Official Starrsoft WIN500 Software Thread

[scan-pa]

Official Starrsoft WIN500 Software Thread.

This thread is to report & Discuss anything related to The WIN500 software.


Starrsoft WIN500 Software: http://starrsoft.com/ Version 1.07 is now Available **** updated on 11/27/2007

System Requirements
In order to run Win500, you'll need the following:

* A copy of the Win500 program
* A PSR-500 Scanner
* The blue GRE USB Scanner Programming cable that came with your PSR-500.
* A Windows (2000, XP, Vista) PC. Sorry - 95, 98, and Me are not supported.

 

[cvsr]

WIN500 Help File

Just got my GRE PSR-600 scanner and I'm evaluating the various programming software available. I've downloaded the Win500 zip but it doesn't include a help file, is one available?

Thanks

 

[hoser147]

Not that Im aware of yet that is what this thread is for. If ya cant find the answer here ask away..................Hoser

 

[cvsr]

Not that Im aware of yet that is what this thread is for. If ya cant find the answer here ask away..................Hoser

I have multiple scanners, a RS PRO-433, RS PRO-97, and now the GRE PSR-600. I receive transmission from the trunked system for NJ State Police Troop B on the RS scanners, but the GRE only catches maybe 1 in 10. I saw on the TSYS tab the multi-site drop down and I want to understand the difference between ROAM Threshold HI LO and STAT and which should be used.

Thanks in advance for you help!

 

[BOBRR]

My Pasting Problem From Excel ?

Hi,

As i wrote a few hours ago, I'm still fighting my Pasting from Excel into the program problem.

Seems to work for everyone else I guess, so must be unique to my Excel setup, in some way.

I have one column (that hopefully will go into the Alpha Tags program column) set up as
"TEXT" in Excel, and the other column set up as "NUMBER" format with 6 decimal places for the frequencies..

I can copy these and paste the two columns into a clean section of Excel with no problems.

Can't get it to work no matter what when trying to transfer into the program, though.

Question: do the two columns in Excel have to be separated as comma, or tab, deliminated ? Or,...?

Any other Excel setup I might have that could be lousing up the Paste transfer ?

Thanks again for the help,
Bob

 

[fmon]

I have a psr500 and would like to use win500 to download both of these county files, middlesex county and somerset county county files only.

I notice both look like mult systems nad am not sure how to set up my scanlists.
I would like middlesex in one and somerset in another. right now i only want the county freq. not the townships. Do I need to make changes in win500 when I download to program or will it upload to scanner as is with no problems. I am new to this scanner as I had a PRO97 befor and programed it manually with some grief.
Any help would be appreiced as I do not have the time to figure manual entries.

Thanks in advance
Frank

Middlesex is a single site EDACS and Summerset is multi site (2 sites) Motorola UHF with three trunking tables.

Using Web Import, navigate to Middlesex County, insure CC only is unchecked, click the site box which should indicate 6 frequencies then either check Talkgroups box or expand it and select only those desired. All = 106 talkgroups.

Click Import this system, give it a name in new dialog and select Scanlist 01. Click Ok

Reset County to Somerset and navigate to Somerset County system. You will notice the three tables are in right side of dialog and they will import with the system, ready to scan. Click in to activate the CC only box. Click in the sites box which should list 8 frequencies on bottom of dialog. Click in the Talkgroup box or sort through for only desired talkgroups. All = 120.

Click Import this system, give it a name in new dialog and select Scanlist 02. Click Ok

 

[fmon]

I saw on the TSYS tab the multi-site drop down and I want to understand the difference between ROAM Threshold HI LO and STAT and which should be used.

Thanks in advance for you help!

It's a multi site system so ROAM would be used if you are traveling about the area of coverage while STAT (stationary) would normally be used while sitting in one place. Threshold levels are settings for directing ROAM to look for a better CC should the current be turning week. The Hi and Lo numbers are upper and lower levels chosen by the scanner user to direct this search for a better tower.

The Scanner Manual gives full details on the settings.

