SDS100/SDS200: DID I MAKE A MISTAKE?!?!?
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GregOH
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One thing that greatly helped me was to go to search in the header above and search SDS100 and read through the post's on my spare time.
One thing that hasn't helped me is the renaming of the terminology. I would prefer the favorite list name where the system name is. Or better yet make all fields changeable.
Department? Is that the agency? No, I think it's where you can can breakdown the police, fire, & city crews into different sub groups?
Service types? Are these really necessary?
There is way to much information for a non-experienced user to use or understand.
Hey @uniden, I refer to the term "Information overload".
Department? Is that the agency? No, I think it's where you can can breakdown the police, fire, & city crews into different sub groups?
Service types? Are these really necessary?
There is way to much information for a non-experienced user to use or understand.
Hey @uniden, I refer to the term "Information overload".
Everything makes sense once you learn it. And none of the changes you suggest are particularly good ideas once you understand what's going on and why.
Knowing what system you're listening to is more relevant than the favorite list name, as many people put all of their systems into a single favorite list.
Departments are groups of channels within a system. Frequencies if a conventional system, talkgroups if a trunked system. You can group by city, agency, county, etc as you see fit.
Service types are critical. They offer a way to toggle categories of traffic across all favorite lists and the database simultaneously. That's really handy with large trunked systems with over 1000 talkgroups; manually toggling each one would be a ridiculous PITA.
Knowing what system you're listening to is more relevant than the favorite list name, as many people put all of their systems into a single favorite list.
Departments are groups of channels within a system. Frequencies if a conventional system, talkgroups if a trunked system. You can group by city, agency, county, etc as you see fit.
Service types are critical. They offer a way to toggle categories of traffic across all favorite lists and the database simultaneously. That's really handy with large trunked systems with over 1000 talkgroups; manually toggling each one would be a ridiculous PITA.
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Terminology is a balance because everyone has different terminology and anytime you try to consolidate several standards into one you end with creating an /additional/ standard.
As for the location of the FL name, many items on the SDS display can be changed. The System tag location is one that cannot. That may be something that can be changed, but changing a spec that was established is not easy and itself can lead to other problems - particularly with software authors. Back when that was being developed, I proposed a more flexible display scheme, but it was not adopted. There may be technical reasons for this. I was not privy to those reasons at the time. But it might be something that we can look into. No promises however. There may be technical reasons it was not adopted and cannot be adopted.
As for the location of the FL name, many items on the SDS display can be changed. The System tag location is one that cannot. That may be something that can be changed, but changing a spec that was established is not easy and itself can lead to other problems - particularly with software authors. Back when that was being developed, I proposed a more flexible display scheme, but it was not adopted. There may be technical reasons for this. I was not privy to those reasons at the time. But it might be something that we can look into. No promises however. There may be technical reasons it was not adopted and cannot be adopted.
GregOH
Member
I toggled sites of my statewide system by hand and that alone was a Major PITA due to there being hundreds of them. Couldn't even image trying to do talkgroups by hand.
Learning to use software to program this scanner is the way to go for sure.
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That's best done with location control, all distant sites automatically get toggled off.
GregOH
Member
I now have the entire system as a FL l will use location control with and I have a small regional chunk of the same system on another FL with most sites on avoid.
GregOH
Member
I set full DB to on and all others to off and location control on and didn't really care for it, so I went back to scanning my edited statewide system and nothing else.
snerd
Listening.....
I guess there’s something to be said for living in the sticks! Well, a smaller town anyway. Lawton. We just don’t have many systems to choose from. The OKWINP25ll is it. Set up police, fire, EMR, OHP, I’m good to go! Well, I do have other conventional systems for scanning on other FL’s. I take it the SDS’s are similar in programming to the 486/586 series?
I'm sure you meant 436 & 536, not '486...'.
Yes, programming an SDS series scanner is the same as for the x36HP series. You can use the same Favorites list for either, or both.
The only difference is that, if you set the "target model" to either SDS100 or SDS200, you can program the NAC key for a P25 system. That is not required, but may be handy if you happen to be in range of two systems that share a control channel frequency. (If that was the case, you're probably in between the two systems, which are separated by some distance.) If you created a Favorites list, for an SDS scanner, & included the NAC, when you load that system into a 436HP or 536HP, it will simply be ignored, since those models cannot use that data.
snerd
Listening.....
Haha yes!! Had computers on my mind!!
Because the SDS can hold so much, and I travel frequently around the west coast; I've programmed my SDS with a little broader attitude. If all you want to hear is your "local area", this might not be for you. I don't like the zip code function as it does not give me control of what I am monitoring. It is nice to have as a backup option if I find myself outside of the wide area I've programmed in my FL.
When the FL is a state; there are (trunked) systems and conventional. Under conventional, the Departments are typically counties. Under trunked systems Departments might be Cities, Counties, or type of channel (hospitals, fire, public works for example). Here's a snip of what I do.
When the FL is a state; there are (trunked) systems and conventional. Under conventional, the Departments are typically counties. Under trunked systems Departments might be Cities, Counties, or type of channel (hospitals, fire, public works for example). Here's a snip of what I do.
Same here. I tried the full DB when I was recently trying the GPS in the car. There are too many backup to backup frequencies in the full DB that are almost never active. With the full DB the scanner ends up spending a lot of time checking frequencies that are virtually never active and you end up missing a lot of transmissions.
I'm in the process of putting together my own edited statewide list, but it's a long process going county by county and trying to wade through the details of each.
The full DB is a reasonable compromise for times when you're far from home, just passing through, and want to see if there's anything you can pick up. It's not the right choice for day to day scanning when near home.
This is what I did, and for several states. Not just for SDS, but for all of my scanners. It's definitely a hobby keeping the local data updated.
GregOH
Member
That's what I did and the favorites list I'm monitoring is only a small chunk of the entire statewide system.
I recommend getting an SD card and a card reader (if your pc don't have one) and making a custom list with Sentinel, writing it to the card, and swapping with the one that's currently in the scanner. But that's just my opinion.
This is just one city with most channels avoided.
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You don't like using service types? I don't think I'd want to set all those to Avoid because I might just want to listen to them at some point. For instance, I don't normally want to listen to the highway department, but when the weather turns bad those guys are just as active as the police. It's a lot easier to enable the appropriate service type than to go through all those system and toggle the Avoid settings.
GregOH
Member
I do use service types and I do listen to the highway department. Akron is quite a distance from me and I'm not interested in monitoring that region. I actually went back later and avoided that entire department.
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