How do you set up your LED schemes?

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map_guy

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I really like the colored LED with the whistler scanners. I started out figuring out a color scheme...

Red for fire
Blue for Police

But things quickly got crazy when I tried to added blinking and multiple colors to tell the difference between towns. So many towns, and system with 3 police channels, etc...

I had the crazy idea of having there scanner blink out the channel number. One blink for Police 1, two blinks for police 2, three for police 3, etc... but couldn't really get that to work.

Any suggestions on setting up the LED colors and flashing?

Some of the colors seem off, any colors work better than others?

Any suggestions on how to setup the boxes on the bottom that control the flashing?
 

Wackyracer

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I don't use this feature. Everything I need to know shows on my display. But I am interested in how others use it and just maybe If something interest me I will implement it.
 

gmclam

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GRE/Whistler LED Color chart

I own several scanners with this feature. I quickly learned that the LEDs were not selected well enough to produce consistent color matching from unit to unit. Fortunately, the scanner firmware provides control for color mixing. I replaced yellow with pink and black with gray.

.........RED ----- Fire dispatch
Flashing RED ----- Emergency channel
.........MAGENTA - Fire non-dispatch
Flashing MAGENTA - Search & rescue
.........BLUE ---- Law enforcement dispatch
Flashing BLUE ---- Law enforcement non-dispatch
.........CYAN ---- CHP base frequency
Flashing CYAN ---- CHP non base frequency
.........GREEN --- Parks state & local
Flashing GREEN --- Federal parks, USFS, etc
.........PINK ---- Medical
Flashing PINK ---- Nationwide medical
.........WHITE --- State government or mixed use
Flashing WHITE --- Federal government
.........GRAY ---- Media or business
Flashing GRAY ---- National business
.........NO LED -- A channel that doesn't fit the above categories (ham radio, marine, aviation, etc)
 
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lurch89

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Most of these are holdovers from my RS Pro-106 and Pro-652, yet to be adapted for my TRX-1.

LED SOLID
Green - Law Enforcement
Blue - EMS
Red - Fire
Purple - Interop
Yellow (red + green) - Public Works/Public Transit
Dark orange - Amateur Radio

LED FLASH
Red - Fire Paging
Blue - EMS Paging
Purple - Wildcard/New channels
 

hiegtx

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I only use the 'flashing' for new, unconfirmed, frequencies or talkgroups. That calls my attention to it, so that maybe I can determine who is using it, for what purpose. However, I like gmclam's comments on using flashing for emergency and some other specific uses.

Otherwise, I use Red for Fire, Cyan for local PD & S.O.'s, yellow for EMS, etc.
 

gmclam

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Yellow vs Pink

The color-accuracy problem was discussed in some other threads. You might try what is mentioned in This post to get a better "yellow" color.
Certainly I can fine tune to get yellow on any specific radio; but one formula doesn't fit all. Even with that, some yellows were not good. I found I could obtain a more consistent pink.

Also, yellow didn't fit the color scheme I devised. Pink was a good fit for medical.
 

map_guy

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Certainly I can fine tune to get yellow on any specific radio; but one formula doesn't fit all. Even with that, some yellows were not good. I found I could obtain a more consistent pink.
Also, yellow didn't fit the color scheme I devised. Pink was a good fit for medical.

I like your color scheme, a good starting point.

So many colors end up looking very similar when actually used in the scanner. Orange looks like red, yellow comes off as greenish.

Anyone know what the 3 led colors in the scanner are?

I may start with those and add other colors to see what will really stand out as different.
 

Ed6698

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For my local town I have the LED set to simulate the flashing lights on the sqaud cars, flashes alternating red and blue.
 

bravo14

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I'm using the psr800. What I have so far is

Local City PD blue/red flash fast for primary / blue/red slow is for other channels
County SO blue/green flash fast for primary / blue/green slow for other channels
Local City FD white/red flash fast for primary / white/red slow for other channels
Beach Fire Orange/red flash fast for primary / orange/red slow for other channels
County Fire red/green flash fast for primary / red/green flash for other channels
EMS yellow/white flash fast for primary / yellow/white slow for other channels
Public Works Orange slow flash
 

map_guy

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I have too many towns to differentiate and I always get carried away. I am leaning towards...

My City Fire - Red Flash, RED/White Flash, Red/White Fast Flash (3 Channels)
My City Police - Blue Flash, Blue/White Flash, Blue/White Fast Flash (3 Channels)

Then for the surrounding area Fire will be solid red, Police Solid Blue. When I get the antenna setup I may just add a color with the solid red if that town gets enough traffic I want to see at a glance.

Then Ill repeat the above with some combination...
Cyan State Police
Pink EMS
Green Environmental
Purple State Repeater
Orange DPW
Yellow Airport
Grey Federal
White Commercial

Who knows if Ill get all that to work, Im just going to go a little at a time.
 

K9DAK

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I've used on my PRO-106 and 197...

Blue for Local PD
Red for FD/EMS
Pink for Sheriff (cuz my wife likes pink)
Yellow for PW
White for county snowplows

Haven't played with the colors much on my 1088 since my PDs of interest and Sheriff are now encrypted... only thing we listen to now is FD and PW, pretty easy to tell those apart.
 

stripped

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Using the current color setup on my ws1040.

White-Ems
Green-DNR
Blue-Police
Yellow-Animal Control/Street Dept. /Mait.Dept.
Red (flashing) with the orange back light flashing too-Fire
Pink with the two chirp alarm -Emergency Management /Tac Channels
 

DJ11DLN

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This is how I had it set up when I did use it:
Dark blue = State Troopers & associated traffic
Light blue = City PD's, some flashing to differentiate
White= Sheriff's Departments, some flashing, see above
Red = Fire & EMS, some flashing, see above
Yellow = Inter-agency and other MA traffic
Green = Skywarn

But I quit using it. I found it distracting when driving, even with the level turned way down. After I had to set up the new P25 system here last winter when they shut down the old Mot2 system in my part of the world, I was going to re-set it for my base scanners after I confirmed that I'd done the new system correctly...and I found that I did not miss it. From unit #'s, voices, and even the specific noise when they key up (connect tones not being filtered out on the Dispatch side), I can 99 times out of 100 tell what agency is talking. If it sounds really interesting or something new pops up and I'm not right there, that's an excuse to get up and go jog over to take a look at the display.:cool:
 

bharvey2

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I take a minimalist approach:

Blue: City PD and Sheriff
Red: Fire
White: Ambulance / Hospitals
 

bob550

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I keep it simple: Blue for my local town's PD dispatch, and red for the FD dispatch. I don't use the LED's for any other frequencies. With the multitude of programming features and options in today's scanners, my belief is "just because you can, doesn't mean you have to".
 
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