Ic Pcr2500

[ac9f]

I am looking for "pro" and "con" comments on the ICOM IC PCR2500 unit. Thinking about buying one and using with a laptop computer to be somewhat mobile. If you have one, I would appreciate your comments. Yes, I have read the comments on EHAM and checked the wiki page information on the unit.
'73
chuck

 

[slypx]

I am looking for "pro" and "con" comments on the ICOM IC PCR2500 unit. Thinking about buying one and using with a laptop computer to be somewhat mobile. If you have one, I would appreciate your comments. Yes, I have read the comments on EHAM and checked the wiki page information on the unit.
'73
chuck

Just got mine (Canadian unblocked version - Yes they exist !) 2 weeks ago and havent had a lot of time to play with it, I'm in a learning curve with this beast. It's a incredible double receiver ... November and December issues of Popular Communications magazine had great articles about it and the third and last part will be in the January issue. Grab these if you can.

Scrool half way down the page and you can read the November highlight of the article here : http://www.popular-communications.com/PC Highlights PC Nov 08.html

Scrool half way down the page and you can read the December highlight of the article here : http://www.popular-communications.com/PC Highlights Dec08.html

If you're looking to go mobile the IC-R2500 version is a solution that will not have you bring a PC in the car if you don't have to. It's not has flexible but it's fine for listening only or scanning pre-pgm frequencies.

I bought the P25 decoder and it works great where I am.

Although, IT WILL NOT DO TRUNKTRACKING, you can monitor control channels (or any voice channel) easily with special software (Trunk PCR or Unitrunker to name these). Unless some third party software bring something new in trunktracking for this receiver you'll need the Uniden's BCD396T, BCD996T and the GRE's of this world for that.

The "diversity" antenna gives you "virtual gain" but in a residential use it's not an issue unless you have two external antenna on different area of your roof that would give you different coverage (which I don't have and let others make milleage on this).

Can't tell you more for now, the holiday vacations will allow me to use it a little more and I'm sure I will discover a lot of things and features that I'm not aware of for now !

If you can afford it and depending on you're needs it a great receiver.

A last note just to clarifing for someone reading this post and not familiar with the product, it's not a "Scanner replacement", it is a "Communication receiver" and a good one.

 

[offsite]

One thing you can't do with this dual receiver unit (at least for right now) is use one side for monitoring a control channel and the other side for voice following. There currently is no trunking software app that will support this mode of operation.

Another thing you can't do is trunk track a P25 system using an external receiver for the CC and the 2500 for voice following. The 2500 defaults to analog mode, and no current trunking app I have found will toggle it to digital mode.

The 2500 employs an optional board for decoding P25 signals. It provides the best quality audio from pure P25 systems of all consumer units I have tried (2500, 396T, 996T, PSR-500). However it will not decode mixed system digital signals here in the San Diego area (470F and 2B2E). The analog channels come thru fine.

If you plan to use this unit with a spectrum analyzer (such as the wonderful SDR-14) you will have to be really good with tacking wires to components in a surface mount environment, or be willing to send your 2500 off to someone who is, because there is no stock access to the 10.7 MHz 2nd IF signal otherwise. Also, the 1st IF filter provides a limited bandwidth signal to the 2nd IF section, so you will not find a very wide chunk of spectrum to view compared with that from, say, the venerable old Icom R8500.

And finally, you may also need to move the pickoff point for the discriminator output(s). The factory point is downstream of some filtering that provides a signal at the output jacks on the rear panel that does not play nicely with some software slicer/analyzer apps.

On the positive side, there are well documented mods for both the 2nd IF and discriminator signal issues. So, both can be fixed if they are important to your scanning protocol.

Btw, my immediate plan is to do a comparative look at the 2500 vs. my R8500s, and my soon to arrive AR5000+3, with an eye to some spring pruning. So, there may be one of these on the boards here in the next few months or so, if you are still looking then.

 

[naSTI]

One thing you can't do with this dual receiver unit (at least for right now) is use one side for monitoring a control channel and the other side for voice following. There currently is no trunking software app that will support this mode of operation.

With TrunkPCR you *CAN* use the second receiver for CC decoding and the primary for Analog OR P25 Audio decoding. The only problem is P25 audio on Simulcast systems is completely useless, but fine for non-simulcast P25 (3600) systems.

Another thing you can't do is trunk track a P25 system using an external receiver for the CC and the 2500 for voice following.

