I don't normally do this...Help!!

[daveo1265]

OK, so for Christmas 2010 my wife got me a GRE psr310 so we could have a nice weather radio and listen to the police dispatch when the power goes out. So I set to work on how to program this little guy. I read the manual, I am still confused. I read the rewritten manual I found on the wiki. I still am confused. I joined Radio Reference with a premium membership to find out more information, and I am still confused. I got a software to program the device which is supposed to have access to the Radio Reference data base and thought I had it, no luck. I pick up nothing. I have lurked on the forum here for almost 9 months because that is usually how I roll. I find out as much information as I can on my own, then I post intelligent questions. This time I have no intelligent question to ask. I would just like to get my scanner set up so I can listen to the fire and police, and use it as a weather radio. I am a software engineer. I went to school and got my degree. I have been working as an engineer for almost 17 years now. I have never been so vexed by setting up a piece of technology. This can't be as hard as I am making it, but it has almost been a year and it is still not running. HELP ME!!!!!! Please?

By the way I am in Kenosha Wisconsin. If you need more info on my location to help me let me know. I know that you will need more specifics about what it is that I don't understand, however I don't even know what questions to ask!!!

Thanks for reading my rant.

aTdHvAaNnKcSe

Daveo1265

 

[GrayJeep]

When you look at the listings for Kenosha (Kenosha County, Wisconsin (WI) Scanner Frequencies and Radio Frequency Reference) you should notice to the right hand side of the listing something like P25 or FM.

Your radio will not do P25 (P25 is digital).
You might try programming just Fire Dispatch (FM) and see if you can hear that. (start with single experiments before trying to load everything)

(In the line of learning and simplicity- try manually programming the weather frequency that the radio picks up when you use the automatic wx function.)

 

[daveo1265]

See how I confused I am? I lied in my opening post. I have the PSR 500! Oh Man this is just not good!!!!

 

[GrayJeep]

See how I confused I am? I lied in my opening post. I have the PSR 500! Oh Man this is just not good!!!!

OK. So your radio will (eventually) do P25.

Start small. Learn one thing. I suggest a conventional (FM) channel. Get that to work.

Then try another small one or two. (different agency or something)

Then see if you can program a control channel as conventional. That will show whether you can even hear that control or not.

Find which control channels you can hear strongly.

Then program those control channels as a trunked system with a talkgroup wildcard to hear everything that comes thru the channel. That will prove you have the control channel set right and that there's traffic.

Save the talkgroups you see come thru. Then look them up and see if you want to listen to them.

Then learn about talkgroups and programming them specifically and excluding ones you don't want to hear.

Then figure out scanlists.

Then figure out vscanner storage.

This all goes much, much better if you use programming software like Win500 and the interface cable. Changes are faster, easier and more intuitive to make.


These things are really complicated so expecting to program everything all at once is unreasonable.
Good luck!

 

[Highpockets]

If you go with Win500:

Win500: PSR-500, PSR-600, PRO-106, PRO-197, PSR-310, PSR-410 Scanner Software for Data Management, Monitoring, and Control

Here is a Guide that will help with using the program:

WIN500 - UtahRadio

 

[fmon]

Dave I like Win500 as in Steve's post above. However, if you have ARC500 this zip may work.

 

[DickH]

See how I confused I am? I lied in my opening post. I have the PSR 500! Oh Man this is just not good!!!!

This will give you a rough idea of what trunking is all about. Your scanner is programmed a little differently than this writeup describes but this still may help you understand trunking.

Motorola Trunking:
The object of trunking is to allow many users to share a relatively few frequencies.
A trunking system is controlled by a computer. Information (data) is exchanged between the system radios and the computer on a control channel, sometimes called a data channel. It sounds like a strong buzz.
A large system can have up to 28 freqs., 4 of which may be used as control channels. The control channel may be changed once a day or as often as the programmer decides. Some scanners need only the control channels to track an entire system. Just put in the 4 Control Channels.

Each group of users (Fire, Police, etc.) is assigned TALK GROUPS. In a Motorola Type II system, the most common type, TGs are usually in 32 number steps starting with 16 and going up to 65536; 16, 48, 80 --- 4656, 4688, 4720 --- 28944, 28976, etc. System radios can have more than 100 TGs programmed into them.

After all the freqs. have been entered and it is "trunking", the Banks become SCAN LISTS where you enter the Talk Groups you want to hear.
Use the Talk Group numbers in the DEC column, not in the HEX column.

When a user pushes the talk button on his radio, data is sent to the computer. The computer chooses an unused freq. and sends that data to all the radios using the TG of the originating unit. This all happens in a fraction of a second and it happens EVERY TIME a radio is used.

EXAMPLE:
Fire Dispatch calling Engine 4 (TG 4528 on 856.7125)
Engine 4 answering Dispatch (TG 4528 on 852.2625)
Respond to 73 Elm Street (TG 4528 on 855.9625)
Engine 4 responding (TG 4528 on 851.6375)

If you have entered TG 4528 into your scanner, it will decode the control channel data and change your scanner freqs. to follow the conversation on TG 4528.

