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Commerical Monitoring of DMR

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n8mrc

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I am trying to monitor our county road commission on DMR and I was wondering how I would program that. Here is the info:

CC 14
TG 34000
SL 1

I am using a TYT MD380
 

jaspence

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Unless you bought a VHF version of the 380, you are out of luck. The majority of MD 380 sales are UHF models (400 to 480Mhz) as there are very few VHF repeaters in use by hams.
 

bharvey2

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Create a Group Call contact with the number 34000. Make sure it doesn't already exist or you'll have problems. Otherwise, it would be shared/confused with the HAM talkgroups.

Create a digital channel with the aformentioned frequency, color code and timeslot.

Create a new zone if you'd like or place the new channel in to an existing zone.

Upload the codeplug and start monitoring that talkgroup

All this assumes you have a VHF MD380 and standard firmware. If the frequency/group you want to monitor is encrypted or trunked, monitoring could be a problem with that radio.

I hope this helps. (and I hope I didn't miss anything. I haven't programmed my MD380 in a while)
 

jonwienke

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First step is to add the TG 34000 as a digital contact (Group Call). Call it "Road Commission". If there are other TGs on the same frequency, add them and label them accordingly.

Create a Digital RX Group List, and add all of the talkgroups on that frequency to the list. Doesn't matter if there's only one.

Put those settings in a channel (make sure RX Only is checked), set the channel Contact Name to anything (it's not used on RX Only), and the Group List to the group list you created, then add that channel to a zone. Write to radio. Your radio ID is irrelevant if not transmitting.
 

n8mrc

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Create a Group Call contact with the number 34000. Make sure it doesn't already exist or you'll have problems. Otherwise, it would be shared/confused with the HAM talkgroups.

Create a digital channel with the aformentioned frequency, color code and timeslot.

Create a new zone if you'd like or place the new channel in to an existing zone.

Upload the codeplug and start monitoring that talkgroup

All this assumes you have a VHF MD380 and standard firmware. If the frequency/group you want to monitor is encrypted or trunked, monitoring could be a problem with that radio.

I hope this helps. (and I hope I didn't miss anything. I haven't programmed my MD380 in a while)

I have all that in, I can see sig on the meter but nothing is coming thru. The repeater is only a couple miles away.
 

bharvey2

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Maybe there is some encryption going on. I'm not sure how the MD380 would process that. It might just mute. Another thought is that there is more than one talkgroup being used on that frequency and your seeing traffic but the programmed talkgroup isn't being used to "unsquelch" the radio. How did you obtain the TG, CC and Slot information?
 

n8mrc

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Maybe there is some encryption going on. I'm not sure how the MD380 would process that. It might just mute. Another thought is that there is more than one talkgroup being used on that frequency and your seeing traffic but the programmed talkgroup isn't being used to "unsquelch" the radio. How did you obtain the TG, CC and Slot information?

The info is on RR website under Ionia County Michigan. I'm not sure how many TG's they have. I'll have to do more research...
 

jonwienke

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I have all that in, I can see sig on the meter but nothing is coming thru. The repeater is only a couple miles away.

Then you don't have the correct TG or color code specified. If the Color Code is wrong, or the broadcast TG is not included in the RX Group List, the radio will not break squelch. If the audio was encrypted, but the parameters were set correctly, you'd hear garbles.

Perhaps the TG ID you got is in hexadecimal? If so, you'll have to convert to decimal. 34000 hex is 212992 decimal.

Another (but less likely) possibility is that most traffic is private (individual radio-to-radio) calls, which would require you to create a contact for each radio ID.
 

bharvey2

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The info is on RR website under Ionia County Michigan. I'm not sure how many TG's they have. I'll have to do more research...

I looked up the site (right clicked the call sign) and found 1 repeater and 100 mobile units. The class (MO6)suggests conventional and not trunked (MO8) but that seems strange for that many units. There is also a Class listing for a controller too. I'm hardly an expert on this though so maybe someone with expertise in DMR trunking can weigh in.
 

natedawg1604

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If you get yourself a $20 rtl sdr dongle, you could easily monitor the entire system with DSD+ and confirm system type (i.e. DMR Conventional, Capacity Plus, Connect Plus etc), talkgroups, color codes, whether Encryption is being used, how active the system is etc.
 

TheBoz

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Vernon Co, Missouri
On my MD380, even though I checked the rx only box, the transmit frequency had to be different than the receive frequency for it to receive, I don't know if anyone mentioned that , but you might give it a shot if you haven't already.
 

Ronaldski

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Bay City MI
Their frequency was recently changed on 1-16-17, supposed to have been they are in a lease agreement with crouch comm.
They have their own license and it was listed in the database prior to the change as 159.105

Maybe try that one and see if that is actually what they use, put it in TG search mode and if they are using the previous frequency we had, let us know so we can get it corrected!

ULS License - Public Safety Pool, Conventional License - KQB301 - IONIA, COUNTY OF ROAD COMMISSION - Frequencies Summary
 

n8mrc

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Their frequency was recently changed on 1-16-17, supposed to have been they are in a lease agreement with crouch comm.
They have their own license and it was listed in the database prior to the change as 159.105

Maybe try that one and see if that is actually what they use, put it in TG search mode and if they are using the previous frequency we had, let us know so we can get it corrected!

ULS License - Public Safety Pool, Conventional License - KQB301 - IONIA, COUNTY OF ROAD COMMISSION - Frequencies Summary

As far as I know they are using 152.3075 digital, I can hear digital transmissions on that freq. The 159.105 is the old analog freq.

Also 153.995 and 153.965 is still used by Saranac Village/Fire. 153.995 is a repeater, it's on the same tower as our clubs 440 machine
 

bharvey2

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n8mrc, I've run in to a similar problem in my area trying to monitor a DMR frequency with my DMR capable scanner. The signal strength meter on my scanner goes full bars but I hear no sound. I've monitored the same frequency simultaneously with an older scanner. On the older one I hear "digital hash" whenever the DMR scanner signal meter goes active. I too received the information from RR. I'm wondering if the frequency I have is a control channel only. Perhaps we have the same issue.

Does anyone know how DMR trunking works? Does it use a dedicated control channel?
 

n8mrc

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n8mrc, I've run in to a similar problem in my area trying to monitor a DMR frequency with my DMR capable scanner. The signal strength meter on my scanner goes full bars but I hear no sound. I've monitored the same frequency simultaneously with an older scanner. On the older one I hear "digital hash" whenever the DMR scanner signal meter goes active. I too received the information from RR. I'm wondering if the frequency I have is a control channel only. Perhaps we have the same issue.

Does anyone know how DMR trunking works? Does it use a dedicated control channel?

I don't *think* it has a control channel. I know the P25 system the state police have do...
 
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