Howdy all you much more experienced people with this realm than myself! I've recently been trying to scan local trunked frequencies using the SDR Trunk software on my M2 Macbook Pro with an RTL-SDR dongle. I love this software's ease of integration with Radio Reference, but I've been striking out on listening to any radio traffic utilizing the SDR Trunk software. My local public safety has 2 different types of trunked systems listed here on Radio Reference: One being the Motorola Type II Smartzone Omnilink system and the other being a P25 Phase II. I've tried all the frequencies on the P25 and I'm not getting anything at all, which is leading me to believe that they're still on the Motorola system for the time being until all the agencies upgrade. I've done some investigation here on the forums and elsewhere and it looks like SDR Trunk cannot decode the Motorola system, unfortunately.
For those of you that are more experienced than I am, which software would you suggest I use to attempt to get this working? It's been pretty discouraging and I've invested quite a bit of hours trying to troubleshoot all of this, to no avail. I'm a relatively tech savvy person, but I have my limits, haha. I'd prefer not to go the Parallel's route, honestly just to run Windows for other software options. I really do appreciate the ease of use and integration of SDR Trunk with the RR database, which is what got me excited about this enterprise in the first place. If you have any other suggestions for Mac that are fairly straightforward to use and can scan multiple frequencies off a single RTL-SDR unit, I'd be willing to give it another shot before I just either give up, or pony up for a Uniden SDS100. I'm really trying to avoid purchasing a $650 unit plus programming fees (because that software's only Windows compatible) if at all possible. The main reason I'm hesitant about purchasing a Uniden unit is that I've heard murmurings about the local agencies going to full encryption over the next year. I'm not entirely sure if this is true or not and I know there's a lot of moving parts to that to get all agencies on board, but I'd really hate to invest that kind of money into something that'll just become a paperweight if all becomes encrypted in the near future.
Thanks for taking the time to read this, let me know what you think and I look forward to hearing your opinions and potential solutions.
-Brandon
For those of you that are more experienced than I am, which software would you suggest I use to attempt to get this working? It's been pretty discouraging and I've invested quite a bit of hours trying to troubleshoot all of this, to no avail. I'm a relatively tech savvy person, but I have my limits, haha. I'd prefer not to go the Parallel's route, honestly just to run Windows for other software options. I really do appreciate the ease of use and integration of SDR Trunk with the RR database, which is what got me excited about this enterprise in the first place. If you have any other suggestions for Mac that are fairly straightforward to use and can scan multiple frequencies off a single RTL-SDR unit, I'd be willing to give it another shot before I just either give up, or pony up for a Uniden SDS100. I'm really trying to avoid purchasing a $650 unit plus programming fees (because that software's only Windows compatible) if at all possible. The main reason I'm hesitant about purchasing a Uniden unit is that I've heard murmurings about the local agencies going to full encryption over the next year. I'm not entirely sure if this is true or not and I know there's a lot of moving parts to that to get all agencies on board, but I'd really hate to invest that kind of money into something that'll just become a paperweight if all becomes encrypted in the near future.
Thanks for taking the time to read this, let me know what you think and I look forward to hearing your opinions and potential solutions.
-Brandon
