Easier to use scanner?

[Machria]

Your iPhone has a touchscreen with a software keyboard, which is even more complex, annoying, and and expensive than a keyboard with buttons.

hmmmm... So the device that has out sold any other electronic device in the history of the world mainly because of it's ease of use and ergonomics, is in your words "more complex, annoying, and expensive". Ok, keep believing that.

And your sample size (5) re Uniden usability is far too small to be statistically meaningful. I'd venture that Uniden's sales and return figures paint a far different picture,, or they would have discontinued scanners years ago.

Really? Why would Uniden care if we bought there product, put it in the closet and never used it. They sold there product, made there money and were very happy to do so, as were there stock holders. I assure you more people buy a Uniden scanner and use it for 1 week or 1 month or so, and then shelve it for the most part vs those like many on this site that delve deeply into it and use it regularly. I'd put money on it.

Also, your're generalizing your experience with the user interface of a discontinued 8-year-old scanner to current scanners, which work differently.

Ok, please list the make and model scanner sold today that can simply do a text search of programmed freq's/ TG's. I'd would buy it first thing in the am. That is the point of this thread, to find a modern day scanner, which I have yet been able to find on the market. I'd love to find one!!

The way I currently see it is, only two things have changed since my first scanner 30 years ago. More memory was added to store more freq's, and the addition of scanning trunked systems. That's it! My Bearcat 100xlt had 10 banks of 10 channels each for 100 channels. It essentially worked exactly the same with almost an identical display and keyboard as my 396xt 30 years later. In between I had a 200xlt. Add in a few letters for text on the display, some more memory, and the ability to scan trunked systems, and that's all the progress that has been made. That's really abysmal if you ask me for 30 years of technology advances.

 

[Machria]

Adding a menu option to search based on user input is not that big of a deal.

My point exactly. So why haven't they done it?

 

[Machria]

Interestingly, the GRE PSR-500 had the ability to do a FIND on a channel/talkgroup label/alpha tag.... but as far as I know the PSR-500/600 may have been the only radio (that I know of) that offered that. I liked that feature but didn't use it as much as it might seem.

Perhaps it's a suggestion that can get some attention.... old is new again.

Maybe even better - a FIND option that displays a list of matches the user can then scroll to and SElect to monitor.... hmmmmm..

Exactly! THAT right there is all we are talking about. How easy would that make it to find/listen to a particular freq/tg?

These days, I tend to put talkgroups I know I want quick access to into additional scanlists (i.e. my county fire talkgroups are in a scanlist, police in another - but my district police is also assigned to it's own scanlist). Of course, you still have to remember scanlists numbers but that's probably the easiest thing there is in today's scanners.

I've tried that, I've tried creating geo scanlists, I've tried creating type scanlists, I've tried both.... but it always comes back to having to remember 100's of "quick keys". After a day that is tough enough, try that after a few months! I can't remember what I had for breakfast today!

 

[Machria]

If you only use the scanner every few months, the odds of you remembering whether the conversation you want to monitor is on Smithtown Fire Dispatch 2 or Smithtown Fire Tac 5 are close to zero, so a text search, while it would be nice, isn't going to help much.

Sure it would. Right now I can't find either! It would take 2 minutes to monitor both, and figure out which I wanted. But anyway, most of the time I'm looking for something unique, for example "DIVE" to find a dive boat frequency. It would not solve everything, but it sure would make it a hell of a lot easier!

And I'm calling BS on the notion you have "1000's of towns on LI" (shouldn't that be FLs/Favorite Lists?) in your scanner that you can actually hear. Unless this is some creative hyperbole, you're clogging up your scanlist with a bunch of crap you can't possibly hear, which is going to bog down your scanner horribly, and make it much harder to jump to any particular thing of interest. You should seriously consider pruning your favorite lists down to what you can actually hear.

I can hear most of ALL of Long Island which is about 75 miles long. I'm in the middle of it. In addition, most are using the same system which utilizes repeaters. The town of Montauk with is 50 miles from me comes in clear as they are standing next to me.

Text search is also going to require adding a full QWERTY keyboard to the scanner, instead of just the numeric keypad. Unless you think twiddling the scroll knob to select letters is user-friendly. So in the absence of a QWERTY keyboard on the scanner, (which would require a lot more space unless you make the keys unusably tiny) a text search function is pointless.

