Multiple Voice Scanners

[Go-24]

Using trunker you get to see first hand why they say you only hear a small percentage of your local traffic. Trunker usually has 2, 3,4 or more talkgroups going on at any one time - I have 2-3 scanners going and quite often I dont hear any of those talkgroups.

You know what would be really sweet? Software that would permit you to utilize multiple voice scanners so that you could pick up as much traffic as possible via the tap/trunker. Is this feasible?

 

[wyldman]

I've noticed this as well,both running trunker,and having multiple scanners going at the same time.

What would be nice,is to have a program,that would control the radios,so that when one radio picks up a conversation,that frequency or talkgroup is temporarily locked out on the other connected scanners.This way they don't all stop on the same thing,and you won't miss stuff because of it.

This would also be a nice feature to have on new future scanners,linked by the serial ports.When you hold on something on one scanner,it locks it out on the second scanner.I am doing this manually all the time,as I'm following a fire call on one talkgroup (on one scanner),and then lock it out on the second scanner so it doesn't follow it as well.

I'd really like to know if this is feasable too,either on the computer,or in a future scanner.

 

[Go-24]

I was thinking trunker could send the first active TG to com1, send the next active TG to com2, and so on. It of course would also be able to detect which voice scanner / com port already has a TG assigned and send the next active TG to the next com port.

So say you had 4 com ports and 4 scanners to use as your voice receivers; you'd program those into trunker and it would send traffic to each as they became available. The scanners are not set up to scan, they are all set up to receive computer commands from trunker, so the duplicate hits you described wouldnt be an issue.

It seems feasible to me, but I haven't programmed in years so I wouldn't know where to begin.

Maybe Uniden or some other company could create some sort of mixer that would incorporate a trunker like program to fufill this desire; I think it would sell like hot cakes!

 

[wyldman]

Yes,that would be the way to do it with a trunking program.Let the program do the work,and the scanner just receive on the channels they are instructed to listen to.

So who's gonna write it ?

I would still like to see some sort of link available to do this on two scanners as well.One scanner wouldn't really have to tell the other one what to scan,just to lock out the one channel when it is held on the other unit.

 

[SCPD]

T4Win supported this.. It only supported a few models of radios. The next evolution / replacement of T4Win will support monitoring multiple signals and tracking multiple conversations.

How it works: any time a listen-worthy conversation comes along - it was assigned to the next available voice radio. If no voice radios are available, the priority of calls on each voice radio is compared to the new call. If the new call has sufficient priority - it can preempt a lower priority conversation. The radio on the lowest priority call is re-assigned to the new call.

Here's where it gets tricky: at the end of a call - if another listen-worthy call is active but was previously ignored due to priority ... the voice radio is assigned to this lower priority call already in progress.

Honestly, I think the number of folks that will actually use this is very small but the framework supports it so ... hey, why not!

-rick

 

[jellotor]

Well, if for example you had a mixed analog and P25 digital system (such as Bell Fleetnet here in Ontario) multiple voice scanners would/could be handy. My trunker setup has a BC250D as the voice scanner for this system and there has been times when I wished that I could monitor analog conversations separately...

 

[Thayne]

Just goes to show you can't have too many radios--Only things that make me stop are my wife and my wallet, and I never know which one comes first and will win