Again, look at TrunkPCR. Icom supports ZERO trunking with the 2500 (and never will), however, we look toward third-party developers for this type of functionality.

The 2500 defaults to analog mode, and no current trunking app I have found will toggle it to digital mode. The 2500 employs an optional board for decoding P25 signals. It provides the best quality audio from pure P25 systems of all consumer units I have tried (2500, 396T, 996T, PSR-500). However it will not decode mixed system digital signals here in the San Diego area (470F and 2B2E). The analog channels come thru fine.

Partially true. Unfortunately, the UT-122 does not do mixed-mode receive, it's analog OR digital, not both IF you are using the Icom Software. TrunkPCR absolutely supports systems that have both Analog and Digital Talkgroups quite nicely.

Btw, my immediate plan is to do a comparative look at the 2500 vs. my R8500s, and my soon to arrive AR5000+3, with an eye to some spring pruning. So, there may be one of these on the boards here in the next few months or so, if you are still looking then.

Bring it on. These types of comparisons are always fun to learn from and always welcome.

---

RR NEEDS TO KEEP ARCHIVES LONGER, THESE QUESTIONS HAVE ALL BEEN ANSWERED BEFORE AS WELL AS COMPARISONS, ETC.. Yet since threads are archived (<3 months) no one searching finds these answers.


-naSTI

 

[offsite]

TrunkPCR

I downloaded TrunkPCR a while back, but found it was just in the Beta stage of development (ver.0_88_236), and so, as would be expected, it was a bit too frustrating to actually use.

I was looking forward to future versions for a while... but I didn't see any... so I kinda gave up at that point.

Also, perhaps I didn't spend enough time to find the operating manual section that explains how to use the 2500 Sub receiver for CC decoding and the Main receiver for voice following in a system where it needs to switch back and forth between analog and digital voice signals.

For that matter I didn't really spend enough time to see how the 2500 would voice follow pure P25 systems using the Sub and Main receivers in the configuration mentioned above.

Plus the 2500 factory discriminator tap point is not real great for decoding some CCs because it provides a filtered signal.

Do you know if things have improved with TrunkPCR to the extent that it can be used with the 2500 for standalone voice following in a mixed or digital only environment?

If so, could you point us toward some clear setup instructions for operating the 2500 in this mode, please?

 

[naSTI]

Well,

88.236 is it. True- the interface is clunky, has some parent/child window stability issues.

It would be nicer if the program could just have all of its function in a single window with three panes:

+------------------------------------------------------------+
| File Tools Menu3 Menu4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
| . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .| . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
| . . Receiver 1 . . . . . . . . .| . . . . Receiver 2 . . . . . . |
| . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .| . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
| (Tab1) | (Tab2) | (Tab3) | (Tab4) | (Tab5) | . . . . . |
| +------------------------------------------------------+ . |
| | . . . . . . Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | . .|
| | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | . .|
| +------------------------------------------------------+ . .|
+------------------------------------------------------------+

*** CHIME IN HERE ANY TIME JAY (I know you read this forum)!!

Also, there is no manual to go with it, you figure it out as you go.

However, the way I do it is the following...

Getting started:
------------------
*Make sure you have the receiver type set for PCR2500, not PCR100 or PCR1000 and ports are set correctly.
*No discriminator tap necessary, just plug in an 1/8" to 1/8" mono audio cable between the Packet jack FOR THE SECOND RECEIVER and the line-in of your soundcard.
* At this point you must understand that you will now have two audio feeds from the second receiver, ONE from the built-in USB audio driver installed by the Icom software and THE OTHER from the line-in in the sounds card.. At some point below, you will be hearing the control channel coming out your speakers through both of these paths. You will control the volume for these audio paths in two completely different areas: 1) through TrunkPCR and 2) through the Windows Audio Mixer which you access through the Speaker Icon in the icon tray (make sure you have "Advance Controls" enabled in the Mixer to be able to drop the volume slider for the line-in).


Setup Trunking:
------------------
1) Create a new Bank and give it a title.
2a) Add a channel to the new bank, and set the frequency for the CC, Press the [Store] button.
2b) Repeat step 2a for as many CCs needed
3) Add one last "Dummy" channel (any frequency at all) that you know won't have audio carriers on it. (You know why later)
4a) The Settings Menu will now apply to the currently selected bank <-- IMPORTANT TO REMEMBER
4b) Select Trunk Settings to setup the trunking parameters for the current bank. (Hopefully you understand how this part works and does not require explaining)
4c) Under the Sound Card Setup make sure your recording device is the Identifier for the sound card that will do the decoding through line-in (preferred) or mic-in. At this point, you will not yet know whether whether the inbound audio from the CC will be Inverted or not, so you may need to come back to this step later.

