DSDplus Config help

[Falcon204]

List is from Unitrunker.. Here is a photo of Unitrunker of the call history list

 

[BM82557]

Is that list from Unitrunker or RR?

I've never heard of two control channels for the same site. The park setting is irrelevant for voice unless you want to park it on a random conventional channel to hear something when there is no trunked activity.

I presume you either copy and pasted from RR or one of the channels is actually data. Or it's two separate sites. Can you post screenshots?

The Kenner Jefferson site is listed in the RR DB with both an 800mhz CC and an 700mhz CC

Louisiana Wireless Information Network (LWIN) Trunking System, Statewide, Louisiana - Scanner Frequencies

 

[AggieCon]

I changed my colors so I might have the red and yellow swapped.

Basically, you can enable or disable a frequency to be an eligible control channel. What this means is if you have "Chase" enabled on the signal VCO, it will rotate through all of the frequencies marked as control channel to find the active control channel. It also helps UniTrunker identify a control channel frequency with a specific system, which is important for EDACS, for instance. For maximum reliability, you can enable all frequencies as control channels. It doesn't really matter.

The system is using just one control channel at a time (I assume the red one). "Alternate" control channels are voice channels when not used as the control channel. I assume you will see, from time to time, the yellow channel turn green and used as a voice channel.

To see this for yourself, double click on a frequency and enable "control." It'll change color.

If you are just voice following one conversation at a time, one dedicated voice dongle is all you need. Just make sure it doesn't have a control channel VCO restricting its movement.

 

[AggieCon]

If you are already "on the ground" scanning, disregard what the RR DB says. Obviously (I hope), the live data you are gathering is more reliable than what is in some database, be it FCC, RR, DFS, etc. Indeed, the screenshot Falcon posted is much more comprehensive than the 2 frequencies listed on RR.

If you are concerned about what's really happening on a frequency, pull it up in SDR#.

 

[rivardj]

I maintain that more dongles are better, however, you will always miss something no matter how many you have. Beside possibly not actually having the audio piped through a speaker in your radio room, you as a human can only hear and process so much. I sometimes have as many as eight audio paths talking to me at one time, way too much to deal with.

Not knowing your local system, I can only guess and suggest you use four dongles. Configure two dongles as signal and park one each on the control channels you listed. The other two dongles would be configured as voice. I would not park either of these dongles on an actual voice channel, more on this later. This might not work well if the same talkgroups are carried on the two control channels simultaneously. In this case you might hear the same traffic on both of the receivers at the same time. I have experienced this in my area when I tried to monitor two physical sites with two different control channels that carry the same traffic at the same time. However, if each control channel carries different talkgroup traffic it should work fine. Also, I would pipe the audio from one voice dongle to the left channel of your sound card and the other to the right channel.

Unfortunately the frequency span from the control channels to the voice channels exceed the bandwidth of the dongles so you will have to use the four dongle configuration I described above verses creating multiple VCO on a one or two dongles.

I am not sure what you are describing in this quote:

" I've noticed that if my police department keys up about time the dongle picks up the conversion it's either late or missed the call all together. Is there a better way at setting up the 2 dongles so I don't miss any of the action?"

As AggieCon said, screenshots would help. Post screenshots of both Info and VCO tabs of both receivers.

Now back to parking voice VCOs on voice channels, the strange behavior I think you are describing might be due to parking the voice receiver on a voice channel. That is all I will say until you post the screenshots mentioned above.

 

[AggieCon]

I really don't think there are two active control channels on what he is scanning.

But to be sure, it would not hurt to listen to both 858.525 and 771.01875 in SDR# and post screenshots to comfort everyone.

 

[rivardj]

I really don't think there are two active control channels on what he is scanning.

But to be sure, it would not hurt to listen to both 858.525 and 771.01875 in SDR# and post screenshots to comfort everyone.

I agree. But there is something odd about that setup, 700 MHz and 800 MHz mixed and spread out over such a wide bandwidth with huge gaps between the control channels and the voice channels.

 

[AggieCon]

I've seen it before. Two dongles will follow fine. It would just require a whole stack of dongles if we were playing it in your room, listening to all calls!

 

[rivardj]

Oh, more activity while I was writing my last two posts.

I don't know. The LCNs have two different prefixes. Are there two separate systems at one physical site, or is there some sort of an anomaly in Unitrunker or the system not passing the correct LCN information?

 

[rivardj]

That's what I have the Signal is set to nothing and only the voice is routed to VB. Don't understand what I'm doing wrong. Most of the tutorials I followed showed to use the same settings I already have in place, but yet still no audio from DSDplus.

I've also tried this whole set up on 3 computers and same results so has to be something I'm not doing right just have to find that needle in the haystack

Are these screenshots of two setups for two separate receivers (dongles)? Screenshots of the information tab would help.

Two suggestions:

1) I would set the Audio Output on the Voice VCO to Unspecified, not the VB cable input.

2) To simplify the setup, configure Unitrunker for only one VCO per receiver.

 

[rivardj]

Look closely at the pictures in the post at this link:

http://forums.radioreference.com/vo...e/338433-dsdplus-config-help.html#post2626506

The only things that should be different for your setup are the Correction on the Info tab for each receiver (dongle), the frequency you are parking on (control channel) and possibly the name of your VB cable input might be different.

 

[Falcon204]

When I made the signal side of the control channel I added in the first top frequency which once added and hit play the 2nd control channel is added automatically in Unitrunker which can be seen in the call history page, as the voice of someone talking the channel moves and hops on different frequencies down the list. If I click on the 771.01875 and uncheck the control box it automatically recheck after I close the box when I hit play again. Samething happens when I turn off Analog it rechecks itself after hitting play.

What I mean about sometimes missing calls is at times I look at the call history and see a group keying up as the frequency turns green but here nothing even as its bouncing around the frequencies.

Some screen shots of the set up etc...

Sent from my SM-T800 using Tapatalk

 

[AggieCon]

Try alt-printscreen.

Yea, I agree, something is different about this system. It looks like a couple of the voice channels are probably multicast, as the hit counts are identical.

What happens if you park the signal VCO on 771.01875?

Are you sure the calls that are being "missed" are not encrypted or data calls? I'm not saying calls aren't missed on UT, because I experience it too, but I can't see the far column in your call history log.

 

[KD8DVR]

I agree. But there is something odd about that setup, 700 MHz and 800 MHz mixed and spread out over such a wide bandwidth with huge gaps between the control channels and the voice channels.

Not odd at all to have a mix of 700 and 800 freqs. Common in my area. They take old analog freqs and add them onto the new digital systems.

AntiSquid disclaimer: All information provided is personal opinion only and may or may not resemble actual fact.