Peoria County Sheriff's Department - 800 MHz [Open Sky] (Official Sticky)

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Starcom21

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Please post all messages related to Peoria Counties new and upcoming system here!

12/17/07 -- The Peoria County ETSB has signed a contract with M/A-COM for a countywide Open Sky system. Estimated turn-on date is June, 2010.
 

kraziebill

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A bit of clarification...

Just to clarify, this new system will be for the entire county's police, fire, etc... not just the Sheriff's Dept.. This also includes Peoria city as well.
 

kraziebill

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It's kind of strange... Peoria wanted to get this system up and running in 3 years. It's been almost one year now and it seems nobody knows the status of it.

There goes my tax dollars i guess....
 

RayAir

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I wouldn't worry about the Open Sky system working right too much. My county decided to go Open Sky back in 2001 with completion in 2003. Well here we are going on 2009 and only 2 departments are on it and there are a lot of problems. The whole county was supposed to be on this TRS! It keeps getting delayed all the time. they tried 3-4 cut overs and it failed each time.
 

jasonpeoria911

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Not much to know about OpenSky other than it isn't monitorable by any scanners. It's basically a digital radio system over computer IP (internet protocol). The rest is just technical jargon.

Jason
 

pm1072

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Oh, and the fact that M/A Comm Opensky has failed to succeed many large installation projects.

Jason




Like the State of New York's testing of 38 sites in Erie and Chautauqua counties covering 2,000 square miles. Has failed them. Someone posted something in one of the threads that is up towards the top of the forums of how bad Open Sky has worked for them and they're only giving MA/COM a short time to clean things up, or they're bailing from the project and probably due to their budget woes, keep what they've been using before the tests. If anyone wants to use MA/COM stuff for wide area communications, though EDACS is getting old, it seems to be the most robust.
 

jrm5265

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Covington, Ga
open sky

anything new on this Open Sky system? We went Open Sky about 3 months ago, about a year past forecasted turn on..........we hate it. Hard to understand, the P7200 talkies are hard to keep volume set on. Theyr heavy. They do something where they lose system and you have to turn radio off and back on to let it re-sync

N O T G O O D
 

mrscanner

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Open Sky by MA-COM

Here in PA the state police state-wide system is still yet to be fully implemented after 5 years with a projection of now 2010. MA-COM has intentions to make a scanner for their system at some point according to their own sources because they see the market for it. Proably will be quite expensive for a while if it happens. In any case it's been a very expensive endeavor for PA, and state troopers have commented they don't like it.
 

i_galbreath

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Ok I'll admit I really do not know much about Open Sky systems. I know they can not be monitored with scanners, however if you bought the same type of radio that the Peoria system is using then in theory couldn't you just program the radio to match their system, minus the input frequencies of course.

Ian

Also here is the link for the Open Sky website:
http://www.macom-wireless.com/products/opensky/default.asp

They have some very interesting looking radios.
 
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i_galbreath

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Oh, ok. Well that sux. I have to admit I got a bit of a kick out of looking at those handheld radios, they look....space age, or like the ones I had when I was 5. lol
 

KAA951

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Why didn't Peoria become a sub-system of the Illinois P-25 TRS?

Our state has a similar wide area P-25 TRS they are installing (Motorola also), It is much cheaper for counties to add more towers for coverage on the state system (using their existing system controllers, microwave links, fiber optics etc) than to build their own stand-alone radio system.

In addition, this expands radio coverage of the counties system seamlessly across the whole state system instead of just the range of your own county radio towers.

The New York Times reported today that New York State is about to cancel their $2 billion OpenSky system as they can't get it to work.

I don't understand... There I go applying logic to government decisions again!
 

RadioMarkW

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Why didn't Peoria become a sub-system of the Illinois P-25 TRS?

Our state has a similar wide area P-25 TRS they are installing (Motorola also), It is much cheaper for counties to add more towers for coverage on the state system (using their existing system controllers, microwave links, fiber optics etc) than to build their own stand-alone radio system.

In addition, this expands radio coverage of the counties system seamlessly across the whole state system instead of just the range of your own county radio towers.

The New York Times reported today that New York State is about to cancel their $2 billion OpenSky system as they can't get it to work.

I don't understand... There I go applying logic to government decisions again!

Because they are only interested in SPENDING our tax dollars, not spending them WISELY.

And in their own words the state system was not up and running when they were studying (for over FIVE years I believe) which system to chose.

I am sure someones brother in law will make some money when it's done though!!

M
 

jamesa53

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They must be stupid like where I live, where all agencies are on Project SAFE-T (county fire, sheriff and state police) in my county with the exception of the city, which uses MA/Comm EDACS so that the police talkgroups can be ProVoice Digital Encrypted. Nice. Theres no radio interoperability between the city and those agencies although EDACS simulcasts them in Analog (nice if you dont have a digital trunking scanner). I hear that the city may be going to SAFE-T and away from EDACS though.....in their small defense, I think EDACS was up and running long before SAFE-T..........
 
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