Trunk Tracking:
------------------
1) Open up the second receiver for the 2500 by pressing the [Dual] button. A Child window should appear.
2) Select the Bank you just created by clicking on its tab for the second receiver. NOTE: The Bank tabs for the second receiver are independent of the primary receiver's Bank tabs (make sure you have both receivers' Banks match).
3a) Using the Channel Up/Down arrows on the second receiver, select the channel whose CC provides the strongest S-reading on the meter (and/or by monitoring it through your soundcard)
3b) Once you are tuned and listening to a CC, do yourself the favor and turn the volume ALL the way down on the second receiver so you don't go nuts listening to that incessant chatter.
4) On the PRIMARY RECEIVER, use the Channel Up/Down arrows to find the "Dummy" channel you programmed earlier so the it is quiet while idle.
5) Press the [Trunk] button to start tracking.. At the STATUS WINDOW OF THE SECOND RECEIVER, you will see the two values thrashing about:
-- Ration of 1s to 0s (binary CC data), and
-- Percentage (%) of quality, recovery of the CC datastream based on how the program decodes it
NOTE1: The ratio of 1:0 should always be floating between 40-60 AND,
NOTE2: The data recovery rate should always average above 80% for quality decoding to happen.

CRITICAL NOTE!!: If you are not seeing high recovery rates, you may need to do one of two things:
A) invert the polarity by going back to the Settings window and checking the box off. This will apply to the currently selected Bank.
B) Adjust the RECORDING INPUT VOLUME adjustment slider by clicking on the Options>Properties>Recording ROUND RADIO BUTTON UNDER THE WINDOWS MIXER (through the speaker icon in the windows tray). In other words the GAIN of the audio coming into the soundcard, not the volume of that audio coming out the speakers.
C) A combination of both A and B

6) If all of the above looks good, then you should be hearing the trunked system. If you are not, make sure you press the [Search] button.
7) Also, press the [Dump] or [Control] buttons to see the live action of the trunking data flying past as message are being sent by the controller in real-time.
8) Minimized the second receiver's window as it just gets in the way and you won't need to do anything else with it unless you're tweaking and changing CC channels.
9) Enjoy watching the trunk monkey smiling at you! (if you have the "See whose talking" option turned on in the settings).

Hope this helps get you up and running!

 

[offsite]

That is so cool that you would take the time to write all this up for us here!

I will definitely try out your procedure on my system tomorrow morning.

Thank you!!

 

[offsite]

OK... Had some time to play with the setup... good, up to a point.

Please see attached screen shot.

Decoding is great (100%) but Main will not voice follow...

...and sound from Main disappears in trunk-search mode (??).

Tried my usual random walk approach with the various settings too... but no go.

Also kept getting the "buffer overflow" message.

Kind of discouraging (again).

 

[offsite]

Whoo Hoo.... got the 2500 to voice follow!

Was giving up on system 470F (see previous post) after spending way too long trying.... but decided to try another (weaker) system in the 400MHz range.

Didn't work either... at first... even after entering all the channel freqs.

Then tripped over the "frequency plan editor", entered the SAME channel freqs as in the band setup, and voila! it tracks!

Excitedly returned to the 800MHz system (470F) but found the frequency plan grayed out (as expected, because it shouldn't be required for an 800MHz splinter system).

Now, at least, I know the 2500 will voice follow something... but would appreciate a comment from Jay or someone else who's made this work with SD RCS, please. (Jay, you live here, right?)

So, to date, TrunkPCR is the first app I know of that will trunk track using both sides of the 2500!

 

[vince48]

offiste
TrunkPCR is awesome software for the 2500. I use it for all of my trunking monitoring. Have you tried the priority feature yet? Belive me, after i used this feature, i will never use another uniden radio again. This software does so much and provides a great deal of information about the system you are monitoring.

 

[naSTI]

Offsite,

Did you get 800 working?

-naSTI

 

[offsite]

voice following on 800 MHz

Yes... a bit... but then got sidetracked after finding out how to run two instances of SpectraVue (SDR-14) simultaneously on one PC... which is an awesome capability I've been chasing for a while.

