Official Fire Tone-Out Discussion

[ffexpCP]

Knock yourself out

If it's like the interface used to program Motorola Spectra/Astro radios, it does some sort of handshake with the software; thus you have to use their stuff. Motorola's not stupid...:roll:

I already did.

The Minitor V software (windows) is a free download. The 3 and 4 software, DOS or windows, can be bought fairly cheap online.

The 3, 5, and 5's all use the same universal pager interface (UPI). The cradle for the 3 and 4 is the same and a charger can be modified to do programming as well.

A close clone of the UPI can be built for around 20 bucks. Compare that with what M wants! :twisted: It's not as fancy, but it works just fine. And perfect for those with more time and know-how than money.

http://andyknitt.googlepages.com/minitorprogrammer

 

[bran]

Hello can any one tell me the tones the fire depatment told me their tones were 553.9 548.8 witch are in group 5 so i put the group 5 in my tone out and i here nothing what i am doing wrong

 

[Asmitty0010]

Alert time on UNIDENS

Hey guys, I have the tones for my town and my BCT15 fire tone out feature works great w/ them. My question is, the alerts that are preprogramed on the unit itself are so short you can barely catch them. Some less then .5 seconds. Is there anyway to increase the time of the alert tone?!?

 

[jpsmith2]

The PL tone shows up in Cool Edit's spectral display just like the QC tones do.

What will the PL tone look like in the spectral display? A screenshot would help if anyone has that available. Thanks!

 

[kvillered]

Davidson and Forsyth County Tone Outs

I was wondering if anyone had the Tone Out info for any of the Davidson or Forsyth county Fire Departments, in NC. Thanks for all of your help.

 

[oregontreehugger]

Did you try asking in the NC state forum? Might be more help there...

 

[Pap]

Good article in Monitoring Times Aug 06 issue, on Fire-Tone outs. By Rich Carlson
N9JIG. Good reading for 396T and 996T owners
Thanks

 

[EricCottrell]

Hello can any one tell me the tones the fire depatment told me their tones were 553.9 548.8 witch are in group 5 so i put the group 5 in my tone out and i here nothing what i am doing wrong

Hello,

Group 5 is the tone set the tones are from. Uniden scanners use the frequency values so put 553.9 as tone A and 548.8 as tone B.

To find tones you can use programs like Wintone or use a free audio editor like Audacity. If you use the audio editor also use Scanner Recorder to generate the wav files only when the tones and voice are being transmitted. Then open the wav file in the audio editor. Audacity has a plot spectrum selection under the view menu. You select a section that has one of the tones and see where the peak is on the plot.

73 Eric

 

[jpsmith2]

What will the PL tone look like in the spectral display? A screenshot would help if anyone has that available. Thanks!

If I post a screenshot or sample recording would someone be able to tell me if what I'm seeing is indeed a PL Tone?

I'm looking at the constant line around 1850Hz, marked with the green arrow.

Attached is a spectral of a call dispatch. The tone out is obviously at the left, the talking in the center, to the right is the "beep, beep, beep" cancelling the call.

 

[DaveNF2G]

1850 Hz is in the audible range, so it's not a PL tone. Do you hear a high-pitched sound over every transmission? It could be a voting selector tone that hasn't been filtered out.

 

[jpsmith2]

Yes, when that line shows up in the spectral there is a "whine" (for lack of a better term) in the background. The sound & line aren't always present, so I'm not sure what happens that causes it to appear or not appear.

Thank you for the reply.

 

[Chrome69]

anyone know where i can find this software since the site has gone down?
counter is a program that will display the tone frequency. It can be found at: http://www.tetrascanner.com/downloadfreqcounter.zip

 

[joetnymedic]

I must have said/asked this a hundred times -
Is there a possibility that since the radio can search for pl/dpl tones that it will in an update search for fire tones too? I HOPE!!!! It would really make life a heck of alot easier. Considering my sons captain doesn't even have a clue to what they are, we've looked at the inside of at least 3 scanners with no luck and the book they have is mia. We called radio repair and the guy who has that info is always not around, This is getting to be a pita. All they keep doing is telling my son to just get a pager and they'll program it for him.

 

[ffexpCP]

If they can program the pager, then they know what the tones are...

 

[ems170]

Joe if he has one of the older minitor pagers (I, II,) that are not computer programed ( III, IV) you can open up the case and look at the two white square pieces that plug into the board. These white squares are the reeds that vibrate at a given frequency (most likely your tone hint hint). look on the reed usuall on the end opposite the plug in this shoud have the htz written on them.

 

[bbreiler]

Is there a way to allow tone-out while in scan mode? I tried setting up tone out and everytime the scanner caught traffic on the tone-out channel it set off tones.

Thank you for the help in advance.

 

[oregontreehugger]

Nope, no tone-out while scanning.

 

[N9JIG]

Is there a way to allow tone-out while in scan mode? I tried setting up tone out and everytime the scanner caught traffic on the tone-out channel it set off tones.

Thank you for the help in advance.

No, all 4 of the Uniden scanners that support Fire Tone Out only allow this mode exclusively. The radio would require a second receiver in order to scan and do tone out simultaneously.

 

[BostonC75]

Is there any central forum or database that is around, either here or somewhere else, where the tones for various counties, cities, states that been confirmed are posted?
I know there is a good one for NYS and some for Massachusetts.

I have decoded and tested tones just about everywhere I go, and I know there must be alot of others out there with the same info. Does anyone have a central database?

 

[BostonC75]

Testing Tone Outs

All Units:

I have some tones that I had previously decoded and wanted to test. One of the areas I wanted to test is outside the normal reception area for me..BUT..they are live on the internet with streaming audio.

If I have the audio piped into one of those cheapo bubble pack family type radios (via audio cable), set the radio to vox, and then put the frequency that I'm using into the 396 with the correct tones, would that work?

The audio over the internet is very clear (no static)..Just wondering if this would work before I do the setup.

Any thoughts?

Thanks..

PS Does anyone read this forum anymore??