How do you have your LED programmed (PSR-500/etc)

[gmclam]

Several scanners now have an LED or programmable backlight. These models include PSR-500, PSR-600, PRO-106 & PRO-197. I know some Uniden models have something similar, but I am not sure of the programmability or models.

How do you have your LED programmed?

What I have seen done is something like this:
BLUE = law enforcement
FLASHING BLUE = law enforecement tac or vice
GREEN = parks, forests, rangers
FLASHING RED = fire dispatch
RED = fire tac
YELLOW = (dedicated) EMS
WHITE = speciality channels (white fire, sar, mixed mode mutual aid)
MAGENTA = medical
etc

 

[darrylcn]

Blue = Police
Red = Fire
Magenta = EHS
Green = DNR, Corrections
Flashing Yellow = DOT

 

[SCPD]

LED Programmming

I will admit I am cheating as I have a purpose for my lights

Blue - SC Forestry Commission 800 Statewide Channel
Green - All SC Forestry VHF
Red SC Forestry Talkgroup on Florence County 800 System
Yellow - My Ham Repeaters

So if I see the light I need to listen up.............

 

[texasemt13]

My PSR-500 used to have a setup like:

Blue= Police
Gold= USMS, FBI, Sheriff's Offices, University PDs
Red= Fire/EMS
Green= CBP, ICE, Border Patrol, Parks & Wildlife Dept., Park Rangers
White= DPS (Troopers)
Purple= DEA, new talkgroups, unidentified frequencies, I-Calls

Flashing= Federal Agencies or I-Calls

Recently, Ive started turning all my LEDs off as they annoy me.

My blue LED started flaking out (doing purple, then nothing at all) so I took all PDs off it. Now it works fine again. I'm just getting tired of the light show and might just leave only the purple on to warn me of interesting hits.

 

[SQUAD109]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7E18 Safari/528.16)

Red- fire dept and ems
blue- city police dept
green- sheriff office
yellow- other misc freq.
white- NOAA weather and news etc
purple- business freq.

 

[gambill1]

blue - local pd
red - local fire
green - vfd

 

[bama9999]

Darker blue non-flashing local PD
Darker blue flashing County Sheriff
Lighter Blue non-flashing Mississippi Highway Patrol Base
Lighter Blue flashing MHP mobiles
Red non-flashing local city fire dept
Red flashing countywide fire depts and EMS

 

[DonS]

Blue solid: PD dispatch
Blue flashing: all other PD
Red solid: Fire dispatch
Red flashing: all other fire
Green flashing: Sheriff, part-time "local" frequency
Green solid: all other Sheriff
Magenta solid: any TG wildcard hit
Yellow solid: CHP

 

[Ensnared]

Light blue = utility type traffic
Purple & DTMF tone = all digital
Red = Fire/Rescue
Flashing Red = EMS
Yellow = Federal
Burnt Orange = UT Austin, Skywarn, EMG
Green = Texas State Agencies
Dark blue = Police

 

[fourthhorseman]

Recently, Ive started turning all my LEDs off as they annoy me.

.

Ahh,,agreed,,ihad the diff systems-TGs all tagged,,to lock
on,flash,became too much bells and whistles..
I just roll with the LCD backlighting,now
at a glance,the LCDs lit up and i can read the
alpha tag


That ALERt LED is just too bright,it lights up the whole
room when dark..

 

[DonS]

at a glance,the LCDs lit up and i can read the
alpha tag

From 12 feet away? That's how I use the LED.

That ALERt LED is just too bright,it lights up the whole
room when dark..

That's why some of us change the levels of the colors - so they're quite a bit darker.

 

[radioscan]

Solid = Conventional
Flashing = Trunked

Red = Fire/EMS
Blue = Law Enforcement
Lt. Blue = Aviation
Yellow = DPW/DOT
Green = DNR/Parks
White = Interops/EMA
Purple = Federal

 

[RadioDaze]

Flashing Red = Orange County "Red Channel", the unencrypted wonder.

 

[ibagli]

I used to have the talkgroups on my city's old trunked system tagged with blue, red, and orange for police, fire, and public works. I still have the now conventional frequencies for the city done the same way, but the only one that gets frequent use now is the PD (fire went to the county's channels, and public works went away completely except for snowplows). I also use yellow for the county EMA, green for new talkgroups on the state trunked system, and flashing red for the aircraft emergency frequency.

 

[kcoleman]

Flashing Red - Ambulance
Flashing Green - Air Ambulance (Life Flight/Air Evac)
Blue - MILCOM
Yellow - Wildcard TG finds

I've used some of the other colors to help me ID traffic when listening to new frequencies or a new system that I'm interested in.

Keith,

 

[fourthhorseman]

From 12 feet away? That's how I use the LED

the handheld is most always in pocket,or hand,with the ear bud..so i can work
and stay connected,without having the radio blasting,

i opt for handheds over base sta's for this reason,,just the pref,,not saying im against
the LED,i had it,,and it took about a month to figure out how to disable it.
now thinking of it,thats probably how to reduce brightness as well..

but seeing some of the other posts,and how others are using them-im seeing a little bit
better view outside the box,so to speak,,

 

[eorange]

Dark Blue, flashing = my city PD dispatch
Dark Blue = my city PD, non-dispatch

Medium Blue, flashing = local PD dispatch
Medium Blue = local PD, non-dispatch

Bluish-purple, flashing = county-wide PD, dispatch
Bluish-purple = county-wide PD, non-dispatch

Indigo Blue, flashing = my county sheriff, dispatch
Indigo Blue = my county sheriff, non-dispatch

Sky Blue, flashing = other county sheriff, dispatch
Sky Blue = other county sheriff, non-dispatch

100% Blue, flashing = local PD TAC

 

[Mike-KC8OWL]

Well, I will be the different one here - I generally don't use any of the colored LED alerts, primarily because I listen to my scanner more than I stare at it. I find the audible alerts to be more useful, and of those I still only use them in a few specific situations.

1) For trunked systems, when my TG Wildcard has traffic I have an audible alert sound that basically tells me to look at the scanner and take note of the new TG

2) When there is traffic on very specific TAC or Special Ops freqs or TG's I have a different audible alert that clues me into the fact I should listen up for something out of the ordinary or of particular interest.

The visual alerts are a neat feature, but I personally don't see a lot of value in coding almost everything with a color because again, I listen to the scanner more than I look at the scanner. In my opinion, alerts are just that, an alert that something 'different' is happening and when that happens, I need to take note.

 

[Northerner71]

Red = Fire
Blue = Poice
Yellow = Highway maintenance
White = EMS
Flashing White = EMS Pager
Purple = BMR Techs
Flashing Yellow = Local construction
Flashing light blue = wildcard

 

[Thayne]

All very interesting answers. My neighbor saw my LED's rather diffused thru a curtain one night when he came home about 3AM. The funny part was he showed up on my IR camera trying to look in the window more closely. (I have a DVR with a 500 gig hard drive that records 4 cameras)
I made him buy my lunch or else I was going to tell his wife he might be a peeping Tom. A good laugh was had by all.
Only bad thing is both wives and him want a good answer as to why I leave it on 24-7