I will revisit the 800 MHz issue tomorrow and report back... sorry for the loss of focus.... LOL!

 

[CrazyCalifornian]

Offsite,

I see the problem you are having from the screen shots.

In the main display you only have the "[A]" TrunkBank enabled, but in the Control Channel's "[Control]" Tab, under the "TB" (T...) column, I can see that all Talk Groups are still assigned to the "[?]" - New Talk Groups "TrunkBank".

For now, you might as well Enable "All TrunkBanks" [A]..[Z] and [?] by Left-Clicking each Blue Box once. They will cycle colors each time you click it. Blue = NOT Enabled, Green = Enabled and Orange = Active Call in this TrunkBank.

I can email you files for SouthZone, NorthZone and EastZone RCS sites if you like. I have most Talk Groups assigned to a TrunkBank. Plus a bunch of the Radio ID's have a valid description...


Jay

Sorry for not chiming in sooner, but my brain has been in hibernation mode lately

 

[offsite]

Jay,

Sorry I didn't respond on this sooner...

Yes, I discovered last week that search mode won't allow voice following unless there are TGs in a bank you have active.

I previously thought that the "?" bank would just collect any groups encountered... but no.

Once if figured that out, I downloaded the data from RR for each of the systems I was experimenting with, and Voila! everything works as advertised!!

Also, new TGs get added as they are encountered, so I can annotate them later.

Of course, SD-RCS digitals don't demod very well... but that's strictly an R2500 problem and NOT TPCR related.

The only functional issue is I see 0% decoding for system BEE00-14C, site 005-002 (pure P25).

I'm guessing it is not 3600 but some other rate, but all others are grayed out. I see a spike at 4800, so guessing that's the one need here... there's also some activity around 2100 (??)

This is one digital system that the R2500 *does* demod really well, so it would be fun to pick up the trunk as well.

I've actually been playing with TPCR all day, ("grrrrr" from Linda, LOL!) and I've got to say THIS IS ONE SUPER APP!!

Kudos to you, Jay, for the first (and only) fully functional app for standalone trunking with the 2500!

BRAVO!

Here's a shot of SD-RCS

 

[Mike_G_D]

Bee00-14c

offsite,

This site is outlined here on RR: http://www.radioreference.com/apps/db/?sid=3856.

It is a true P25 site so the CC is at 9600 baud.

My PSR500 and PRO-197 track this fine though a lot of the voice communications are encrypted (or seem to be at times).

Why does the PCR2500 have problems with the digital voice demod on the 3600 baud San Diego mixed mode RCS? Most consumer radios decode these digital communications fine while they have great difficulty with the pure P25 9600 baud simulcast systems that are becoming more popular. It's odd that the 2500 is having the apparent reverse of this situation!

I used to think that the 3600 baud Motorola systems did not use simulcast at all but I guess they do according to some information I recently received concerning how some of the RCS sites are set up. However, while the site I listen to usually (site 02, North Zone) does simulcast with multiple transmitters (and I can hear the resulting phase distortion while listening to the CC - I used to think it was just due to my location as I have many mountains to the east of me) I don't seem to have major problems with digital voice decoding at least with a good CC decode rate.

It just seems odd that the 2500 has difficulty with the SD RCS digital voice traffic.

-Mike

 

[slypx]

I have put aside my 2500 to give a learning boost to my PSR600 learning experience !!!

So I did not follow all of this thread and "trial and error" mode you went thru and don't mean to be off topics here, but can the same be done with EDACS using the two receivers ??

Thanks

 

[CrazyCalifornian]

Yes, the PCR2500 and TPCR can use Edacs in the Dual Mode.

One problem though is that you'll hear the beep, beep... beep tones when a transmission is done since I don't monitor the voice channel in dual mode.

This is on the ToDo list and hope to have this part working before the next release
(Don't have a set date on the release yet!)


naSTI,

Good drawing of the side-by-side rcvr display, but I don't plan on doing the ICom-ish look anytime soon.
I have some ideas on doing something similar to that, in my "Scanner Contruction Set" (TM) which should poke it's head out for the public to see sometime after late summer of 2009, hopefully

Jay

 

[offsite]

offsite,

This site is outlined here on RR: http://www.radioreference.com/apps/db/?sid=3856.

Yes, I downloaded the TGs to TPCR from that link a while back in anticipation of scanning this system.