 

[cvsr]

It's a multi site system so ROAM would be used if you are traveling about the area of coverage while STAT (stationary) would normally be used while sitting in one place. Threshold levels are settings for directing ROAM to look for a better CC should the current be turning week. The Hi and Lo numbers are upper and lower levels chosen by the scanner user to direct this search for a better tower.

The Scanner Manual gives full details on the settings.

Frank,

Thanks for the quick reply, changed setting from off to STAT and now it's coming in pretty good!

 

[fmon]

Question: do the two columns in Excel have to be separated as comma, or tab, deliminated ? Or,...?

Any other Excel setup I might have that could be lousing up the Paste transfer ?

Thanks again for the help,
Bob

Normal Excel settings, but the freq column needs to be defined as you have it.

This zip has the example I used in my previous. Note: the 4 red lines are all that I highlighted for copy, simply because of the descriptive label above the first freq. Using that label would cause the exact symptom you mentioned in your first post on topic.

 

[BOBRR]

To fmon And Don

Hi,

i can copy and paste just fine the file fmon Attached.

Still going crazy trying to figure out why I have all the difficulties with my Excel, which seems to work just fine for everything else.

I am Attaching my file that I would like to paste into the program.

Could i trouble you, please to try it, and let us know it you can copy the two columns, and
paste them into the program ?

If you can, then I guess it's something that I corrupted somehow in the program perhaps ?

if you can't, then it is with my Excel. (are the columns formatted O.K., or...?)

Much thanks for the trouble,
Bob

 

[DonS]

i can copy and paste just fine the file fmon Attached.

Still going crazy trying to figure out why I have all the difficulties with my Excel, which seems to work just fine for everything else.

I am Attaching my file that I would like to paste into the program.

1. When copying to the clipboard in Excel, don't select row 1
2. The frequencies (column B) paste just fine
3. The alpha tags (column A) don't paste.

The problem is caused by Win500's attempted interpretation of the data you're pasting - Win500 tries to automatically figure out what each column contains, so you can create tables with columns in any order. Win500 does this by looking at the data in each column, then trying to "fit" it to patterns of valid data. The expected "patterns" are tested in order of decreasing "restrictiveness". For example, a CTCSS tone frequency is more restricted than an Rx frequency, an Rx frequency is more restricted than an Alpha Tag, etc.

If you select row 1, that text throws off the Frequency pattern match.

Your column A contains values that all match valid P25 NAC codes (between 1 and 3 hexadecimal digits). Since that test is performed before the "alpha tag" test, Win500 interprets that column as "squelch code". The data doesn't actually appear when you paste it into the CONV grid because Squelch Mode is left at its default value of "Search".

You have two choices:
1. Change your alpha tags in column A so they contain other characters, and no longer match valid P25 NAC codes. You may want to do this anyway, since all you're going to see for these CONV objects in Scan mode is the frequency and something like "6" or "07A" - those tags may not be very helpful to you if you're scanning lots of objects.
2. Win500 will let you "force" the contents of a column, by adding a "header row". If you put specific text above your columns, you can tell Win500 that column A is "alpha tag" and column B is "frequency":

Alpha Tag	Frequency
01A	156.05000
05A	156.25000
6	156.30000
07A	156.35000
8	156.40000
9	156.45000
10	156.50000
11	156.55000
12	156.60000
13	156.65000
...

The recognized values for the header row are:
CONV:

ID
Alpha Tag
Frequency
Mod
SqMode
SqCode​

TGRP:

ID
Alpha Tag
Type
TGID​

 

[eorange]

This feature is nothing short of outstanding - and I'm grateful it's now documented. :wink:

 

[BOBRR]

To Don: From OP Re Paste Problem

Hi Don,

Much thanks.
That sure explains it, very well.

As always, appreciate your time and help.

I never would have figured it out.
Will now have to find something else to keep my 71 yr old brain from atrophying
(even more) !

Regards,
Bob

 

[fmon]

Hadn't figured why yet, but all I get is Channel for all Alpha Tags and the correct frequency in it's column.

