FYI - Another trunker/etrunker Windows port

[brandon]

a3 working good for me too... monitoring the Riverside County EDACS. I left it on for a while last night and came back to see it still running

 

[SCPD]

I got the A3 version to work .. and have had no problems. For some reason none of the windows ports will work on my pc but my laptop runs fine.

It is working pretty good and no crashes here.

I was just wondering Eric if you would be releasing any source code ?

Great job Eric ...

 

[EricCottrell]

Hello,

Yes I will be releasing source code.

Questions for the group: How do you like the highlighted background in place of the blinking? Personally I think it stands out more than blinking but I am biased as it means more coding to get blinking to work. Are the beeps useful?

Usually things that annoy me motivate me to change or add to the program. Two annoying things I am looking at are the default bandplan being 8 for 800 MHZ and being able to clear data without exiting the program. A side issue would be to add other bandplans like the Oz one or the rebanding one. If I am scanning VHF, UHF, or 900 MHz it would be nice not to exit trunker and edit the bandplan. This means expansion of the menu system and the start of menus for only one trunked system type. I may also put in an EDACS menu so ESK can be manually set.

I found out more information on the EDACS Extended Addressing that MBTA, Cecil Co, and State of Florida uses. There can be over a million radios which is greater than the capacity of current code. Passport can also have over 65,000 radios so the code should be expanded to use 32 bit integers. Expanding the capacity may be an easy change but it has potential to create bugs. Also the group and id files may get too big and the internal implementation may need modification.

My current thinking is to get the current code working and release it as a baseline, something users can fall back to in case future changes seriously break things.

73 Eric

 

[pmn929]

Auto Save

Eric,
Would it be possible to add a feature that would auto save all or select files? I've always wanted to be able to gain access to the xxxxPage.txt file to parse affiliations in somewhat real time in a seperate program.

 

[mws72]

Eric,
Would it be possible to add a feature that would auto save all or select files? I've always wanted to be able to gain access to the xxxxPage.txt file to parse affiliations in somewhat real time in a seperate program.

I second that. But I wonder how hard it would be to have the page file instead as a CSV file.

 

[PeterGV]

Eric... Did I read your post right? You added support to control a BCD396t?

If so, can you elaborate just a bit on how I'd set that up? I've got your port of Trunker running wonderfully... and it'd be awesome to have it control my Pro96 or 396t.

Thanks,

P

 

[EricCottrell]

Eric... Did I read your post right? You added support to control a BCD396t?

If so, can you elaborate just a bit on how I'd set that up? I've got your port of Trunker running wonderfully... and it'd be awesome to have it control my Pro96 or 396t.

Thanks,

P

Hello,

You use:
TRACKSCAN=BC246T
or:
TRACKSCAN=BCD396T

This should work for the 246T, 396T, and 996T. Default baudrate is 57600 baud so it needs to be changed for the 996T.

73 Eric

 

[SCPD]

Eric ..

Just a few comments about these programs in general .. and possible enhancements.

The one that I think is needed is an autosave feature. I save my files every hour .. thus avoiding a possible issue with a power outage etc. I know about UPS's etc .. but why depend on them if we dont have to.

I personally dont mind the way you have done the back ground on some of the groups. I think you asked this prevoiusly.

Another thing I find really handy is when I am looking for unidentified radios .. I make the program beep when they transmit or affiliate. That alerts me to pay attention .. and possibly id them.

I have also changed the color of the affiliations to make it easier to distinguish .. like making the color of the affiliation match the set color of the affiliated group and not just plain white.

I have been running ver A3 since it came out and it has run perfectly (about 94% accuracy) .. no crashes at all.

Great job ....

 

[PeterGV]

Hello,

You use:
TRACKSCAN=BC246T
or:
TRACKSCAN=BCD396T

This should work for the 246T, 396T, and 996T. Default baudrate is 57600 baud so it needs to be changed for the 996T.

Thanks... but I tried that before posting. I still see WTrunker display ar8000 as the scanner type. I've tried setting the environment variables every which way:

(partial output from SET command...)

TRACKDIGITAL=1
TRACKENV=c:\trackenv.bat
TRACKSCAN=BCD396T

Conents of c:\TrackEnv.bat:

TRACKSCAN=BCD396T
TRACKSCANPORT=COM1
TRACKDIGITAL=1
TRACKSCANBAUD=57600

I'm SURE I'm doing something very obviously wrong.

Can anyone offer any clues?

P

 

[pmn929]

Peter,
I'm sure you do, but make sure you have SET in front of each of your commands there. Also in my batch file, the last statement I have kicks off wtrunker.exe. That way, I just double click the bat file, it sets the variables and then launches the program.

 

[PeterGV]

Arrrgh... Working now.

Ahem. Yes, well, I DID say I was pro'lly doing something very obviously wrong. Seems it's important to use the correct version of the software. Ahem. Yes...

All better now

P

 

[jpsmith2]

BTW Cecil Co is listed as ESK in the wiki but it is SitePro.

Cecil County, Md. does use ESK on its system.

 

[EricCottrell]

Cecil County, Md. does use ESK on its system.

Hello,

While the system may have ESK capability the main reason etrunk and scanners can not trunktrack this system is the Extended Addressing option. This option modifies the over-the-air protocol to provide additional talkgroups and radio ids. The new SitePro controllers support Extended Addressing. The MBTA EDACS Provoice system in Boston also has the Extended Addressing option. I was able to figure out some of the modified protocol. The discussion is in this thread. http://www.radioreference.com/forums/showthread.php?t=20887

Extended Addressing was developed for the Florida SLERS system and was scheduled to be installed when available. I suspect SLERS sites now have this option. I find that a scanner or etrunk tuned to a extended addressing control channel will display a control channel lcn of zero and a site id of 33. I get this result on both MBTA and Cecil Co.

73 Eric

 

[pmn929]

Eric,
Does this program log crashes? I went to hold a group earlier by pressing H, and the program blew up. I could see it write the error to the screen, but the screen closed before I could see anything.

 

[pmn929]

Another Request.
Would it be possible to show and log Deaffiliations?

 

[pmn929]

Deaffiliations

Another Request.
Would it be possible to show and log Deaffiliations?

Ok, while watching today, I saw that wtrunker did show 2 deaffiliations, however I'm not sure if its catching them all... So I ran a test.

While I had trunker running, I also ran Rick's packets.exe, dumped the output to a text file, and recorded the audio.. Packets.exe showed a deaffilation of a radio while trunker did not. I've cropped the audio down to about 10 seconds which includes the frames in question. If you would like, I could send it to you.

 

[mostar]

Eric -

Have you by any chance sent your latest releases to Lindsay so they can be obtained via rr.com?

Thanks!

 

[pmn929]

Eric,
Any idea when you might release the source code for this version?

 

[fmon]

Would someone advise me how I can get this program & UniTrunker to open in a windows page. They both got to a full screen (DOS type) when I run them. OS is XP SP2. I run wtrunk/ewtrunk from a bat and UniTrunker from the start menu.

TIA

 

[pmn929]

After you launch it... Alt+Enter

Would someone advise me how I can get this program & UniTrunker to open in a windows page. They both got to a full screen (DOS type) when I run them. OS is XP SP2. I run wtrunk/ewtrunk from a bat and UniTrunker from the start menu.

TIA