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.

 

[N3FAH]

Mass SP TRS

Ahh... on the 800 MHz Transition Administrator "to reband or not to reband" page for the MSP TRS, the ".7175" freqs are NOT shown. Everything is either ".7125" or ".7375". And from what I can tell, MSP was not required to reband as they lie within a NPSPAC border region. So for what it's worth, I vote with RKG on the "Typo". I will put this to the test when I drive to Mass next week and report my findings here.

BTW, it has been empirically derived that a bad power cube can suck the DSP firmware out of the Pro-106. Had to do a full reboot, reload all "objects" after it went stark raving mad, flashing, beeping, etc.
Thank you Don for making that possible.

N3FAH, Central NH

 

[DonS]

Version 1.78 has a little "toy" in the Monitor/Control tab (look over at the top-right of that tab). I've tested it quite a bit here, and it seems to work pretty well for me. However, I have heard a couple of reports of crashes from people who have used it.

If you try out the "toy", I'd be interested in hearing about:
* Crashes
* CPU usage while it's running
* Accuracy of info displayed in the toy's title bar (should be within 0.5 - 1.0 Hz)

There's an obvious application for this; when I get some free time I may add such a feature.

 

[N3FAH]

Ahh... on the 800 MHz Transition Administrator "to reband or not to reband" page for the MSP TRS, the ".7175" freqs are NOT shown. Everything is either ".7125" or ".7375". And from what I can tell, MSP was not required to reband as they lie within a NPSPAC border region. So for what it's worth, I vote with RKG on the "Typo". I will put this to the test when I drive to Mass next week and report my findings here.

BTW, it has been empirically derived that a bad power cube can suck the DSP firmware out of the Pro-106. Had to do a full reboot, reload all "objects" after it went stark raving mad, flashing, beeping, etc.
Thank you Don for making that possible.

N3FAH, Central NH

Ouch, Sorry, Don... Just re-read that. I MEANT to say you made the RECOVERY possible, not you made the flashing beeping crash possible.

N3FAH/Dick S.

 

[mtindor]

Version 1.78 has a little "toy" in the Monitor/Control tab (look over at the top-right of that tab). I've tested it quite a bit here, and it seems to work pretty well for me. However, I have heard a couple of reports of crashes from people who have used it.

If you try out the "toy", I'd be interested in hearing about:
* Crashes
* CPU usage while it's running
* Accuracy of info displayed in the toy's title bar (should be within 0.5 - 1.0 Hz)

There's an obvious application for this; when I get some free time I may add such a feature.

I downloaded the latest (V1.78) and I see the toy you are referring to, "spectrum." If I click on it, a blank black window pops up. I assume it is somehow supposed to show signal in a swatch of bandwidth above/below the freq you happen to be on. Is that correct? If so, any idea why I would only be seeing black?

I'm running 32-bit Windows Vista Home Premium and have no other problems with Win500.

Mike

PS: The FIRST time I fired up this new version, went to the control screen and clicked START, it did crash. But it hasn't happened since. I had copied this over existing stuff in my Win500 directory. I'll see what happens with a clean install.

 

[DonS]

I downloaded the latest (V1.78) and I see the toy you are referring to, "spectrum." If I click on it, a blank black window pops up. I assume it is somehow supposed to show signal in a swatch of bandwidth above/below the freq you happen to be on. Is that correct? If so, any idea why I would only be seeing black?

It's meant to work hand-in-hand with the monitor/control function - meaning that you need an audio connection between the scanner and PC (i.e. if you can stream audio or hear the scanner on your PC speakers, you shouldn't get a "black window").

EDIT: No, it doesn't have anything to do with RF signal / bandwidth / spectrum. It's using only the audio that the scanner is currently "playing".

 

[mtindor]

It's meant to work hand-in-hand with the monitor/control function - meaning that you need an audio connection between the scanner and PC (i.e. if you can stream audio or hear the scanner on your PC speakers, you shouldn't get a "black window").

EDIT: No, it doesn't have anything to do with RF signal / bandwidth / spectrum. It's using only the audio that the scanner is currently "playing".

Hmm, ok. i didn't think there was any function in the scanner to show spectrum - but then again i figured you of all people would have the "in" as to if there was and may have been introducing the world to it heh.

You're right, no audio plugged in - I'll test it on my streaming scanner and see what it does.

Thanks!

Mike

 

[DonS]

Oh...

In its current incarnation, it's probably most "interesting" on frequencies that are using CTCSS, or when a fire department does a tone-based dispatch.

 

[Astrak]

Okay, hooked the scanner to the PC/IF port started monitoring and started the spectrum thing. I then noticed that whenever I talked or a sound was made in the room the analyzer would jump. So I tuned the scanner to a frequency with nothing on it and started talking into the scanner and sure enough whenever I spoke the spectrum analyzer would start jumping. Is my scanner....scanning me?

