Need more than 999 UID's??? Try this!

[hazrat8990]

For those of you that like to have UID's programmed, and have more than the supposed limit of 999, I have found a solution that works!

For many years, I only had a single system programmed into my G5. Over the last couple years, I started adding UID's out of boredom. I started off with my county's dispatch consoles, along with fire and EMS. I thought it was pretty cool having the individual units, so I started adding in the sheriff's dept, local PD, and highway patrol. It was a tedious process, and quite a pain at times! Once the new version of PPS became available, things got much easier since I could now import .csv files into it. Once I broke over the thousand mark, I had to pick and choose, which wasn't really a big deal.

The collecting of UID's sort of became an obsession for me with my scanners. I just happen to live a stone's throw away from the LE academy and naturally, every attendee follows the rules regarding "dragging traffic" . I found myself adding UID's from almost every agency in the state. So far, I have 2400+!

Now back to the G5... Eventually, I decided to create several new zones to accommodate all of the additional TG's, as well as add surrounding states so I could use it wherever I went. I ended up approaching this task a bit different than one normally would. Instead of having every TG in the state in a single system, I created six of them just for Wyoming. All of the statewide agencies, like highway patrol and DOT, became their own system. The other five systems consisted of TG's that were part of each of the five districts in the state. I was then able to sort UID's and program them into their respective districts, thus allowing me to program all of them. This worked well until the statewide agencies exceeded 999 UID's. One thing I noticed while monitoring the 65535 TG, is that UID's that were programmed into different systems were showing up. This is when the light bulb clicked on!!

Just as an experiment, I went into my master UID list I have for my scanner and broke it up into separate files with 999 UID's for the first couple files, and the remainder in another. I then went into PPS and deleted all of the UID's from their respective systems. After that, I added the .csv files I just created to systems that had absolutely nothing to do with my state. The first file with 999 UID's went to Utah, the second 999 went to Colorado, and the remaining 433 UID's went to New Mexico. I programmed this to the G5 and all of the UID's are being displayed!! Turns out that the G5 doesn't really care where they're programmed!

In conclusion, for those of you who wish to have virtually unlimited UID's, you can do so by creating multiple copies of your existing system, or creating random ones just to store them.

 

[w2wml]

Very cool! How do you have them listed? Car1, car 2? Also, did you add them as talk groups?

 

[hazrat8990]

Very cool! How do you have them listed? Car1, car 2? Also, did you add them as talk groups?

I have individual ID's labeled exactly as dispatch, and the units themselves refer to them, with the exception of portable radios. For example, if there's a fire call and BRUSH 1 responds, I will probably see a few different ID's. One being for the truck itself, and the rest being individual firefighter portables. If I don't know which is which, I'll label them all initially as BRUSH 1. When there's a call later on with ENGINE 1 and I see one of the ID's labeled BRUSH 1 pop up, I'll know that particular ID is a portable radio, so I just label it as FIREp.

In the beginning it was a pain, since I was just writing them down as I saw them pop up on the screen on the G5, or on one of the scanners. I would also playback recordings to get ID's whenever I would take a road trip. Last year, I ended up purchasing ProScan and Utilized the logging feature. I was then able to log, edit, and organize the ID's and program them into my scanners. With PPS being able to accept imported .csv files, I am able to use the same list of ID's for everything. With the logging of ID's becoming streamlined, and being in close proximity to the academy, I quickly exceeded the maximum limit.

 

[w2wml]

do you think it will work with a G4? Also, where would you program them? I dont see anywhere to list individual id numbers.

 

[hazrat8990]

It works with all G series.

 

[BenScan]

I've noticed Radio Aliases coming through on systems where I didn't think I had them labeled, and wondered about this. I thought it might be because they were on the same system. However, as Hazrat8990 stated, it seems all Radio Aliases get lumped together. That's a nice bug/feature. I guess it might get confused if there are duplicates, but I can live with that.

I use a spreadsheet to keep track of Radio IDs and aliases for use in SDR Trunk, my Unications, and other scanners that support them. That way, I only add and update in one place. Occasionally, I'll export/import them to the different programs and devices.
The spreadsheet highlights Call Aliases that are too long or have characters that might mess with exporting/importing. I'm at about 7,500. I use another spreadsheet to keep track of ranges of Radio IDs, to help with IDing unknown users.

 

[hazrat8990]

BenScan, you are already set up perfectly for this to work! All you have to do is create a master list with only column A & B, then from that one, split it up into 8 files with a max of 999 UID's each. Import each one into the duplicated, or fictitious systems you create, and viola!! You now have all 7500 UID's in your G series!

One thing I've found is the format absolutely has to be a certain way, otherwise PPS will reject it when you try to import. The first line in each file MUST be included for things to work. To ensure that it's 100% correct, you could add a UID into PPS and export the file first, and then build your master template from there.

 

[Enjoi19]

Good to know I don't need to duplicate it between systems - I've got 1 system but 4 distinct sites, so it's programmed as 4 systems in PPS. Handy to know this - thanks!

 

[hazrat8990]

Good to know I don't need to duplicate it between systems - I've got 1 system but 4 distinct sites, so it's programmed as 4 systems in PPS. Handy to know this - thanks!

