Newbie Questions

[dwh367]

I currently have a Radio Shack Pro 96 and a Radio Shack Pro 106. As you can tell it has been many years since the last time I bought a new scanner as I haven't really needed to. However our county will be bringing a P25 Phase 2 simulcast system online later this year. Our city utilities have also switched over to a DMR trunked system and I can no longer hear them.

I refuse to pay what Uniden wants for a SDS series scanner so I'm starting to seriously look into creating my own SDR scanner. Before I get too far into the planning process though I have a few questions that would be deal breakers. I'm looking at getting the Airspy R2.

1. Will the R2 scan through a trunked P25 Phase 1 system, a trunked P25 Phase 2 simulcast system , and a trunked DMR system like a normal scanner does (plus some analog frequencies thrown in for good measure)?

2. I'm going to miss the portability of my scanners so can I set up something along the lines of the Radio Feed software so I can listen when I'm not at home?

Thanks.

 

[boatbod]

Airspy makes good SDR hardware, but how you best utilize it is entirely dependent on software.
For P25, especially in a simulcast environment op25 is a good choice, but it's support for DMR is minimal so you might try sdrtrunk or DSD+
One challenge you may have is trying to "scan" all the different modes and frequencies at the same time. SDR apps generally doesn't do that because it requires a whole lot of re-tuning which is (relatively speaking) slow. If you can cover your entire frequency range within the bandwidth of the single SDR device (10mhz in the case of an Airspy R2) you can probably set up multiple decoders to run in parallel, otherwise it might be more cost effective to buy several $25 tcxo RTL dongles, and dedicate one for each system you want to monitor.

 

[dwh367]

Airspy makes good SDR hardware, but how you best utilize it is entirely dependent on software.
For P25, especially in a simulcast environment op25 is a good choice, but it's support for DMR is minimal so you might try sdrtrunk or DSD+
One challenge you may have is trying to "scan" all the different modes and frequencies at the same time. SDR apps generally doesn't do that because it requires a whole lot of re-tuning which is (relatively speaking) slow. If you can cover your entire frequency range within the bandwidth of the single SDR device (10mhz in the case of an Airspy R2) you can probably set up multiple decoders to run in parallel, otherwise it might be more cost effective to buy several $25 tcxo RTL dongles, and dedicate one for each system you want to monitor.

Thanks for your reply. This is why I wanted to ask before I got too far into it. I hit a deal breaker so it looks like I'll be getting a few more years out of my current equipment.

 

[JimD56]

SDRTrunk running 3 Dongles, No Problem with DMR.