CM300 Day/Night Switch Help

[deathpool4567]

My EMS department has a CM300d that we are using as a "station alert system" for our HQ building where our supervisors live on shift. I have it set up to work correctly off of a callout channel but they would like to be able to listen to our dispatch channel openly throughout the day to keep tabs on things happening and utilize the callout channel at night when they want to get some sleep and only have the radio go off to their tones programmed on the channel.

One of our employees stated that, at his previous department, they had a similar system but with a "day/night switch" (a light switch was used) that could switch between the two channels like our supervisors want however I am not quite sure how to accomplish something like that as I'm still pretty new to the radio programming side of things as the interim radio guy until we can actually hire a legit one. I have done a bit of digging in the MOTOTRBO CPS 2.0 software I am using and found some documentation on using the GPIO pins to activate the "monitor" function however I am not sure where to go from there.

Also, to isolate the two channels out of our current programmed list of 60, would I set the TX Admit Criteria for the 58 channels I don't want monitored to something other than "Always" since that is what is required for the monitor function to work? I know that sounds like a silly question (to me at least) but I want to make sure I am on the right track at least.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

 

[hill]

More than likely would be easier to just program two different channels in the radio and change channels with the regular channel change button

One channel would just be a normally receive channel with just receives all traffic on the Dispatch frequency. The other would be configured to use two tones that would alert during off work hours.

 

[mmckenna]

More than likely would be easier to just program two different channels in the radio and change channels with the regular channel change button

One channel would just be a normally receive channel with just receives all traffic on the Dispatch frequency. The other would be configured to use two tones that would alert during off work hours.

I was just typing the exact same thing. This is how we used to do it when I had a fire station I supported.

CDM1250 control head was mounted in the apparatus bay and they just selected between a "Day" channels and a "Night" channel.

I have no experience with the Motorola DMR gear. The channel change thing is easy to do on Kenwood's but that won't help you.

 

[hill]

Yea I had some Kenwood handheld radios set up to do two tone for a few local areas and would also have a channel that would monitor fire dispatch for all radio traffic.

Two tone is quickly going away for fire department alerting in my area with more modern ways to alert crews like apps or alerts.over P25 systems.

My UHF radios still work, but a recent upgrade for one County from Smartzone to P25 and they don't even have any VHF fire Dispatch anymore.

 

[hill]

I was just typing the exact same thing. This is how we used to do it when I had a fire station I supported.

It always feels good when I am on the same page/ideas as mmckenna!

 

[ramal121]

Yes to above, this is the easiest way to do this. Your day channel would be programmed with "OR" squelch and the night channel with "AND" squelch. If you need to have a D/N switch located away from the radio you can do this by connecting it to the rear accessory connector.

Don't use monitor and Tx Admit Criteria does not affect anything with receiving.

 

[deathpool4567]

Thank you guys for the replies and ideas! We ended up having the two different channels programmed and so far it has worked great. Thanks again!