I replaced your wording with a real word and they paste correctly. Your tags look like HEX values, wonder of Win alpha tag may recognize these as such and have the word Channel as replacement?

 

[fmon]

Will now have to find something else to keep my 71 yr old brain from atrophying

He he, mines 5 months younger...me thinks we've exceeded storage.

 

[Sownman]

He he, mines 5 months younger...me thinks we've exceeded storage.

The brain works like a vacumn cleaner hose and knowledge is like ping pong balls. You can keep cramming em in one end but eventually they start to fall out the other.

Steve

 

[BOBRR]

All Objects Tab ?

Hi Don,

The All Objects feature is really nice.

Not sure if this is doable or not, or, frankly, even a good idea, but in the ALL OBJECTS Tab, would it be possible to do some scan list selecting and moving around of the Objects from one scan list to another, perhaps, right from this tab ?

Bob

 

[Skud]

With regards to the recording, correct me if I am wrong, but it will record all objects to one file and you can also choose to have it record each separate object to their own file.

And is there an option to have it start a new file after so many minutes of recording?

 

[williafa]

I have scanlists 1 thru 4 programmed with 4 different trunked townships. Middlesex county, somerset county, edison township, and east brunswick township all in new jersey.
I also have one conventional township programmed, North brunswick scanlist 5.
After I upload to scanner the 4 trunked systems they are in the scanner fine. When I upload the conventional system the 4 trunked systems get cleared out of the scanner and only the conventional system is left in the scanner. I am not sure what I did after the web import from rr database.
Grank

 

[DonS]

With regards to the recording, correct me if I am wrong, but it will record all objects to one file and you can also choose to have it record each separate object to their own file.

Win500 records each "conversation" to its own file, stamping them (filenames) with the time, object type, object ID, and alpha tag(s).

This behavior is fixed (i.e. not changeable) within the program, for a few reasons:
1. Audio recording is intimately tied to the logging function, where filename etc. is based on the currently-active object.
2. With WAV file recording, there's no way to keep the audio synced to real time unless you record silence between actual samples.
3. Recording silence between actual samples forces a constant file-write for any object that has been active since the "monitor" function was started, at ~2.5 kB per second per object.
4 If recording silence for any object that has ever "gone active"... If you start the monitor function, 20 objects go "active" in the first few minutes, and you leave it running for 24 hours, you've now created 20 files (one per object), each of which is ~216 megabytes (2.5 kB per second x 86400 seconds). If the 20 objects shared active time equally, each of those twenty 216 MB files is 95% silence.
5. #4 is a moot point, since the recording code I wrote only allows one active output file at any given time. The file is written via notifications from Windows, which periodically supplies a real-time-based set of audio data.

The recording function was intended to create a set of files from which you could "follow" activity on the scanner, tying them to the activity log (text) file. If you really want to create one giant file for each active object, you should be able to find free/cheap utilities on the 'net that will concatenate WAV files.

And is there an option to have it start a new file after so many minutes of recording?

There's an option to limit each file to X seconds. Win500 will start a new file on the next "conversation". This feature was primarily intended to keep Win500 from recording giant files (forever) if the scanner got "stuck" on a keyed mic, data transmission, or other infinitely long open-squelch condition that you really don't want to record.

 

[DonS]

I have scanlists 1 thru 4 programmed with 4 different trunked townships. Middlesex county, somerset county, edison township, and east brunswick township all in new jersey.
I also have one conventional township programmed, North brunswick scanlist 5.
After I upload to scanner the 4 trunked systems they are in the scanner fine. When I upload the conventional system the 4 trunked systems get cleared out of the scanner and only the conventional system is left in the scanner. I am not sure what I did after the web import from rr database.
Grank

Did you create a second file for the "conventional" data then upload them after you'd uploaded the first ("trunked") file?

If so, that's the problem. Each "upload to scanner" operation wipes out what's already in the scanner, replacing it with the new upload. You'll need to combine your two sets of data into a single file then upload that.