Lower Merion going from EDACS to DMR?

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I heard the system keeps crashing... They asked for radios from Montco.. Not sure why they didn't just get mototorla radios in the first place...
 

phillydjdan

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Honestly, how much money did they save by going to DMR versus buying a bunch of Moto radios with crypto boards and just joining the county system? I doubt they saved anything. In fact, I would venture a bet that going their own way cost them a lot more than going with the flow. Give the police and fire some Moto radios, hook public works up with some simplex VHF channels or re-purpose the UHF frequencies into a few conventional repeaters. Boom, the township has it's communications covered. I mean, this isn't rocket science. But, then again, we wouldn't want eavesdroppers to hear what the trash men are saying, right? lol
 

Ljay

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Lmt

Any radio would be good as long as the infrastructure provider had coverage which Montgomery 800 does not in a lot of of those areas and may or may not for some time depending on site aqua sit in and frequency coverage contours

And to the fellow that said upgrade to Harris ..Well That was a 4 million dollar forklift not upgrade
pretty crazy how Motorola wants all the subscriber units bought 1 to 2 years prior to infrastructure
sure thier will be 7 firmware / software upgrades by that time or an obsolete model. County won't entertain other radios at half the cost of an apX even thought the townships are paying for it . kind blows the whole p25. Format Compatability out the window and let's not forget to talk aboutut the free proprietary encryption that is offered that really takes the whole process cap testing capability to a whole new level to lock into the Motorola monoply....

Just some facts not fiction
 

Septa3371CSX1

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Ran DSD+ on this system for a little bit today. For the first time observed some voice activity on 460.275 - previously only picked up data on that frequency. 460.275 is still the data (or control) channel for the system. As far as talkgroups go I'm not sure if DSD+ is getting it right but I'm seeing 16515073 come up fairly often. I'm guessing that to be the primary police channel. 16515074 is the ID that comes up most often which makes me think that's the dispatch console. 16515074 did, however come up as a talkgroup ID which makes me guess that to be police channel 2 (on the EDACS that was used for look ups). Also voice is coming up in both slots 1 and 2. Be easier to figure this all out if privacy was disabled of course.

I also wonder if it would have been easier to upgrade the EDACS to a Harris P25 system. I know newer EDACS radios can do P25 but I do believe most of Lower Merion's radios were 20+ years old. If portable coverage is an issue with joining the county system then they could have set up a cross band repeater with one of the UHF frequencies to extend the mobile coverage of the car radio in areas of bad portable coverage (perhaps just using 800 mobiles and UHF portables with a vehicular repeater would have worked just fine for Lower Merion).

Seems like Lower Merion didn't do all of their homework with this system. After all DMR is not really intended for mission critical use but more for business use.
 

Septa3371CSX1

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Talked to an LMPD officer last week. The issue with the old system was poor mobile and esp portable talk back coverage. The vendor "promised" better coverage with this new system.

Those issues seemed to have started when they went from EDACS wide to EDACS narrow. Reception seemed to have gone down once they made that switch even within Lower Merion.

Who did they buy this DMR system from? I have a feeling it came from a dealer and not a manufacturer.
 

fireguyastro

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Lower Merion

Just for informational purposes they will be going to a HYtera Tetra system , unless they've changed the spec that was the original plan. Which would be the same system the NJ transit uses
 

phillydjdan

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I guess the police chief was hell bent on us not hearing them the next time they racially profile some kids shoveling snow...
 

Stormfax

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And not hearing the speed-check timer chew out the clipboard officers for missing the Lexus going 35mph over the limit. $$$
 

fireguyastro

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I stand corrected they are on a hytera dmr trunked system found out last night


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kh11

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What's up with 34 dispatching on TAC-4 today?
 

fireguyastro

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Has there been problems with it septa ? Sorry don't know your name mine is Tim here


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