SDS100/SDS200: SDS100 Help

[petey25]

Hi everyone,

I'm new to this hobby and just got a Uniden SDS100. I bought it brand new and didn't have the company I purchased from program it. I thought I programmed it correctly on Sentinel, but am not picking up anything in my area besides the occasional CB or HAM transmission. I'm looking to program it for the Lake County, CO area to listen to EMS/fire/law enforcement activity mainly.

Any resources or suggestions on what I'm doing wrong would be greatly appreciated! I read the manual for the scanner, watched a few YouTube videos, and did a decent amount of research, but still must be missing something or doing something wrong.

Thanks to everyone in advance! I'm really looking forward to learning more.

 

[wrockjm]

Welcome to the forums and congratulations on the new SDS100. So a few questions for clarification:

1) On your SDS100, what service types do you have enabled?

2) It looks like they use a trunk system. Did you program in the site as well as the talk groups. On the site, you need at least the three control frequencies:

852.575

852.850

853.100

853.6375

3) Are you using favorites? Are they enabled / turned on?

 

[petey25]

Welcome to the forums and congratulations on the new SDS100. So a few questions for clarification:

1) On your SDS100, what service types do you have enabled?

2) It looks like they use a trunk system. Did you program in the site as well as the talk groups. On the site, you need at least the three control frequencies:

852.575

852.850

853.100

853.6375

3) Are you using favorites? Are they enabled / turned on?

Thank you, I'm excited to learn more!

1) I currently have emergency ops, EMS dispatch, EMS tac+talk, fire dispatch, fire tac+talk, hospital, law dispatch, and law tac+talk.

2) I think this is where I'm going wrong. I'm not sure how to tell the difference on Sentinel between sites and talk groups, as well as how to specify those three control frequencies.

3) I am currently using a favorites list for my county and it is enabled. I'm guessing when I created the list on Sentinel I did something wrong.

Thanks for offering up some help, I really appreciate it!

 

[nessnet]

I'm not sure how to tell the difference on Sentinel between sites and talk groups,

The very first place to start is to understand trunking.
It will be very hard to operate this radio (and to program it) until you do...

Trunked Radio Systems - The RadioReference Wiki

Trunked radio system - Wikipedia

 

[wrockjm]

After creating your favorite, you'll create a trunk system. Click on that system and you'll get a screen that has four tabs. The first one is default - Departments. This is where you would program your departments which hold the talkgroups. The second tab is Sites. If you click on that, you can create a Site which will show up in the left pane. Click on the site on the left pane and you'll have the option to add your site control frequencies. Once you have those in and your department(s) and talkgroup(s) you should start hearing traffic. Hope this helps.

 

[n1chu]

Using the Sentinel programming, update the data that draws the latest data into the Sentinel program. Then, in Sentinel, use that data to create your Favorites Lists. Doing this eliminates any typos you may make while programming manually. It also includes all the settings such as “Select Service Types”, which the scanner needs to see in order to operate correctly.