My iPhone does not have a keyboard on it. And in the case of the XLT, we could just use the scroll knob to enter text. Not the fastest, but it works a lot faster than scrolling thru 5000 frequencies.

Your claim would be a lot more believable if you appeared to know the difference between a director and a directory, and exhibited a better grasp of spelling and punctuation.

Oh sorry, I was not aware this was going to be graded, I thought this was just an internet forum!! I'll do better in the next class professor!

LOL any product that was completely unusable for 90% of purchasers would not remain on the market for long, and would quickly bury the manufacturer and seller in fraud litigation.

Ever hear of the Pet Rock? Tell that to the millionaire that sold millions of them!
https://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&k...qmt=e&hvbmt=be&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_7jcnommaw7_e

 

[jonwienke]

That again does NOT solve my problem. I do not want to scan anything. I want to tune to, and listen in on ONE (1) particular channel. In addition, the GPS / zip thing in my area does not work very well. Most of the things I listen to are nowhere near me (as far as radio distance is concerned).

I live in the middle of Long Island. Long Island is about 75 miles long, and 10 miles wide. Because of the repeaters all over the island for the Suffolk County system, I am able to listen to pretty much anything on the island in that 75 miles stretch. When something goes on in a particular town I often want to scan that local area which is outside of my normal local area, or sometimes I just want to listen to something specific within that area, like a PD marine dive boat from that village. Sounds easy, but I have 100's of these "area's" in my scanner.

You don't have to put in YOUR Zip code, you can enter the Zip code of the town with the "interesting" activity, with a Range of zero, to minimize extraneous clutter. It's actually a better solution than text search.

Here's an example: in Cumberland County, PA, the major fire department is NOT called the "Cumberland County VFD", it is the "Vigilant Hose Company". If something is going on in the Shippensburg area, doing a text search for "Cumberland" or "Shippensburg" would completely miss the most fire traffic. But putting in the ZIP code 17257 will find it.

In addition, jumping directly to a particular channel is rarely useful, unless you're in a rural area that only has one frequency each for EMS, fire, and police. In populated areas, there is typically a main dispatch channel, and then several tac or ops channels which are assigned by dispatch to units working a particular incident. So if the Podunk FD is responding to a vehicle crash and a structure fire simultaneously, the vehicle crash may be assigned Fire Ops 1 and the structure fire Fire Ops 2. So to hear the fire crew working the structure fire, you're going to have to scan all of the fire channels (dispatch and ops) until you hear dispatch assign the incident to the ops channel, or figure out which incident is where by listening to traffic.

So instead of doing a text search for "Fire Ops 2", you punch in the Podunk Zip code, listen to fire traffic until you figure out which ops channel has the incident traffic you want, then hold the scanner on that ops channel until the incident is over. Or more likely, hold on Podunk's system, so you hear dispatch assigning units to the incident and the ops channel traffic, police interaction with the FD, and EMS response to any injuries resulting from the fire.

 

[jonwienke]

My point exactly. So why haven't they done it?

For the reasons I outlined in my previous post. It's rarely actually useful.

The newest generation of scanners (BCD436HP and BCD536HP) don't have banks of channels, they have a 3-level memory hierarchy, Systems, Departments, and Channels. Each System can have any number of Departments, and any Department can have any number of channels. Each Department is tagged with GPS coordinates to define its service area, and each channel is tagged with a Service Type (police, fire, EMS, public works, etc.)

When you're scanning, you can hold on a system, a department, or a channel. In West Virginia, there is a statewide P25 system that handles pretty much all public safety traffic at the state, county, and local level. It has several hundred Departments, and thousands of talkgroups (channels). But it is pretty easy to drill down to a particular channel or set of channels quickly. If you tell the scanner you're in Martinsburg (Zip Code 25401), Location control will turn off most extraneous Departments. You'll be listening to the following Departments: WV State Police (Romney barracks), Martinsburg PD and FD, Berkeley County sheriff, FD, and public works, Jefferson County sheriff, FD, and public works, and Morgan County sheriff, FD, and public works. If you turn off the Public Works Service Type, then the scanner will skip all of the public works departments and scan only police, fire, and EMS.

