Is there a scanner that detects when the police radio beeper is on?

[brettbolt]

Its seems that whenever I listen to the local police radio, all I hear is license plate / drivers license checks after traffic stops. Its so boring that I usually lock it out and listen to other stuff.

I do enjoy listening to more exciting things like car chases and arrests, but they are so rare that its not worth having to listen through all the routine records checks.

When something interesting happens, they usually clear the air and turn on a beeper. Is there a police scanner in existence that will mute everything until the tone is detected?

If not, is there any other way to filter out all the routine radio traffic?

 

[doctordialtone]

When something interesting happens, they usually clear the air and turn on a beeper. Is there a police scanner in existence that will mute everything until the tone is detected?

If not, is there any other way to filter out all the routine radio traffic?

No scanner will do that.

 

[JohnnyGent]

Its seems that whenever I listen to the local police radio, all I hear is license plate / drivers license checks after traffic stops. Its so boring that I usually lock it out and listen to other stuff.

I do enjoy listening to more exciting things like car chases and arrests, but they are so rare that its not worth having to listen through all the routine records checks.

When something interesting happens, they usually clear the air and turn on a beeper. Is there a police scanner in existence that will mute everything until the tone is detected?

If not, is there any other way to filter out all the routine radio traffic?

I'm gonna say NOPE, if I'm wrong I'll be corrected any second. I stick with my answer.
Scan On.

 

[mule1075]

No scanner will do that.

Technically it could be done if the tone was close enough to trip the fire tone out feature on the Uniden models. My local pd uses a long tone of 651.9 which is what the radio id app decoded it at for pursuits bolo's etc. The 651.9 tone is also the all call tone for the fire department pagers and my 346xt trips for that so technically it should trip for the PD long tone. I have never tried or wanted to so I am not sure.

 

[w2lie]

Came here to say what @mule1075 said - or you can look for a fire pager that will activate on those tones as well. You can set the pager to keep the squelch open until you reset it so that you hear all of the action and you can reset the pager when you are done listening.

You may also be able to record a little bit of the transmissions with the pager so you can go back and listen to any alert you might have missed.

 

[KK4JUG]

In my travels, I rarely hear the beeping anymore. I don't know whether it's the luck of the draw or whether it's falling out of favor.

In any event, I don't foresee the manufacturers building that feature in.

 

[IcomIcR20]

In my travels, I rarely hear the beeping anymore. I don't know whether it's the luck of the draw or whether it's falling out of favor.

In any event, I don't foresee the manufacturers building that feature in.

There are no beepers in the Triad/Northern Foothills area of NC that I can remember hearing in the past few years. Some counties farther east still use it like Wake and Alamance counties. Virgina State Police still use it as well.

Here they just transmit one long "alert" tone and tell everyone to hold routine traffic. Sometimes they don't even transmit the alert tone at all.

 

[TailGator911]

Here, it's a very short tone, then the dispatcher will either say 'hold all traffic ' or direct those involved to Tac 2, which is encrypted. I miss the old days when they used a freq like 155.370 as inter-county coms when they had a car chase or BOLO or something big. I remember hearing it all on that frequency, screamin' and shouting sometimes, panting and trying to talk after a foot chase, yelling out street names during the chase. That .370 frequency could sometimes be quite entertaining. . Ahhh, the good old days....

JD
kf4anc

 

[rk911]

Its seems that whenever I listen to the local police radio, all I hear is license plate / drivers license checks after traffic stops. Its so boring that I usually lock it out and listen to other stuff.

I do enjoy listening to more exciting things like car chases and arrests, but they are so rare that its not worth having to listen through all the routine records checks.

When something interesting happens, they usually clear the air and turn on a beeper. Is there a police scanner in existence that will mute everything until the tone is detected?

If not, is there any other way to filter out all the routine radio traffic?

back in the 90's i had a dispatcher trainee quit a few days after being hired. in the exit interview he told me, and i remember his words quite clearly, that the job wasn't exciting enough. he thought it "would be more like the TV cop shows". police work in most places ain't like the TV cop shows. be glad of that.

our alert tone was, IIRC, 1050-hz. some dispatchers used it to clear the frequency, some didn't. the illinois state police would use a tone after the dispatcher would run a plate for a trooper on a traffic stop and the plate or driver would come back hot, stolen or wanted. this was to alert other troopers for purposes of backup. one downstate illinois state police district didn't use a tone when this happened, they used a ciw bell. the staff told me they dud this cause the alert tone not only alerted the troopers but also the suspects. it was different.

 

[brettbolt]

... that the job wasn't exciting enough. he thought it "would be more like the TV cop shows". police work in most places ain't like the TV cop shows. be glad of that.
...

I hear what you are saying and I'm glad there are not emergencies happening all the time. It's just that during the hours between emergencies I would rather listen to something else.

The "keep the channel clear" tone would be easy to detect in software. I think I will see about adding this feature in an SDR program.

