Simpletrack AVL IC-F121S

[KK6ZTE]

Good afternoon,

I'm looking for any information or experiences that anyone may have regarding the Simpletrack AVL add-on to the IC-F121S. The group I'm working with has seven of these transceivers, and our Icom dealer has made us a great offer on the GPS kits for each radio. Unfortunately, he isn't too familiar with them, and I cannot find much information either. I'm used to using Fleetsync AVL.

What kind of radio is needed to decode the packets and transfer to a PC? Icom shows an F1721B in their brouchure but that seems like a lot of radio for a decoder.

Has anyone used this? Can you provide any tips or experiences?

Thank you!
John

 

[mmckenna]

You should just be able to use another F-121S to handle that. Actually, probably any VHF mobile with the right in/out connections would work.

These aren't anything fancy, just a TNC like product. They usually take the detector output, data in or mic in and a PTT, and feed that into the module and give you RS-232 out the other end.

I agree, I wouldn't waste a high end radio like that for this duty.

 

[KK6ZTE]

My dealer suggested using a TK-7180 in MDC mode to pass data out. I don't know how it'll work, but I'll give it a shot.

Have one of these ordered up and will try it out. If it's as simple as you suggest, I may try to integrate into one of my 7180s to see how it works.

 

[mmckenna]

The 7180 will give you a nice DB-25 on the back of the radio to do all your interfaces. Makes life a bit easier.

I'm using the internal NexEdge AVL function on my NX-900's, so no external boxes.

 

[KK6ZTE]

Agreed; I'm using an NX700H for decoding duties on Fleetsync AVL which works well. It'll be interesting to see how the Icom plays along.

I'm going to duplicate a channel in two zones on a scan list, one an MDC zone, the other a Fleetsync zone, and see how one radio will decode the traffic. Should be interesting at the least.