If there is a car chase going on in Jefferson County, you can hold on the Jefferson County Sheriff Department, and hear all traffic related to the pursuit. When the chase is over, release the hold and the scanner will go back to scanning the entire area. If a house catches fire in Berkeley County, hold on the Berkeley County Fire Department, and you'll hear fire and EMS traffic associated with the incident. If a homeless guy starts a fight in the Martinsburg train station, hold on the Martinsburg Police Department to hear related traffic.

At no time is it necessary (or even desirable, given the frequent simultaneous use of dispatch and ops/tac channels) to manually search for a single channel. The scanner makes it fairly easy to drill down to a specific group of channels. You can manually scroll through Systems, Departments, and Channels during a hold to manually move to a specific channel faster than using the scroll wheel to select letters to do a name search. For example, if you have a Department hold active, and press the System button, you can manually scroll through Systems to select the WV statewide P25 system. Then you can press the Department button and manually scroll through Departments in that system to select Berkeley County Sheriff. At that point, you can either let the scanner scan the 5 talkgroups in that Department, or you can press Channel to hold on a specific talkgroup in the Department and manually scroll through the talkgroups as desired.

It's similar to the process of navigating through folders on a hard drive to find a particular file. Doing a name search on the root folder of the drive will often match too may files to be useful, and if the file name is not what you expect (e.g. Vigilant Hose Company vs Shippensburg Fire Department), you'll never find it. But if the files are organized into folders, you can navigate to the desired file with a few clicks, even if there are hundreds of thousands of files on the drive.

The BCDx36HP also allow you to create a list of location presets, each with their own GPS coordinates and Range setting. You could have a preset for Home, and another preset for Podunk. So if there is something interesting in Podunk, you can switch the scanner location to Podunk, and instead of listening to traffic around your home, it will monitor traffic in the vicinity of Podunk. When the incident is over, switch the scanner back to Home, and resume listening to stuff in your neighborhood.

 

[Machria]

You don't have to put in YOUR Zip code, you can enter the Zip code of the town with the "interesting" activity, with a Range of zero, to minimize extraneous clutter. It's actually a better solution than text search.

jonwienke,
I appreciate your efforts, but I understand all this. I know very well EXACTLY how the geo stuff works. I've used it. For somebody who wants to scan basic services, local fire, local police for a particular area it works fine. But unfortunately this has nothing to do with what I am trying to do. To re-iterate, I am trying to simply tune in to a very specialized, particular frequency. One that will not be found in service type scan. Further, the systems in my area are so busy, I would be a small miracle if I could actually find the one I'm looking for. I'm NOT trying to "scan" anything. I'm simply trying to GO TO a particular Frequency and listen to it. That's it. I already know the frequency, I already have it stored in my scanner along with 4000-5000 other ones. And I have it clearly labeled with a meaningful tag for me to understand what and where it is. Now the question is, how do I find it in the scanner? Quick keys and scan lists only work for a VERY small list of items. In addition, I don't use it often enough to even remember a few "quick keys". Ive got labels all over the back of my scanner with scanlists #'s and some QK's. But that gives me about 10 things I can get to. The other couple of thousands are lost I nthe huge pile of data, with no easy way to access it, PERIOD.

Can I scan it? Yes. Can I simply tune to a particular freq? Most of the time, NO.


You keep saying "I would not use a text search". I would use it EVERY SINLGE TIME I turned on the scanner. When I turn it on, 99 out of 100 times I simply want to listen to 1 thing. This is such a simple concept to understand what I want to do and why. You are WAAAAAAY over thinking it.

 

[jonwienke]

Then tag that one oddball frequency with a Service Type of Custom 9, and only enable other Service Types when feeling adventurous.

 

[Machria]

You don't have to put in YOUR Zip code, you can enter the Zip code of the town with the "interesting" activity, with a Range of zero, to minimize extraneous clutter. It's actually a better solution than text search.

Again, I'm not looking or scanning for "interesting activity". I'm trying to tune to a specific freq, that is it. Why is that so difficult to understand?