I can scan this system's channels as conventional channels with P25 activated using the ICOM s/w. That s/w has a "P25 Received Call Record" function that captures and saves all TG numbers received. Over time I was able to manually map the TG numbers in this list to RRs descriptions. And by scanning them conventionally I can sort of track comm threads, but when it gets busy up there things become more ambiguous... : )

But... the digital demod is pretty spectacular... much better than with my PSR500 or 396T (which, as you indicate, will track this system).

It is a true P25 site so the CC is at 9600 baud.

I ran a spectral scan of the CC and only saw a spike at 4800... there was nothing to be seen at 9600(??).

I did this with the R2500 and the R8500, which gave the same basic spectrum.

[Btw, UniTrunker decodes it just fine, but only Jay's cool app will voice follow digitals on the R2500.]

My PSR500 and PRO-197 track this fine though a lot of the voice communications are encrypted (or seem to be at times).

Why does the PCR2500 have problems with the digital voice demod on the 3600 baud San Diego mixed mode RCS? Most consumer radios decode these digital communications fine while they have great difficulty with the pure P25 9600 baud simulcast systems that are becoming more popular. It's odd that the 2500 is having the apparent reverse of this situation!

I called ICOM tech about this immediately after I got my 2500, and they confirmed I should not expect good results on a simulcast system... likely for the same reason the Uniden doesn't do so well either. Seems like for consumer units GRE has a lock on this (at least for now).

I also see the signal strength of the CC jump all around continuously, whereas the other systems' CCs are pretty much rock steady, except for slow fades for the far away ones.

I used to think that the 3600 baud Motorola systems did not use simulcast at all but I guess they do according to some information I recently received concerning how some of the RCS sites are set up. However, while the site I listen to usually (site 02, North Zone) does simulcast with multiple transmitters (and I can hear the resulting phase distortion while listening to the CC - I used to think it was just due to my location as I have many mountains to the east of me) I don't seem to have major problems with digital voice decoding at least with a good CC decode rate.

It just seems odd that the 2500 has difficulty with the SD RCS digital voice traffic.

-Mike

Odd and annoying... LOL!

 

[slypx]

Scrool half way down the page and you can read the third and last of these highlights in the January issue : http://www.popular-communications.com/PC Highlights Jan09.html

 

[naSTI]

naSTI,

Good drawing of the side-by-side rcvr display, but I don't plan on doing the ICom-ish look anytime soon.
I have some ideas on doing something similar to that, in my "Scanner Contruction Set" (TM) which should poke it's head out for the public to see sometime after late summer of 2009, hopefully

Jay

Jay,

I've just seen too much clunkiness when clicking and shifting the focus of overlapping windows occur. Also (on my slow HP Omnibook laptop) grabbing any one of the windows and moving them around (and not letting go of a child window) causes TPCR to Buffer Overrun.

Although an absolutely phenominal idea to have the display area be "clickable" and interactive (not often found with any other radio software), it has proven (again at least for me) to also be a crutch (specially for slightly slower machines)

I can care less about the ICOM-ish look myself. What I'd like to see however, is to see the windows consolidated together rather than have all of these child windows. If you personally as the developer, or the greater bulk of your customers, prefer separate windows as it is today, PLEASE, AT A MINIMUM allow having the ability of the SubReceiver and Data windows to be dock-able into a single one.

Also we had this conversation before, but I'd still love to see the ability to have much greater control of the software via shortcuts and keystrokes rather than though clicking with a mouse. Tabbing around fields is an arse pain and not all of the fields are "tab-able" like inside the black activity area.

If everything were in one window, determining where focus is would become irrelevant, and having a shortcut available to do most things one currently require a mouse for, would be easier to accomplish. Things like:

* Pressing the spacebar during an active TG to toggle "Holding/Pausing" it.
* Pressing the Enter key during an active TG to open the properties window for it.
* Assigning Up and Down arrows to Volume
* Assigning Left and Right Arrows to cycle through stored Talkgroups/Channels.
* Assigning the < and > angle brackets to cycle through the DATA-window's Info Tabs.
* Pressing the L button to toggle Logging on the current DATA-window tab.

etc.. you get the picture.

The benefit is that it makes multi-tasking easier and less time hunting for the controls in the window. When I hear something interesting, I could Alt-Tab back into TPCR and press a key quicker than Alt-Tabbing then finding where the mouse currently is to then hit the target of what I'm trying to do in the app.


Also, GOOD LUCK WITH THE TOOLKIT YOU ARE BUILDING!

Thanks for a great app,
-naSTI