P25RX Firmware Updates / Testing

[FP761]

Hi Todd,

Received my P25RX yesterday and found two Control Channels for our P25 System in Lancaster County. I manually added a single TG for the Group I am most interested in hearing. I found the P25RX to provide intermittent “choppy” voice, or completely miss a voice message while my Unication G5 was receiving the entire voice message at the same time.

Any suggestions to improve the P25 receiving entire voice messages?

 

[brndnstffrd]

Picked one up finally about a week ago used after trying unsuccessfully to pick one up the last few times they came available. I did feel a little guilty not buying from the manufacturer knowing that this is a small-time operation and not mass produced, but i will definitely be supporting him with future purchases.

I did have the firmware update issue initially that I was able to resolve on my own, using the bootstrap procedure. Found this thread after and saw that I wasn't alone. My impression after the first few hours was great, and now after running it for a week on a Phase II simulcast system, I am very impressed. I will be looking to add another very soon and am definitely interested in the display.

 

[Cheeseburgers]

Yeah it works great on CT's CLMRN P2 system. I sold my G4 to a coworker who works FD and would make better use of it than me. Tonight I've been running my P25RX off USB power sending to SONY BT speaker in my bonus room. Sound great!

 

[twintip720]

Hi Todd,

Received my P25RX yesterday and found two Control Channels for our P25 System in Lancaster County. I manually added a single TG for the Group I am most interested in hearing. I found the P25RX to provide intermittent “choppy” voice, or completely miss a voice message while my Unication G5 was receiving the entire voice message at the same time.

Any suggestions to improve the P25 receiving entire voice messages?

I have the same issue on MPSCS in SE MI. I was looking forward to this product, I even ordered two off the bat. I am hoping it can decode the simulcast better by doing something I haven't figured out yet.

 

[btt]

Hi Todd,

Received my P25RX yesterday and found two Control Channels for our P25 System in Lancaster County. I manually added a single TG for the Group I am most interested in hearing. I found the P25RX to provide intermittent “choppy” voice, or completely miss a voice message while my Unication G5 was receiving the entire voice message at the same time.

Any suggestions to improve the P25 receiving entire voice messages?

I have the same issue on MPSCS in SE MI. I was looking forward to this product, I even ordered two off the bat. I am hoping it can decode the simulcast better by doing something I haven't figured out yet.

Sorry to hear it guys. Would you mind trying the earlier stable version and see if that makes a difference? Version 2020-11-15_0633? I'm currently working on several issues, but none of them involve choppy audio. I'm not sure what would cause this at this point. I will probably add an option at some point to allow fine-adjustments of the audio playback sample rate, but I doubt this is the cause. I tested all units that shipped. If you are unhappy with the device, please contact me via email and I will issue return labels.

 

[FP761]

Update: I had disabled the "DUID Enhancements", as my system was UHF. I also observed the following with the DUID disabled:

1. The CC Blocks were running 7-15 Blocks/Sec.
2. The Sync State was unstable, bouncing from 1-Synced (Green) to -2 XXX (Yellow) to ? (Red).
3. The "Signal" LED color was also bouncing around. Half of the time it was green, but also some blue and occasional red.
4. I believe that this is what created the intermittent "chopped" audio and missed TG messages for me.

I re-enabled the "DUID Enhancements" and found the audio to greatly improve, the Sync State to become stable, the CC Blocks increased to 25-30 Blocks/Sec. and the Signal LED to remain a solid "Green".

Therefore, I am feeling much better about the Product performance!

 

[btt]

Another thing that could cause missed grants if you are comparing to another receiver is the TG timeout setting. It is a default of 2 seconds on the P25RX. You can set this value to as low as 100ms. It is a matter of preference.

 

[Napalm]

Hi Todd, everyone.

I got my P25RX on Super Bowl Sunday (thanks Todd). I am monitoring a Phase II LSM system here in Lake County Indiana.

With the newest firmware I'm having the following issues:
No matter what TGs I set up in the editor, the btconfig never shows me the tg ID I programmed (even if I turn off unknown TGs)
Sometimes the radio will switch to another voice grant and display the previous TGID. (I think I'm not the only one with this issue on a P2 system).

Switching back to the most recent stable fw fixes the unk TG ID issue but not the "persistent voice grant"(?) problem. From reading back the posts I think Todd is fixing these.

I am also having issues with roaming on both the recent firmware and the latest stable. I have entered in the two systems into roaming flash, and enabled roaming. I've set system timeout to 2 sec, but I never see the receiver checking/switching to the other system... am I missing something obvious?

Thanks,
K3FTW

 

[nosig55]

@btt I am really impressed with the P25RX. I was surprised at it's small size but BIG ears. The KSICS and MARRS sites are working very well here in north east Kansas. It is roaming between the two. The Marrs site is Missouri but the tower is located in Kansas near my location. The KSICS site is a seven site simulcast that has never been easy to receive with any scanner I have owned. I don't own an SDS100/200 so I cant say that they wouldn't work well. I don't foresee owning one now. The audio on the P25RX is very clear and crisp. It's easy to setup and browsing through the manual helps. It's a very cool product and am very happy with the purchase. Thank You !!