Here's an example: in Cumberland County, PA, the major fire department is NOT called the "Cumberland County VFD", it is the "Vigilant Hose Company". If something is going on in the Shippensburg area, doing a text search for "Cumberland" or "Shippensburg" would completely miss the most fire traffic. But putting in the ZIP code 17257 will find it.

I understand this, and have similar things in my area. Haggerman FD is in the town of East Patchogue. But I know this, and would search for both if I were looking for something from that town. An no, I don't know all of them because there are 100's like that. But that is not my issue. I actually don't even use town names most of the time. As an example, I have broken up my areas into quadrants. A simplified example of this is: South East, South West, North East, North West.... and then named them with abbreviations I understand: SE1, SE2, SW1, SW2... SE1 = South East area 1 (1 has normal service types, Fire, PD, EMS, 2 has specialized services like Divers, investigators, parole....). So most of the time I want to find "SE2-Dive". This will bring up all dive boats in the South Eastern area. I would then select the particular dive boat from that area I was interested in and tune to it. Pretty simple.

In addition, jumping directly to a particular channel is rarely useful, unless you're in a rural area that only has one frequency each for EMS, fire, and police. In populated areas, there is typically a main dispatch channel,...

I'm generalizing here. When I say "Freq", I mean to a particular system, and talkgroup most of the time. In some cases it is still a conventional frequency however. But you get my drift.... I just want to listen to one "object", lets say.

So instead of doing a text search for "Fire Ops 2", you punch in the Podunk Zip code, listen to fire traffic until you figure out which ops channel has the incident traffic you want, then hold the scanner on that ops channel until the incident is over. Or more likely, hold on Podunk's system, so you hear dispatch assigning units to the incident and the ops channel traffic, police interaction with the FD, and EMS response to any injuries resulting from the fire.

I already have all these in the scanner. I do not want to "scan search" for them and try to figure out who is who by listening to it. I just want to go to the freq, I already know what it is, I know who is on it, I know what freq/talkgroup they are using. All I need is, a way to find it among the other 5000 things I have programmed in my scanner.

Since you brought this up, I rarely am interested in the normal type services (FD, PD, EMS....). I'm usually wanting to listen to very specialized things, like Dive a boat. There is not "Dive boat TAC", "Dive boat OPS".... It's just a "Dive Boat" for a particular town name. And FYI, I'm just using the Dive boat as an easy to understand example.

Will the text search be "perfect"? No. Will it work MOST of the time? Yes. Will it be helpful? Bet your arse it would be! Beyond helpful!

 

[Machria]

Then tag that one oddball frequency with a Service Type of Custom 9, and only enable other Service Types when feeling adventurous.

Ok. What about the other 4000 oddball frequencies?

You keep going back to these memorizing quick keys, lists, custom things.... I have a MUCH better idea, how about we add a text search, and we use the TEXT that is already in the scanner memory so we don't have to memorize anything!! You know, like all the other modern day devices in the world today do.

You know what, funny, I just picked up my $129 UNIDEN wireless home phone and searched for a name: "Louis" to call him. Louis came up twice, it said "Louis Cell" and "Louis Home", I scrolled down one to Home and pressed Dial. The phone dialed his Home number!! The miracle of modern day devices!!! And amazingly, for $179 I have 8 wireless transceiver handsets that use encrypted spread spectrum communications to the base unit, which is a digital answering system that stores all the CID and directory data. So all the wireless handsets access this data wirelessly, and allow text searches on it. All with no keyboard, and for under $200. So there goes the $$ to develop such a thing argument.

You guys from the Uniden Scanning division aught to run down the office to the home phone division, and ask them how they incorporated a text search into there cheap little device and figure out how to add it to the scanners! (yes, I'm being facetious).

 

[jonwienke]

Then create a "Dive Boat" favorite list that just has the dive boat frequency or frequencies.

 

[Machria]

Then create a "Dive Boat" favorite list that just has the dive boat frequency or frequencies.

Really, ok. Then what about:
FD's
PD's
Investigators
Parole officers
Jails
Local municipalities each with snowplows, road service, tolls, public safety, traffic, parking....
Universities
Community colleges
RR
Military base
3 major airports each with: FD, PD, Security, EMS, cust services, 30 or 40 airlines, ground services, fuel services, Garret jet service, local flight clubs.......
Marine PD
Marine FD
Marine Dive
Coast guard
Coast Guard heli
Shellfish
Businesses (100's if not 1000's of them on LI)
Wireless mics
Motion picture companies (yes, they film a movie 2 houses down from me last year)

and I can keep going, and going and going and going......