This should get you started, but you should read the manual carefully. You may need to read it several times.

EDACS and LTR systems use the same principles, but they can not do Control Channel Only trunking, the TG numbering is different and the frequencies must be entered into specified channels in the scanner.

 

[eagleswings01]

Welcome to RR! I have the 310 and love it, but it definitely takes time and patience to learn how to use it. I've created a few short video tutorials that explain how to do various things with the scanner. I have more coming, and hope to have a nice collection for others to reference when needed

Asking questions here is the best thing you can do! The people here on RR helped me keep my sanity. Good luck and welcome again!

Mike

* Just saw your second post and read that you have the 500 and not the 310. Sorry about that!

 

[joekansas]

I read the manual, I am still confused. I read the rewritten manual I found on the wiki. I still am confused. I joined Radio Reference with a premium membership to find out more information, and I am still confused. I got a software to program the device which is supposed to have access to the Radio Reference data base and thought I had it, no luck. I pick up nothing. I have lurked on the forum here for almost 9 months because that is usually how I roll. I find out as much information as I can on my own, then I post intelligent questions. This time I have no intelligent question to ask. I would just like to get my scanner set up so I can listen to the fire and police, and use it as a weather radio. I am a software engineer. I went to school and got my degree. I have been working as an engineer for almost 17 years now. I have never been so vexed by setting up a piece of technology. This can't be as hard as I am making it, but it has almost been a year and it is still not running. HELP ME!!!!!! Please? Dave...

I am gonna copy this to somewhere in my computer, because someday when I get a scanner like this to listen to the digital trunked stuff I am gonna be writing the same sentences, except for the part about being a software engineer. I am a railroad engineer!

From the sound of it- how do the companies who design and produce these things expect the everyday, ordinary lunkhead like me to be able to get it to work?

I have such a short fuse when it comes to this stuff that I don't know whether or not the scanner would have a very long life in my hands if I was to get this frustrated.....They are too expensive to smash!

 

[scannerboy01]

I have such a short fuse when it comes to this stuff that I don't know whether or not the scanner would have a very long life in my hands if I was to get this frustrated.....They are too expensive to smash!

When you get your scanner, you could get a computer program that can program your scanner so that you don't wreck your scanner and get frustrated at your computer.:lol: I had unhappy experience with a computer program so, I programmed my scanner by hand so that I could start listening faster.

 

[W2PMX]

From the sound of it- how do the companies who design and produce these things expect the everyday, ordinary lunkhead like me to be able to get it to work?

Ask yourself how the ordinary person who's never been inside a locomotive can run one.

We all need to learn what we want to do - no one is born knowing how to program a scanner - or run a locomotive. For someone who doesn't want to learn, an HP-1 or GRE PRS-800 might be best. Very few buttons, so it's frustrating to those of us who want to program them on the fly from the front panel, but simple for those who can't.

 

[daveo1265]

Hello every one. thanks for the help and encouragement. I have gotten PSREdit500 so i am hoping this will make it a little easier. I will let you know how I fair.

 

[KB5ILY]

This thread is probably one of the best I have seen in explaining how a digital scanner work.

 

[Ensnared]

Sent PM

OK, so for Christmas 2010 my wife got me a GRE psr310 so we could have a nice weather radio and listen to the police dispatch when the power goes out. So I set to work on how to program this little guy. I read the manual, I am still confused. I read the rewritten manual I found on the wiki. I still am confused. I joined Radio Reference with a premium membership to find out more information, and I am still confused. I got a software to program the device which is supposed to have access to the Radio Reference data base and thought I had it, no luck. I pick up nothing. I have lurked on the forum here for almost 9 months because that is usually how I roll. I find out as much information as I can on my own, then I post intelligent questions. This time I have no intelligent question to ask. I would just like to get my scanner set up so I can listen to the fire and police, and use it as a weather radio. I am a software engineer. I went to school and got my degree. I have been working as an engineer for almost 17 years now. I have never been so vexed by setting up a piece of technology. This can't be as hard as I am making it, but it has almost been a year and it is still not running. HELP ME!!!!!! Please?

By the way I am in Kenosha Wisconsin. If you need more info on my location to help me let me know. I know that you will need more specifics about what it is that I don't understand, however I don't even know what questions to ask!!!

Thanks for reading my rant.

aTdHvAaNnKcSe

Daveo1265

Please, check your PM if you still need help.

 

[daveo1265]

I am going to go step by step and post my progress here. So I started with the Kenosha fire dispatch.

I went on the database and found the frequency to be 154.19000.

I pressed PGM on the scanner and then Pressed the f key under NEW

Then I pressed the f key under conv as this is a conventional FM radio system

The first thing that came up was which scan list this is going to go on It is designated by an *
I pressed select and then pushed the up arrow to go to scan list 2. I then pressed select again and the * appeared next to scan list 2 which is where I wanted it.

