How best to effectively manage 16 radios via PC?

[mancow]

I have this bank of 16 BC780XLTs hooked into a common antenna with a preamp searching 10 MHz of the 225-385 range each. There are times I would like to switch them all over to channel scan though and then back to search mode.

USB to RS232 adapters can be had for about $2.50 each on ebay. I have several already and they work great. But, what do I drive them with? Proscan is great but 16 instances of that seems like it would get out of hand quickly. I guess I could load 16 instances of it in separate directories so it saves all the com port settings but I'm still not sure that's the best method.

Changing them all manually is a real drag.

Any ideas as to what program would be the best, if any?

 

[ka3jjz]

Change all 16 at the same time?? I think that would be pretty difficult; you've already described the issues, and there's another - having a bunch of cables hanging off the scanner front port is an invitation to disaster. It only takes a careless yank or an accident to break that port.

I'm quite sure ProScan can have multiple instances of itself running at the same time - it's called the sessions manager (see the screen shots on the website). I would bet that there is a limit to the number of sessions you can have running at the same time, though - probably due to memory constraints. And I would think it would be more than a bit overwhelming to have 16 'sessions' all going at the same time, as you've already noted.

Sounds like a good question for the ProScan thread, to be honest....

Perhaps do 4 scanners at a time then do that 4 times? That might be more doable....Mike

 

[cg]

All my old scanners run through an Edgeport 8 port serial to USB adapter. I then use ProScan to control them. However, I don't record or log each radio, I only use this setup because the rear db9 ports are inaccessible (and USB adapters were pricy when I set it up). I got two fairly cheap on EBAY.
Edgeport/8 - 8 RS-232 serial DB-9 - 301-1002-08 - Digi International

I have had 8 instances of Proscan running just to try it and it worked well. It did challenge the computer I had at the time but my newer one would probably handle it well.

Once you had all the radios on serial ports, I would guess a file could be run that issued Uniden commands to 16 ports one at a time for either Scan or Search. That kind of stuff is well beyond me though.

chris

 

[PhillyPhoto]

Change all 16 at the same time??

If you're just looking to either hold or resume all 16 at once, you could create a simple program. If you want virtual displays, it would be easier to run multiple instances of something like FreeScan.

 

[mancow]

Ideally I would like to just be able to connect to any one at will so I can program it. I think the multiport 232 to USB adapter and proscan is probably the best route so far.