Should I just put a 4 digit quick key code on each channel, memorize them and start using that? You know, we should ask Uniden to take the tag text out of the scanner. We should all go back to the Bearcat 100xlt and just display the text and talkgroups. Why use tags, right?

 

[sparklehorse]

To make your text search feasible you will have to personally edit the alpha tags of all of your 5000 channels. Otherwise you are at the mercy of the Radioreference database, and its non-existent naming conventions. In my area I have four counties that have a "Fire Ch 5", and many, many other channels, fire and police, that are simply called "Dispatch". You will have to add your own info to each of these to give them some useful context. Like "Smthtn Fire Ch 5" as an example. Otherwise you will not have gained much with your search function.

.

 

[Machria]

To make your text search feasible you will have to personally edit the alpha tags of all of your 5000 channels. Otherwise you are at the mercy of the Radioreference database, and its non-existent naming conventions. In my area I have four counties that have a "Fire Ch 5", and many, many other channels, fire and police, that are simply called "Dispatch". You will have to add your own info to each of these to give them some useful context. Like "Smthtn Fire Ch 5" as an example. Otherwise you will not have gained much with your search function.

.

Already done!

Actually, most of it was done years ago. I have a spreadsheet with all my freq's in it, with lots of text and tags and info to go with them. When I got the 396, I downloaded all I could from RR, and then spent weeks cutting and pasting, re-arranging, adding, deleting.... Only to then find I couldn't find anything anyway!

But your right, the naming conventions on RR are non-existent. But that is to be expected because I'm sure that data is compiled from many different places....

 

[mule1075]

The data is compiled by the users of this site.

 

[jonwienke]

Long story short, you're whining about the limitations of an 8-year-old scanner with an obsolete memory architecture and user interface.

The newer scanners allow the user to do what you want (navigate to a single arbitrary frequency or talkgroup) in several different ways, some of which are faster and more elegant than what you're asking for. And which don't require the user to impose their own naming convention on every channel in the database.

You can specify a location other than your own to select a small initial subset of systems.

You can manually select a system, then a department, and then a channel. The hierarchical structure of the database makes this faster than text searching for "SE Dive Boat SS Minnow" using the scroll wheel to select letters (the methodology used to enter DMR and ProVoice keys). It's obvious you haven't played with an x36HP scanner, or you would understand this. You NEVER have to scroll through a list of thousands of channels. You start with the general area by setting your location, and then select a system, a department, and the specific channel.

In most cases, you'll have less than 26 options at each level of the hierarchy. In my WV example, about 15 total systems from which to select the WV statewide P25, then another ~20 departments from which to select Martinsburg PD, then 5 channels from which to select Public Works & Administration. It's faster than selecting the first 3 letters of your proposed text search using the scroll wheel.

There's also many ways to scan or not scan frequencies using service types and favorite lists, which you can enable and disable by name in the scanner menu.

 

[Machria]

Long story short, you're whining about the limitations of an 8-year-old scanner with an obsolete memory architecture and user interface.

NO! I'm not whining about anything. I'm ASKING/SUGGESTING to Uniden or any other scanner manufacturer to join the rest of the planet in 2017 and make a modernized scanner that is ergonomic to utilize. That's it. YOU are suggesting it is done to the 396. I'm only using the 396 as an example since most scanners today as far as I know work the same way or similar to the 396.

If you know of a newer scanner that is easy to find something in without memorizing 1000's of "quick keys", please do let us know. Please list the specific brand and model. Thanks.

What I am asking for is NOT a rocket science. For gods sake.

The newer scanners allow the user to do what you want (navigate to a single arbitrary frequency or talkgroup) in several different ways, some of which are faster and more elegant than what you're asking for. And which don't require the user to impose their own naming convention on every channel in the database.

You can specify a location other than your own to select a small initial subset of systems.

