BCDx36HP Sentinel Software & Siren App Discussion

[fxdscon]

The latest firmware version is 1.2.1 how do you find out what changes where made to a Firmware?

The latest firmware version for the 436HP is 1.02.07

The latest firmware version for the 536HP is 1.02.03


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[detroit780]

Please read message #11 in this thread. Uniden says the current Firmware is the production release. Once another firmware is released there will be documentation describing the changes. Also in the same thread UPMAN states another firmware should be released next week.

http://forums.radioreference.com/uniden-scanners/283754-bcd436hp-firmware-differences.html

Les

The latest firmware version is 1.2.1 how do you find out what changes where made to a Firmware?

 

[ofd8001]

How do you enable Priority scan on a P25 system?

I have entered the system, site, departments and talk groups with Sentinal. I selected one department/channel and set P-Ch to ON in the sentinal software and uploaded. All departments and talk groups are scanning ok. When I hit F-.no on the scanner, none of the settings for priority work. They return a result of Priority Scan - No channel.

How do you turn it on for one TGID on the system?

It's a little confusing, at least to me. I also got the same "Priority Scan - No Channel" message, so I asked somewhere in this forum. Upman answered it for me.

The deal is this: There are two different priority scanning "things" one for conventional frequencies, the other for trunked systems.

The Conventional one is set via the Profile Editor. It is in the Miscellaneous tab, General Options, Priority Scan Mode. You can change that to On or Off. If you select On, then there must be a conventional channel established to be the priority channel. If you do not designate such a conventional channel, then the error "Priority Scan - No Channel" appears.

On the other hand, Priority ID Scan for a trunked system is set differently. You need to edit the Favorites List containing the system. Then highlight the desired system in the left pane and click the "Options" tab on the right pane. You'll see a box saying "Priority ID Scan" with the options "On" and "Off". Choose "On". You'll then need to go to the list of channels and set the P-Ch to "On" for the desired talkgroup.

Unfortunately, that's the extent of my knowledge on this. Something I'm wondering about on this subject is "What happens if more than one talkgroup is set to be On as the P-ch"? That's as in does any one have a greater priority than another?

 

[davenlr]

It's a little confusing, at least to me. I also got the same "Priority Scan - No Channel" message, so I asked somewhere in this forum. Upman answered it for me.

The deal is this: There are two different priority scanning "things" one for conventional frequencies, the other for trunked systems.

The Conventional one is set via the Profile Editor. It is in the Miscellaneous tab, General Options, Priority Scan Mode. You can change that to On or Off. If you select On, then there must be a conventional channel established to be the priority channel. If you do not designate such a conventional channel, then the error "Priority Scan - No Channel" appears.

On the other hand, Priority ID Scan for a trunked system is set differently. You need to edit the Favorites List containing the system. Then highlight the desired system in the left pane and click the "Options" tab on the right pane. You'll see a box saying "Priority ID Scan" with the options "On" and "Off". Choose "On". You'll then need to go to the list of channels and set the P-Ch to "On" for the desired talkgroup.

Unfortunately, that's the extent of my knowledge on this. Something I'm wondering about on this subject is "What happens if more than one talkgroup is set to be On as the P-ch"? That's as in does any one have a greater priority than another?

Verified the Profile editor one is OFF (no conventional systems to have priority), the Priority ID scan on the system I want is ON, and the P-ch on the talkgroup I want is ON. Still get the error message.

Do you have yours working?

To answer your question, I believe the new manual said it gives priority in the order you have the talkgroups assigned with quick keys, but that might be for conventional systems.

 

[ofd8001]

Hmm. When I set the conventional channel priority to off on the Profile editor, that error message ceased to appear.

Thinking wildly, do you have more than one profile involved? For example you could have Profile A in the scanner, but have edited Profile B but not sent Profile B to the scanner.

Thanks for the answer - the talkgroups I have on priority are all associated with the same quick keys, however.

 

[davenlr]

Hmm. When I set the conventional channel priority to off on the Profile editor, that error message ceased to appear.

Thinking wildly, do you have more than one profile involved? For example you could have Profile A in the scanner, but have edited Profile B but not sent Profile B to the scanner.

Thanks for the answer - the talkgroups I have on priority are all associated with the same quick keys, however.

Then it said it was in the order it was entered...

Ok, I searched and found the original post, and went through it with the scanner instead of Sentinal, and it was all set ok. I only have one profile. So the questions I have now are:

If its set up correctly, does anything indicate its on, on the screen?
Do you NOT have to enable it with the Function-.no settings (is that only for conventional?) I only get the error if I turn on priority scanning with the Function-.no keys.

 

[ofd8001]

I do not see anything on the display to indicate that Priority ID is active when scanning a trunked system.

Just guessing here, but it might be due to the differences in priority scanning. With conventional priority, the scanner "hops off" a non priority frequency to sample the priority frequency for activity, leading to a break in an active non-priority transmission. But with Priority ID scanning, transmissions are not interupted to check - it's all done through data on the control channel which is silent.

 

[davenlr]

Yea, perhaps it is actually working, and I just dont know it Guess Ill find out when there is a fire call. I just thought from reading the manual that it should show PRI on the screen if it was on. Thanks for your help.

 

[ofd8001]

I don't know if you do much with Alert Lights, but I thought I'd throw out the idea of setting the Alert Lights for a priority TG to fast or slow blink.