 

[btt]

Switching back to the most recent stable fw fixes the unk TG ID issue but not the "persistent voice grant"(?) problem. From reading back the posts I think Todd is fixing these.

I am working on improving the Phase II decode. It may take a while. I have some real data to work with, but there is a lot to it.

I am also having issues with roaming on both the recent firmware and the latest stable. I have entered in the two systems into roaming flash, and enabled roaming. I've set system timeout to 2 sec, but I never see the receiver checking/switching to the other system... am I missing something obvious?

Can you post some screenshots of your P25RXConfig tab and the SearchDB tab? It sounds like you have it set up correct.

@btt I am really impressed with the P25RX. I was surprised at it's small size but BIG ears. The KSICS and MARRS sites are working very well here in north east Kansas. It is roaming between the two. The Marrs site is Missouri but the tower is located in Kansas near my location. The KSICS site is a seven site simulcast that has never been easy to receive with any scanner I have owned. I don't own an SDS100/200 so I cant say that they wouldn't work well. I don't foresee owning one now. The audio on the P25RX is very clear and crisp. It's easy to setup and browsing through the manual helps. It's a very cool product and am very happy with the purchase. Thank You !!

Thank you sir. I appreciate the positive feedback!

 

[Cheeseburgers]

I really enjoy the stream to Bluetooth speaker option. Its a great little receiver.

 

[Napalm]

I am working on improving the Phase II decode. It may take a while. I have some real data to work with, but there is a lot to it.


Can you post some screenshots of your P25RXConfig tab and the SearchDB tab? It sounds like you have it set up correct.


Thank you sir. I appreciate the positive feedback!

 

[btt]

I am also having issues with roaming on both the recent firmware and the latest stable. I have entered in the two systems into roaming flash, and enabled roaming. I've set system timeout to 2 sec, but I never see the receiver checking/switching to the other system... am I missing something obvious?

Your configuration looks fine. It should switch between 853.xx and 774.xx during periods of no voice activity (for >2.5 seconds). You should probably be seeing better than 7 BLKS_PER_SEC @ -110 dBm. In the top image you were getting as good of a decode as possible (54/sec) for the same control channel @ -101dBm. You might want to look at the IQ plot on the Signal Insights tab and see if you can adjust the antenna for better performance.

 

[Napalm]

It had just finished getting off a voice call and hadn't synced properly with the display.

I have played with different permutations of settings to get roaming to work. I can't figure it out. I will do a whole reset here in a little bit and see if there's a combination of settings that got messed up. I checked the console and its setting roaming on and its setting the roam after VC loss to the number I set. I even went into the console and gave it the command directly and no joy.

I know you're busy Todd so I wonder if anyone else has got roaming to work successfully and can you share your config ?

Thanks,

David

 

[btt]

It had just finished getting off a voice call and hadn't synced properly with the display.

I have played with different permutations of settings to get roaming to work. I can't figure it out. I will do a whole reset here in a little bit and see if there's a combination of settings that got messed up. I checked the console and its setting roaming on and its setting the roam after VC loss to the number I set. I even went into the console and gave it the command directly and no joy.

I know you're busy Todd so I wonder if anyone else has got roaming to work successfully and can you share your config ?

Thanks,

David

David,
I just put the latest version on the website. I've only recently started testing this, but could you give this version a try? There are a lot of changes related to roaming since version _1304. Please try version 2021-02-15_1453. You can always return back to _1304 if necessary.

 

[Napalm]

I saw that! I'm playing with it now. TGIDs are reported correctly now, thanks. Roaming isn't working as of yet but I'll play with it some more. Thanks!

 

[Napalm]

Update: Roaming still not working for me.

I turned Off allow unknown TGs and got no voice grants. I reenabled allow unknowns and now its not reading from the TG list (everything is showing unknown).

 

[btt]

Update: Roaming still not working for me.

I turned Off allow unknown TGs and got no voice grants. I reenabled allow unknowns and now its not reading from the TG list (everything is showing unknown).

If you disable roaming and monitor each of the control channels individually, do they both work for you? I believe some people are monitoring up to 5 control channels with the current firmware (roaming enabled). (future version should allow for more).

 

[Napalm]

If you disable roaming and monitor each of the control channels individually, do they both work for you? I believe some people are monitoring up to 5 control channels with the current firmware (roaming enabled). (future version should allow for more).

Yep that's what I don't understand. If I manually select each CC I get perfect decode (54 frames / sec) with about -100dbm or better. Tracking is great, decoding is perfect (1000000 times better than my Uniden).

Could it be because its a mix of P2 and ASTRO ? I don't even see it trying to switch CCs. Would it be in the console?

I'll figure it out if it kills me LOL.

 

[btt]

Yep that's what I don't understand. If I manually select each CC I get perfect decode (54 frames / sec) with about -100dbm or better. Tracking is great, decoding is perfect (1000000 times better than my Uniden).

Could it be because its a mix of P2 and ASTRO ? I don't even see it trying to switch CCs. Would it be in the console?

I'll figure it out if it kills me LOL.

It is strange. Try going to the console, type 'factory' (enter). You should see a message about resetting config to defaults. You may have to restart the BTConfig software after this if it doesn't read the configuration back in ok. Then, turn the roaming back on , set to 2 seconds and press "Write Config".