Jon, Really?? Do we have to keep going around in circles on this?? I DO THIS ALREADY!! My Freqs are all in scanlists by local. They are also in scanlists by service types. They are also in scanlists by importance to me (stuff I like to regularly listen to as opposed to stuff I rarely listen to). They are stored 7 ways till Tuesday, indexed, sorted, tagged, edited, categorized.... None of that makes it much easier to find a single freq amongst it all. A simple text search would, PERIOD. There is absolutely NO WAY of doing what I need, with this scanner. You arrange it, scan it, search it, turn it upside down and jiggle it around while saying there is no place like home. But you still can NOT find a single particular frequency which is ridiculous given the amount of stuff it allows you to program into it.

Take a few minutes and actually READ my posts. Understand them before posting the same stuff over and over....

You can manually select a system, then a department, and then a channel. The hierarchical structure of the database makes this faster than text searching for "SE Dive Boat SS Minnow" using the scroll wheel to select letters (the methodology used to enter DMR and ProVoice keys). It's obvious you haven't played with an x36HP scanner, or you would understand this. You NEVER have to scroll through a list of thousands of channels. You start with the general area by setting your location, and then select a system, a department, and the specific channel.

Again, selecting a System, department, and channel assumes I know what system, department, and channel the freq I am looking for is on. I don't know that. I don't know anything about it. All I know is, I want to listen to a Dive boat, in Oshkosh NY. I don't care what system it is on, I don't care what department it's in, I don't care what Quick key I gave it two years ago when I programmed it in.... I just want to type DIVE boat and bring it up.

This is like apple asking us to store all of out contacts (I have 1400 contacts in my phone) in groups, and lists. And you can ONLY access them if you know what group and list they are in. Are they stored by industry, then job function? Or are they in groups by race and religion? When I look up a person to dial in my phone, should I have to first specify what "category" that contact is in before I type his name to search for it? NO. I just type BOB, and all the dang Bob's show up.

Why can't we do that on a scanner with 1000's and 1000's of channels programmed in??

In most cases, you'll have less than 26 options at each level of the hierarchy. In my WV example, about 15 total systems from which to select the WV statewide P25, then another ~20 departments from which to select Martinsburg PD, then 5 channels from which to select Public Works & Administration. It's faster than selecting the first 3 letters of your proposed text search using the scroll wheel.

What if I don't know what agency or dept, or even system the Dive boat works for?? I just want to type DIVE and bring it up, that's it. I don't care or know or even want to know what system they are on, or what agency signs their paycheck.

There's also many ways to scan or not scan frequencies using service types and favorite lists, which you can enable and disable by name in the scanner menu.

Yes there is, that is terrific, thanks.

Butt getting back to the question at hand, why can't we do a simple TEXT SEARCH of our 10,000+ programmed frequencies and talkgroups?

 

[mule1075]

Brother everybody gave you good ideas and it seems you just want to argue.Hate to say it but might want to find a new hobby or design something with your IT experience that helps you with what you want to do.

 

[sparklehorse]

So far we are almost 60 posts into this thread, and the only strong proponent of your search function is you. It's unlikely that's enough pressure to convince the scanner makers they should act on your suggestion. If you want to see how popular your idea is with the scanning masses you should start a new thread as a Poll to see what the actual level of interest is. If there is enough positive response it could potentially move the needle on your idea. Personally I'd much rather they devote their energy to addressing actual problems, like P25 simulcast distortion. It doesn't much matter that you can find your DIVE channel easily if your reception of it is unintelligible.

.

 

[TDR-94]

It seems more and more like people want an autonomous network connected scanning device.Something users can tell through voice prompting (like Lexi,Alexa or Echo) to do a dictionary search of all keywords that they would find of particular interest then capture all data and voice traffic relevant to those keyword searches and play them in real time or compile for later reviewing.

For instance you could have you,your family,friends,neighbors and possibly shady associates,names,aliases,addresses,licenses and even vehicle tags entered as keyword searches so when any traffic related to that info is received they could all get 'early warning' text messages sent to their mobile devices and all voice traffic and radio spectrum data recorded for further review later.

Essentially a modern 'lazy mans' device that fits into the palm of your hand and doesn't require much user thought or interaction.

That type of device would more than likely fall under SIGINT/COMINT ,which would not be intended for John Q public.I'm sure no Defense contractor would be selling such a device/system for $600 either.