I pressed the down arrow and then select to change the frequency to 154.19000 . I then pressed select again to enter the frequency

Then press down and then select to change the tag. This is an interesting on as it is not very intuitive to do. You select what letter group you want and the select the individual letter based on the position in the letter group. For instance my first letter i wanted was K. So I pressed 5 on the keypad and the letter JKL appeared. I wanted the K so I then pressed 2 and the K appeared. To get numbers you press the 1 key and to get lowercase letters you press FUNC.

Once I got that I thought I was all done, but i found out there is something called squelch modes that I needed to pay attention to. In the data base they are called TONE on the radio they are labeled as Squelch Mode. So the database calls out that the Tone for fire dispatch is 071 DPL. So to translate into GRECOM PSR500 terms, this means that the Squelch mode should be set to DCS and the DCS frequency should be set to 071. The frequency on this selection has preset values so just press the up key until you find the right one.

I then pressed the f key under the word Save and then Save again. I then pressed scan and it started to scan list 1. RATS!!!! So I found that I needed to go into the global settings and have it set to disable list one and enable list 2. Once I did that I still got nothing. I was about to give up and then it crackled to life and i heard "Truck 3 return to base" And then another voice that said "10-4 truck three return 11:34"

I was giddy!!!!!! So I now have the fire frequencies programed and the weather frequencies all in my scanner WOOOOOHOOOO!!!! I need to figure out the P25 thing as i am a little confused about that. The data base has a frequency listed but then I go to the WISCOM part of the database, there are different frequencies listed. SO I am still struggling with that one. As soon as I have more figured out, i will let you know.

I really appreciate all of the help you have given and offered.

Thanks So much!

 

[scannerboy01]

Congratulations that you got your scanner working and you are able to listen.

 

[W2PMX]

P-25, by itself, has nothing to do with frequencies. If it's P-25 trunking, you want the frequencies and the talkgroups. Using software to download from the database and program the scanner makes it a lot easier. There are also trunking tutorials in the wiki on this site.

 

[DickH]

This thread is probably one of the best I have seen in explaining how a digital scanner work.

It works exactly the same as an analog scanner. Digital is just another type of modulation - like AM,. FM, etc.

 

[Ensnared]

Visual Learning

I am going to go step by step and post my progress here. So I started with the Kenosha fire dispatch.

I went on the database and found the frequency to be 154.19000.

I pressed PGM on the scanner and then Pressed the f key under NEW

Then I pressed the f key under conv as this is a conventional FM radio system

The first thing that came up was which scan list this is going to go on It is designated by an *
I pressed select and then pushed the up arrow to go to scan list 2. I then pressed select again and the * appeared next to scan list 2 which is where I wanted it.

I pressed the down arrow and then select to change the frequency to 154.19000 . I then pressed select again to enter the frequency

Then press down and then select to change the tag. This is an interesting on as it is not very intuitive to do. You select what letter group you want and the select the individual letter based on the position in the letter group. For instance my first letter i wanted was K. So I pressed 5 on the keypad and the letter JKL appeared. I wanted the K so I then pressed 2 and the K appeared. To get numbers you press the 1 key and to get lowercase letters you press FUNC.

Once I got that I thought I was all done, but i found out there is something called squelch modes that I needed to pay attention to. In the data base they are called TONE on the radio they are labeled as Squelch Mode. So the database calls out that the Tone for fire dispatch is 071 DPL. So to translate into GRECOM PSR500 terms, this means that the Squelch mode should be set to DCS and the DCS frequency should be set to 071. The frequency on this selection has preset values so just press the up key until you find the right one.

I then pressed the f key under the word Save and then Save again. I then pressed scan and it started to scan list 1. RATS!!!! So I found that I needed to go into the global settings and have it set to disable list one and enable list 2. Once I did that I still got nothing. I was about to give up and then it crackled to life and i heard "Truck 3 return to base" And then another voice that said "10-4 truck three return 11:34"

I was giddy!!!!!! So I now have the fire frequencies programed and the weather frequencies all in my scanner WOOOOOHOOOO!!!! I need to figure out the P25 thing as i am a little confused about that. The data base has a frequency listed but then I go to the WISCOM part of the database, there are different frequencies listed. SO I am still struggling with that one. As soon as I have more figured out, i will let you know.

I really appreciate all of the help you have given and offered.

Thanks So much!

Here is the reason I like about Win500. The visual field representation of the program allows you to actually see the whole system at once, not in pieces like you get by scrolling through the manual program. When that field of view of what you are putting in that radio is expanded, you can map it like you want. You can see the talkgroups and trunking systems. Everything is there before you.

When you click on a Trunking system in the upper box, the talk groups or channels appear in the box below.

Yes, it is wonderful that you programmed it and got it to work. Now, let's refine the process with Win500. It is infinitely easier to program using this software. The example sent to you by Highpockets shows what a programmed system looks like.

But, this is why I own a PSR 500. I can fully load the working memory, copy it, and have 21 different working memories to choose from when I am driving down the road. You shape it to your specific parameters.

For instance, I have the entire state of Colorado programmed for driving through IH25 N-S, border to border, another folder for DFW area, Houston. It is a magic box to me.