I first bought a 536HP for home. I have only a few systems I listen to, but they are P25 so I had to go digital. My fire/ems dispatch is still analog and I have set up FTO to limit just to my town. Most of the time that's how my scanner runs, unless I open up police and fire to listen to something specific. I've started using the siren app a little more. Actually the engineering pc software and VLC to stream audio to my PC. I've go it set to record in case I miss a call and want to play it back. Relatively happy. Have the screen turned off unless the squelch is open so hopefully mine will take a while before it goes bad.
Anyway. I wanted to put a scanner in my truck, but FTO is a must because the freq for my town has a ton of stuff for other towns and it goes non-stop. So that tells me to stay with Uniden for FTO. I bought a 436HP thinking I would use that, but I quickly found problems with what I wanted to do.
For my truck I want it simple and easy. Bury the scanner in the console storage, maybe run a roof antenna to it, probably hook an aux speaker to it. Turn the truck on, automatically powers up to my FTO settings. Power truck off, turns off. Easy peasey. If I want to open up other freqs, I grab it from console and remove the avoids. If I want to go mobile, just pull the jacks, plug in the rubber duck and go.
Here were the 2 problems that I quickly found.
1. Hooking the 436HP to external power is done through the USB cable. You would think nice and easy. Nope. First in order to get around having to turn it on/off from the front panel you have to remove the batteries. OK, so not so bad, keep them in the console if I want to go mobile. But no, when plugged into USB Only, unit will power up/down with car, BUT powering up always brings you to a screen prompt (serial connection), that you have to answer before it will run. Deal killer. UNIDEN, MODIFY THE FIRMWARE TO GET PAST THIS ISSUE!!!
2. Possible SD Card corruption??? I've read a lot of posts where people have had corruption pulling the power from their 436/536's. Some report that they've never had problems. I guess I could give this a try and always have a spare loaded SD card in the console in case it happens. I always see that "writing to SD card" when powering down.
So, has anyone worked around these problems, specifically the first one? Sure would love to put my 436 to use.
BUT if this isn't going to work, what other uniden scanner would be best suited. I really don't want to put a full 536 in my truck for this.
996xt?
BCD325P2?
396xt?
996p2?
----edit----
I just noticed that besides pausing at the mass storage or serial screen when booting up with USB power and no batteries the scanner will NOT hold its original settings and return to FTO mode when powered back on. It went back to scanning mode. This is yet another reason why i don't think I can use this scanner for my truck unless I left it powered on all the time. Battery drain on the trucks 12v battery? Uggg nothing can ever be easy.
Roveer
Anyway. I wanted to put a scanner in my truck, but FTO is a must because the freq for my town has a ton of stuff for other towns and it goes non-stop. So that tells me to stay with Uniden for FTO. I bought a 436HP thinking I would use that, but I quickly found problems with what I wanted to do.
For my truck I want it simple and easy. Bury the scanner in the console storage, maybe run a roof antenna to it, probably hook an aux speaker to it. Turn the truck on, automatically powers up to my FTO settings. Power truck off, turns off. Easy peasey. If I want to open up other freqs, I grab it from console and remove the avoids. If I want to go mobile, just pull the jacks, plug in the rubber duck and go.
Here were the 2 problems that I quickly found.
1. Hooking the 436HP to external power is done through the USB cable. You would think nice and easy. Nope. First in order to get around having to turn it on/off from the front panel you have to remove the batteries. OK, so not so bad, keep them in the console if I want to go mobile. But no, when plugged into USB Only, unit will power up/down with car, BUT powering up always brings you to a screen prompt (serial connection), that you have to answer before it will run. Deal killer. UNIDEN, MODIFY THE FIRMWARE TO GET PAST THIS ISSUE!!!
2. Possible SD Card corruption??? I've read a lot of posts where people have had corruption pulling the power from their 436/536's. Some report that they've never had problems. I guess I could give this a try and always have a spare loaded SD card in the console in case it happens. I always see that "writing to SD card" when powering down.
So, has anyone worked around these problems, specifically the first one? Sure would love to put my 436 to use.
BUT if this isn't going to work, what other uniden scanner would be best suited. I really don't want to put a full 536 in my truck for this.
996xt?
BCD325P2?
396xt?
996p2?
----edit----
I just noticed that besides pausing at the mass storage or serial screen when booting up with USB power and no batteries the scanner will NOT hold its original settings and return to FTO mode when powered back on. It went back to scanning mode. This is yet another reason why i don't think I can use this scanner for my truck unless I left it powered on all the time. Battery drain on the trucks 12v battery? Uggg nothing can ever be easy.
Roveer
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