That's how I started off with adding UID's initially. I had all of the dispatch consoles, highway patrol, EMS & fire ID's included with each list since they were common. Once the lists started exceeding the limit, I split up the lists to only include ID's that would be in that particular district. It was discovered totally by accident while I was monitoring a particular site. Once I noticed ID's from the far side of the state were being displayed, that's when it dawned on me.

In your case, if they'll all fit into one system, that's all you need.

 

[w2wml]

I have the id #s loaded in my main system but when I put it in another system, it doesn't show up. Any suggestions?

 

[BenScan]

For those of you that like to have UID's programmed, and have more than the supposed limit of 999, I have found a solution that works!

For many years, I only had a single system programmed into my G5. Over the last couple years, I started adding UID's out of boredom. I started off with my county's dispatch consoles, along with fire and EMS. I thought it was pretty cool having the individual units, so I started adding in the sheriff's dept, local PD, and highway patrol. It was a tedious process, and quite a pain at times! Once the new version of PPS became available, things got much easier since I could now import .csv files into it. Once I broke over the thousand mark, I had to pick and choose, which wasn't really a big deal.

The collecting of UID's sort of became an obsession for me with my scanners. I just happen to live a stone's throw away from the LE academy and naturally, every attendee follows the rules regarding "dragging traffic" . I found myself adding UID's from almost every agency in the state. So far, I have 2400+!

Now back to the G5... Eventually, I decided to create several new zones to accommodate all of the additional TG's, as well as add surrounding states so I could use it wherever I went. I ended up approaching this task a bit different than one normally would. Instead of having every TG in the state in a single system, I created six of them just for Wyoming. All of the statewide agencies, like highway patrol and DOT, became their own system. The other five systems consisted of TG's that were part of each of the five districts in the state. I was then able to sort UID's and program them into their respective districts, thus allowing me to program all of them. This worked well until the statewide agencies exceeded 999 UID's. One thing I noticed while monitoring the 65535 TG, is that UID's that were programmed into different systems were showing up. This is when the light bulb clicked on!!

Just as an experiment, I went into my master UID list I have for my scanner and broke it up into separate files with 999 UID's for the first couple files, and the remainder in another. I then went into PPS and deleted all of the UID's from their respective systems. After that, I added the .csv files I just created to systems that had absolutely nothing to do with my state. The first file with 999 UID's went to Utah, the second 999 went to Colorado, and the remaining 433 UID's went to New Mexico. I programmed this to the G5 and all of the UID's are being displayed!! Turns out that the G5 doesn't really care where they're programmed!

In conclusion, for those of you who wish to have virtually unlimited UID's, you can do so by creating multiple copies of your existing system, or creating random ones just to store them.

I've cheated and used CoPilot to write an Excel script that breaks up my spreadsheet into individual files with 999 RIDs,Aliases. Definitely a time-saver!

Sub ExportToCSV()
Dim ws As Worksheet
Dim lastRow As Long
Dim chunkSize As Long
Dim numChunks As Long
Dim i As Long
Dim fso As Object
Dim outFile As Object

' Set the worksheet containing your data (change "Sheet1" to the actual sheet name)
Set ws = ThisWorkbook.Sheets("Sheet1")

' Determine the last row with data in column A (assuming data starts from row 2)
lastRow = ws.Cells(ws.Rows.Count, 1).End(xlUp).Row

' Define the chunk size (999 rows per CSV file)
chunkSize = 999

' Calculate the number of chunks
numChunks = Application.WorksheetFunction.Ceiling(lastRow / chunkSize, 1)

' Create a FileSystemObject
Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")

' Loop through each chunk
For i = 1 To numChunks
Dim startRow As Long
Dim endRow As Long
Dim chunkRange As Range
Dim csvFileName As String

' Determine the start and end rows for the current chunk
startRow = (i - 1) * chunkSize + 2 ' Skip header row
endRow = WorksheetFunction.Min(i * chunkSize + 1, lastRow)

' Define the range for the current chunk (columns A and B)
Set chunkRange = ws.Range("A" & startRow & ":B" & endRow)

' Create a new CSV file name (e.g., "output_chunk_1.csv")
csvFileName = "output_chunk_" & i & ".csv"

' Open the CSV file for writing
Set outFile = fso.CreateTextFile(ThisWorkbook.Path & "\" & csvFileName, True)

' Write the column headers to the CSV file
outFile.WriteLine "P25T SUID,Call Alias"

' Write the chunk data (excluding the header row) to the CSV file
Dim rowValues As Variant
Dim rowString As String
For Each rw In chunkRange.Rows
rowValues = rw.Value
rowString = Join(Application.Index(rowValues, 1, 0), ",")
outFile.WriteLine rowString
Next rw

outFile.Close
Next i

MsgBox "Data exported to " & numChunks & " CSV files.", vbInformation
End Sub

 

[vince48]

Great idea Ben

 

[hazrat8990]

I would like to try this, but I have no clue on how to make it work with OpenOffice, or where to even begin. I don't really use spreadsheets for purposes other than dirt simple things.