As luck would have it, I've got my scanner up and running as I type this. I held the scanner on a non-priority talkgroup and there was a transmission on what I set to be a priority talkgroup. It jumped off the non-priority when the priority channel became acive.

 

[davenlr]

I don't know if you do much with Alert Lights, but I thought I'd throw out the idea of setting the Alert Lights for a priority TG to fast or slow blink.

As luck would have it, I've got my scanner up and running as I type this. I held the scanner on a non-priority talkgroup and there was a transmission on what I set to be a priority talkgroup. It jumped off the non-priority when the priority channel became acive.

Ok. Thanks for the tip. I guess it is working. Ill edit my police dispatch channel to be a priority to test it out, since apparently, we are not going to get any transmissions of the fire channel tonight (good thing).

So its probably working all along, and I just thought it wasnt because there is no indication on the screen. They could blink the PRI display every couple seconds to let you know its working

Yep, took your suggestion, and it is indeed working. Just no visual indication its on. Thanks again.,

You guys are so helpful, I decided to donate. You all rock.

 

[gariac]

Anyone working on running Sentinel under Wine (either OSX or Linux), please PM me. I simply can't go through this many posts (I gave up after 35 pages) to work on something that most people on the list have no interest in.

Sentinel is written for 32 bit windows. [I haven't owned a 32 bit computer in a decade. Doh!] For OSX, the wine installation should be straightforward since Wine on OSX is only 32 bits.[This refers to the window being 32 bits, not OSX, which is 64 bits.]

Download sentinel from
BCD536HP < UnidenMan4 < TWiki

Install wine and 32 bit wine in whatever manner your distribution uses. [yast, zypper, yum, etc]

You will need to install dotnet20 for sentinel. It is part of the sentinel download. This will require a separate directory for 32 bit wine.

To install dotnet20:
WINEARCH=win32 WINEPREFIX=~/.wine32 winecfg
env WINEARCH=win32 WINEPREFIX=~/.wine32 winetricks dotnet20

For the installation of the Uniden software, navigate to where the setup.exe file is located
WINEPREFIX=~/.wine32 wine setup.exe

In general, you run 32 bit windows programs like this:
WINEPREFIX=~/.wine32 wine my32bitprogram.exe

Specifically for Sentinel, you should set up a bash file that is basically one line:
WINEPREFIX=~/.wine32 wine ~/.wine32/drive_c/Program\ Files/Uniden/BCDx36HP\ Sentinel/BCDx36HP_Sentinel.exe

This is all one line. The forum wraps the text.

I called the file bcd436hp. Make it executable using chmod +x, then run it by
./bcd436hp

Wine will create a symbolic link to a directory called "Uniden" at your top level directory. That is where Sentinel will save files.

Sentinel under wine can read in a new database. You can edit favorites, etc. The only thing I don't have working is the USB interface.

Most modern USB devices work as either a USB drive or "the other mode". The USB drive feature is universal. You can read and write to the BCD436HP from linux without a problem. HOWEVER, copying file to the SDHC card makes it unreadable. This is really really unfortunate since most modern devices (cameras for instance), allow the use to copy files, even firmware, so that the device can be used on "alternate" operatiing systems. Uniden could have done better in this respect.

You can do a "dd" to copy the old SDHC to a new SDHC. I think doing this is mandatory if you don't have a window PC to "fix" your BCD436HP.

PM me if you have questions.

 

[banditt2344]

How do you enable Priority scan on a P25 system?

I have entered the system, site, departments and talk groups with Sentinal. I selected one department/channel and set P-Ch to ON in the sentinal software and uploaded. All departments and talk groups are scanning ok. When I hit F-.no on the scanner, none of the settings for priority work. They return a result of Priority Scan - No channel.

How do you turn it on for one TGID on the system?

Make sure the talk groups you have your Priority set to are enabled under your quick keys. If those groups are not turned on it will not scan. Feel free to send me a message if you can't get it to work. I had the same issue and got mine working.

 

[skyteam11]

I have run into a problem with programming and editing using Sentinel. I had created a favorites list on my 536 and everything was working great. When I tried to make a sixth favorite site, I could not upload it to the radio, nor could I edit what I had already made. Now under edit profile, I have the download and monitor on and favorite keys are assigned. I have the latest software update so far. Any thoughts of what is next?

 

[NHdave]

So you can't right click one of your previous favorites lists and select program list? This should actually be named edit, not program.

 

[skyteam11]

I will try that

 

[skyteam11]

I have been able to edit in the sentinel and it shows that an edit has been made, but when I go to upload it to the radio, no luck

 

[NHdave]

I have been able to edit in the sentinel and it shows that an edit has been made, but when I go to upload it to the radio, no luck

Make sure you are selecting "erase favorites lists on scanner" in the upload window that pops up.

 

[skyteam11]

I have. What gets me is that I have dones this several times with no problems and now it is not happy

 

[JoeyC]

but when I go to upload it to the radio, no luck

What does that mean? That the change wasn't made or that the upload didn't complete?

 

[bswp]

Anyone working on running Sentinel under Wine (either OSX or Linux), please PM me. I simply can't go through this many posts (I gave up after 35 pages) to work on something that most people on the list have no interest in.

Have you seen the Winebottler thread here? http://forums.radioreference.com/uniden-scanners/282304-how-install-uniden-sentinel-mac.html