 

[rk911]

well, assuming you can program your SDR to stay muted unless it hears a particular tone you’re likely to miss a lot since not every agency...A) uses a tone, B) those that do may not always use it, C) different tones may be used for different things and D) different agencies may use different things.

back in the day Motorola was pretty much the only game in town when it came to dispatch consoles...CentraComm I and II. each had dedicated alert tone buttons (again. i think at 1050hz but i could be wrong. anymore breakfast is a dim memory. don’t get old). these days everybody and their grandma makes radio consoles. i could go on and on about the good old days...KSR teletype, Incoterm terminals, Z2 or Z5 but it makes me feel old-er. ).

good luck

 

[bob550]

If not, is there any other way to filter out all the routine radio traffic?

I feel your pain! But this is what happens when you're listening to unfiltered police calls. So, hit the scan/resume button on the scanner and move on. It's not a perfect solution, but it's the only one consistently available on most scanners, except for the Unications, which are pagers of course.

 

[ofd8001]

I don't think the tones (at least the ones I'm familiar with) last long enough to be decoded. Probably one of those things you have to develop an ear for. Other clues to something of interest are voice timbre and background noises (sirens, yelling, etc.)

 

[Danny37]

With time you'll be able to filter out those routine calls with something that's called "passive listening" many people in public safety occupations develope this skill with time. You'll be able to zone into the more priority traffic with time comes and ignore the routine stuff but somewhat listening. It's hard to explain but the more you do this, you'll just develope an ear for it.

 

[brettbolt]

With time you'll be able to filter out those routine calls with something that's called "passive listening" many people in public safety occupations develope this skill with time. You'll be able to zone into the more priority traffic with time comes and ignore the routine stuff but somewhat listening. It's hard to explain but the more you do this, you'll just develope an ear for it.

True, I could learn to ignore routine calls. But while the scanner is stuck on routine traffic I might be missing out on something more interesting on another channel.

It would be nice to have this blockout feature on a portable scanner. I was hoping someone would know a way to accomplish this with an existing scanner (which is why I started this thread). But now that I know it isn't available (thanks to the users who replied here), I will try to implement this in my SDR program 'DR Processor' at n6by.com . I am the author.

The user will have to input the emergency beeper frequency and time between beeps for the channel. Then the program will mute audio until it detects the specified frequency (using the same tone detection code that it currently uses for tone squelch).

 

[bob550]

The disadvantage to using technology to filter radio calls is that there are varying degrees of "interesting calls". Waiting for calls that meet the criteria set by software may cause the loss of several you may have wanted to hear, and your scanner may be quiet most of the time waiting for that tone. Then too, the level of activity under these circumstances will vary by location and department being monitored. I agree with Danny37 in that the best filtering system available is your own mind.

 

[jim202]

Back a number of years ago, there use to be an alert tone the dispatcher could activate that would beep about every 30 seconds or so. This was used to keep the channel being used clear of non emergency traffic as some sort of activity was going on. Generally it was used for chases and active LE activity where a clear channel was important. Never have I heard it being used on a fire channel.

Jim

 

[wtp]

another answer is.....MORE RADIOS !
i use one for the dispatch channels,
one has them turned off so i get all the other stuff,
one has the inputs to know if someone is in the neighborhood.
and some older ones for the real slow frequencies (business, mutual aid, DEA)

 

[TailGator911]

another answer is.....MORE RADIOS !
i use one for the dispatch channels,
one has them turned off so i get all the other stuff,
one has the inputs to know if someone is in the neighborhood.
and some older ones for the real slow frequencies (business, mutual aid, DEA)

Exactly how I organize my radios. There is a science to successful monitoring, and a method to the madness. Each scanner in my shack has an assignment in the grand scheme of things, and they work well together. In a complex multi-mode radio environment, I find it necessary to add more radios to cover all of the different modes and digital systems in today's ever-expanding world of vhf/uhf communications. (at least, that's what I tell her just before I buy) har-har …. seriously, tho, the only way to ensure total coverage sometimes is to dedicate a capable radio to whatever it is you want to monitor, otherwise things get lost in the shuffle and you will miss important transmissions.

JD
kf4anc

 

[Danny37]

Exactly how I organize my radios. There is a science to successful monitoring, and a method to the madness. Each scanner in my shack has an assignment in the grand scheme of things, and they work well together. In a complex multi-mode radio environment, I find it necessary to add more radios to cover all of the different modes and digital systems in today's ever-expanding world of vhf/uhf communications. (at least, that's what I tell her just before I buy) har-har …. seriously, tho, the only way to ensure total coverage sometimes is to dedicate a capable radio to whatever it is you want to monitor, otherwise things get lost in the shuffle and you will miss important transmissions.

JD
kf4anc

While this method works, it's definitely hard to master. I noticed if I try to passively monitor with 3 different radios my brain get overloaded and I start to get a headache. However, the good news is that it was with 2 radios at one time and now I'm up to 3 so I'm slowly working myself up to 4 etc. I think one of the reason I'm having a hard time is because I'm scanning heavy traffic frequencies here in NYC.