 

[DonS]

Okay, hooked the scanner to the PC/IF port started monitoring and started the spectrum thing. I then noticed that whenever I talked or a sound was made in the room the analyzer would jump. So I tuned the scanner to a frequency with nothing on it and started talking into the scanner and sure enough whenever I spoke the spectrum analyzer would start jumping. Is my scanner....scanning me?

Either a) you don't have an audio connection between the scanner and PC (i.e. a cable between the scanner's headphone jack and your computer's mic or line input jack) or b) in your Windows Mixer applet, you have the microphone input enabled but not the jack into which the scanner is connected.

The fact that you do see the spectrum analyzer "toy" jumping when you talk indicates that it's working - but it's getting audio data from a microphone on your computer, and not from the scanner.

 

[Astrak]

Didn't know this computer had a mic on it, just found out it does. Really I didn't think that was from the scanner but I didn't know where it was coming from, since I didn't know this computer had a built in mic.

 

[mtindor]

Oh...

In its current incarnation, it's probably most "interesting" on frequencies that are using CTCSS, or when a fire department does a tone-based dispatch.

I checked it out and it's pretty nice. Of course I only checked it out to tell when my audio was overdeviating. Worked well for that. Nevver thought to check CTCSS or tone dispatch - I'll do that next. Thanks Don.

Mike

 

[jnewell]

OK - 'nother possibly dumb question. I went back to clean up the file and found I'd only been importing the control channels anyway. Two questions, actually -

1. Since I wasn't importing the "bad" freq, was Win500 objecting to something else?

2. When I try to import all of the MA SP freqs, which turns out to be ~150 freqs not including a couple of prison sites, a popup says "You've selected 152 system freqs, 86 of which are unique. The maximum in a single TSYS object is 32. "Extra" seleced freqs will not be imorted. Do you want to import anyway?" The question is: if I really want ALL of those control, alt and voice channels, do I need to create different system objects (like, maybe for each site?) and then associate the talk groups with each?

Thanks for your patience!

 

[RKG]

There is no need to program the voice channel frequencies. These are provided by the OSW on the fly whenever a channel request is granted, and the PSR will decode them.

What people call the MSP system employs a total of 32 different control channels. However, one of them, used by the Commonwealth in B Troop (western Massachusetts) is also employed by someone else in A Troop (northeastern Massachusetts). Since the PSR does not mask control channels for SysID, if you (a) program all 32 control channels, (b) then set the roam parameter for "Stat" or Roam, and (c) run this while within the A Troop area, you'll encounter some audio holes while the PSR waits for a TG on the non-Massachusetts system that never occurs.

 

[DonS]

I checked it out and it's pretty nice. Of course I only checked it out to tell when my audio was overdeviating. Worked well for that. Nevver thought to check CTCSS or tone dispatch - I'll do that next.

I made a couple of small changes to the display. The biggest change is that it's logarithmic (each grid line 3dB). That may be better for testing for "overdeviating audio".

I also added grid lines at 200Hz intervals (horizontal axis), and made it a bit faster (less CPU usage).

 

[RDCat]

with these upgrades???? how do i get them onto my computer 'c' drive?now?
ron

 

[TES]

with these upgrades???? how do i get them onto my computer 'c' drive?now?
ron

Upgrading from a previous version:

To upgrade, merely download the new version of the ZIP file and extract its contents into the same folder where you currently run Win500, overwriting the older version. If you're a registered user, your registration will not be affected.

 

[DonS]

with these upgrades???? how do i get them onto my computer 'c' drive?now?

Just go to the Win500 web page and click the "Download" link. You'll be downloading a ZIP file. Extract its contents into the same directory where you're now running Win500 (you may want to NOT extract the Win500.INI file, since using the one from the ZIP file will overwrite some user-interface settings (window positions and sizes, column selections and widths, etc.)).

 

[DPS8504]

Don S;

The analyzer is a heck of a tool. I can see the where the CTCSS tone is at the beginning of the transmission and how it stays up with the transmitter. My system was very quite tonight and I didn't get a chance to see how it would react to a digital signal and NAC.

Very good tool, thanks for adding that.

 

[DonS]

Yeah, I kind of like at as an interesting "visual" toy. I did use it to catch the city FD's alert tones, as well as to notice that the county FD uses 1050Hz to alert (odd choice, I thought, when thinking of NOAA weather alert tones).

Some people watch TV at night. I write FFT, peak detection, and display code

 

[DonS]

My system was very quite tonight and I didn't get a chance to see how it would react to a digital signal and NAC.

Since it's operating off the analog "audio output", it should look similar to any other voice signal. You may see fewer high-frequency components (i.e. it may roll off more quickly than analog voice). You certainly won't see any indication of the NAC, since that's in the digital data that never makes it to the scanner's audio output - the DSP only puts the voice portion of the P25 data out to the speaker/headphone.