different people have different use cases, and that there's no one-size-fits-all solution (e.g. none of the example scenarios and admonitions match my situation). What's unfortunate is that there's not at least an option to help people whose use case makes service type filtering a hindrance rather than a help. I think it's occasionally a useful feature to have around even for my own favorites lists, but the majority of the time I don't want filtering and it's a pain to either manually turn all the services on or more likely forget and be puzzled for an hour why I'm not hearing much traffic on a trunked system that the radio is clearly tracking.

Thanks for everyone's input.