Bluetail Support: Excellent!!

[Blackswan73]

I purchased a Bluetail Nano from Bluetail Technologies and eagerly awaited its arrival. When it arrived I connected it to my trusty RS00, and loaded my configuration file. Nothing! I contacted Dave who wrote the configuration file for me and informed him of the results. He sent me a revised .ini configuration file to try. Still no joy with the 700mhz system, but the 800mhz system worked great. Todd sent firmware revisions and diagnostic software to descern the problem with the 700mhz system. Still no luck. Todd thought the Nano was defective and sent another one. Same result. After much troubleshooting Todd determined the issue and made a firmware change to fix it. Now the Nano is chatting away on everything, 700mhz Harris P252, SAFE-T P251, and misc. VHF analog freqs. I am very happy with it and I am very impressed with the customer service and support I received from Bluetail and goldmyne99. Thank you! I love my new Nano

B.S.

 

[Cheeseburgers]

Love my p25rxs

 

[maus92]

Todd definitely puts a lot of effort into his product. I'm curious what was the issue preventing the 700 band reception, and curious what was unique in your situation as others haven't specifically mentioned issues with 700 MHz systems.

 

[Blackswan73]

The system is a Harris P252 TDMA that the IDEN Slot Identifies it as a P1, even though it is a P2. So the firmware set the TDMA at 1, when it should have been a 0 or 2. So it wouldn’t decode voice on the system. Todd made a firmware change so the firmware would not set the TDMA to 1. Todd discovered the issue and advised me to edit my configuration file to make TDMA=0. With the new firmware update the configuration edit is now not needed. Radio now decodes the system properly. The system in question was the new Grant County Indiana 700mhz system. Todd said he had never seen this issue before.

B.S.

 

[maus92]

In almost all cases, the control channel for Phase 2 / TDMA systems uses Phase 1 / FDMA signalling schema. I think there are a few L3H systems now being deployed that utilize a TDMA control channel, but that would preclude backwards compatibility / interoperability with "foreign" / older radios using Phase 1 technology. Interesting that other users had not discovered the issue until you did. Glad that Todd fixed the issue.

 

[GTR8000]

The system is a Harris P252 TDMA

Actually, it's an EF Johnson Atlas system, not L3Harris.

 

[maus92]

So does TDMA=0 mean "not TDMA"; TDMA=1 means "TDMA"; and TDMA=2 means "auto select" in Nano-speak? I've never seen an EFJohnson Atlas system in the wild as they are not common in my region (Erie PA being the closest). Is there anything special about Atlas systems that need to be considered? I though their biggest selling point was (beyond being cheaper) was that they use a local distributed trunking controller design vs a single controller with a redundant or cloud backup controller.

 

[Blackswan73]

Ok, I will try to explain this but I preface this with the disclaimer that I am not a coder, so a lot of this is completely Greek to me. In the Eaglemon software there is a box at the bottom where you can read from the Nano memory. The result is the configuration file. The first part of this text file is the global configuration area. Under IDEN there is a line that should be TDMA=. The number after the equals sign should be either a 0 or a 2. A zero means it is not P25, a two means it is a P25 system. The firmware reads the information from the control channel and sets this value accordingly. I the Grant County system, the control channel sent information that caused the Nano to set that value at 1. It is only supposed to be a 0 or 2, hence the Nano couldn’t decode the data to produce voice. A simple edit to the above line in the configuration corrected this error. After we determined this was the problem, Tobb wrote a firmware update that prevents the Nano from setting this line to 1. With this update the configuration file does not have to be edited

B.S.

 

[GTR8000]

@Blackswan72 are you able to post a snippet of the control channel data for that system? I'm curious what exactly it's broadcasting, in particular the IDEN_UP messages. I'm not sure if BTT has any sort of control channel log that can be saved, I do know that software like Unitrunker or SDRTrunk is able to show the control channel messages in plain text logging.

 

[KevinC]

@Blackswan72 are you able to post a snippet of the control channel data for that system? I'm curious what exactly it's broadcasting, in particular the IDEN_UP messages. I'm not sure if BTT has any sort of control channel log that can be saved, I do know that software like Unitrunker or SDRTrunk is able to show the control channel messages in plain text logging.

Wasn't (isn't?) it EFJ systems that Uniden had problems with? I seem to remember a system in Connecticut that gave people fits. Reprogramming would fix the issue for a bit then it would stop working again. I suggested trying a GRE-based scanner and manually setting the bandplan and I believe that worked. But this time I really could be wrong.

 

[GTR8000]

Wasn't (isn't?) it EFJ systems that Uniden had problems with? I seem to remember a system in Connecticut that gave people fits. Reprogramming would fix the issue for a bit then it would stop working again. I suggested trying a GRE-based scanner and manually setting the bandplan and I believe that worked. But this time I really could be wrong.

Sounds familiar, could be. I thought that I noted a system in NY or NJ within the past year that was EFJ Atlas, but I can't remember now.

 

[KevinC]

Sounds familiar, could be. I thought that I noted a system in NY or NJ within the past year that was EFJ Atlas, but I can't remember now.

Found it...

396xt and 996xt dropping custom bandplans

I have experienced problems with a 996xt and a 396xt that lose the custom band plan for a MOTO P25 system in my area. These radios are in operation 24/7 not being turned off or unplugged for any reason as they are dedicated to monitor this trunk. Occasionally I will notice that the one of the...

forums.radioreference.com

 

[Blackswan73]

@Blackswan72 are you able to post a snippet of the control channel data for that system? I'm curious what exactly it's broadcasting, in particular the IDEN_UP messages. I'm not sure if BTT has any sort of control channel log that can be saved, I do know that software like Unitrunker or SDRTrunk is able to show the control channel messages in plain text logging.

I don’t think the Nano has that feature I can post the configuration file and the line edit that worked, but that has been made unnecessary by the latest Nano firmware update. I do have some csv files from when I was running special diagnostic firmware to determine the problem. I do remember the system is sending time sync signals about every 5 minutes or so. Todd said that was very unusual

B.S.

 

[GTR8000]

I was interested in what the system is actually broadcasting over the control channel. Good learning experience to see how different manufacturers operate.