ST. Clair County VFD's going MotoTRBO?

[CyberGoth1440]

From Allcomm Wireless's Facebook page 9-12-11 :
"Allcomm Wireless, Inc has been awarded a contract from the City of Moody to design and implement a Motorola Digital Communication solution for the St. Clair County Fire Assn and the City. This will be a Multi-Ste Communication System with 300+ subscribers."


Allcomm Wireless, Inc - Company - Birmingham, AL | Facebook

Moody Fire & Police are already MotoTRBO, wonder if "Fire Assn" means all VFD's in the county will be joining them?

 

[SCPD]

Yes we are all getting screwed over by mototrbo a little at a time. I confirmed it with a St Clair offical,seems like nobody wants us to know what they are doing anymore.

 

[b5bartender]

St. Clair Times - Grant to help county firefighters

 

[CyberGoth1440]

So the Firefighters will be on MotoTRBO, Sheriff & Local LE conventional VHF (except Moody)? Oh yeah, that's "interoperability"!

 

[CyberGoth1440]

I know I read somewhere that DHS grants specified P25 or other open standards. BTW Trussville Fire has been testing MotoTRBO on their current frequencies for a few months now.

 

[medic9351301]

the plan i had heard is that all of st.clair county will go over bit by bit. and all of the county vfds will switch, and why in the hell is trussville fire testing it does not make any sense at all. makes me wonder if the pd will be the next to go over and test. i still have not heard them test them yet everytime i hear them there are clear

 

[CyberGoth1440]

I'll bet Center Point will be next to jump on the MotoTRBO wagon, they will at least have to go Narrowband NFM by 2013

 

[medic9351301]

i dont see centerpoint going over the cutoff date is next year unless they changed it, i wish that these agencies would review stuff b4 jumping head first they teach us to stop and do a scene size up b4 we make any dec. just be cause of switching to narrow band does not mean switch to digital

u can go digital and not encryp look at cullman county.

IT IS JUST A PLOY TO SELL NEW RADIOS AND EQUIPMENT
look at d-star was supposed to be the best thing since toliet paper what a big flop

 

[AlabamaWeather]

Center Point Fire will not be going digital for a long time. Unless the FCC tells them to, there are no plans to switch. ALL St. Clair Co fire depts will be switching to Digital next year. Suppose to be in place by I think March. At least we get new radios to play with at Springville lol

 

[codeplug]

St. Clair Co Fire Fighters Assoc. New narrowband freq.’s - Emission Type:7K60FXE
Call sign:WQLW602- PW
(Emission designator for MotoTRBO digital voice operation - 7K60FXE ).
Several new frequencies listed below. - Not listed in R/R
151.3475 Output
153.8225 Input
154.3175 Output
154.9875 Output
155.9225 Input
156.0825 Input
156.2325 Input
159.3825 PL 167.9 ? Output - Traffic heard near Jefferson County
Has anyone heard these freq.’s yet?

 

[CyberGoth1440]

Anyone tried this? Digital Speech Decoder (software package) - The RadioReference Wiki

 

[bob-the-scanner-man]

Yay!! Let's all jump on the bandwagon!!

I still think that traditional VHF or UHF frequencies are best for fire departments. Seems like the possiblilites for interop with traditional analog frequencies is much greater than digital. Ah well, just seems like overkill to me but I'm not the one paying for the radios.

EDIT:
Just saw what CyberGoth1440 posted. I'm going to have to tinker with that sometime.

 

[medic9351301]

from what i have read u have to have a linux based system to use it

 

[codeplug]

MotoTRBO Digital Audio

If anyone knows of a way to decode the audio for MotoTRBO in real time please post it here.
What scanner or scanners will decode the audio and whether or not a tap is needed.
What decoding software is needed and what operating system is needed for PC use.
If there is a way to decode the audio with the scanner only without having to use a PC.

 

[Forts]

No scanners will decode TRBO. You can however use DSD with a pc and a tapped scanner (providing they aren't using privacy). Lots of discussion on how to do that can be found on this site. And yes, it does currently only run under Linux.

 

[CyberGoth1440]

Yeah, it seems to be Linux only for now. I have tried literally dozens of Distributions (versions of linux) and there seems to alway be something that either doesn't work or doesn't work as well as Windows, no matter how much I tweak it. If anyone want's to give it a try I would suggest Zorin os5 or Linux Mint. If you have an old machine to use only for DSD that would be the best setup & one of the good things about Linux is that it will run well on very low-end hardware. A dual-boot with windows or Virtualization (running linux inside Windows) is another option.

 

[bob-the-scanner-man]

I've dabbled in Linux in the past and have enjoyed it for what it is. I have a few PCs I've picked up at local thrift stores that would be ideal candidates for DSD and Linux. The best part about it is that aside from getting a PC to use Linux and DSD with, all of your software is free. I'll just have to be on the lookout for a non-digital 800mhz scanner that I don't mind opening up to add a discriminator tap.

I also noticed that DSD supports P25. I assume it would possible to combine DSD and a non-digital 800mhz trunking scanner to pick up a system like the one for JeffCo and Birmingham. I already have a digital scanner but it would be kind of cool to have another one that could be used to monitor other stuff. Not trying to hijack the thread though, just thought that was interesting.

 

[b5bartender]

This site has a good bit of info on how to add discriminator taps to several scanner types:
Discriminator Output

Bob, DSD does support P25, but can't control the trunking function... so it's really only good for single-channel systems (like Cullman County), unless your non-digital scanner can natively do trunking too. (EDIT: oops, just saw you already know this)

CyberGoth, I'm running DSD on a dedicated first-generation Athlon64 system with no GUI.. Using Debian Linux ("wheezy" testing distribution with the newer 3.x.x Linux kernel), the performance was worlds better than Ubuntu 10.04. I had to install the "oss-compat" package to get it working, as DSD was written for the deprecated OSS sound system, and most modern distros run ALSA instead of OSS now.

Codeplug, Moody PD feed is back up. Had to do some rearranging, my computer room was looking like a bird's nest with wires criss-crossing everywhere I'm now scanning the output frequencies posted above as well, so they'll decode if I receive anything...it's on an indoor antenna though, so I'm not sure what the range is.
http://b5bar.dyndns.org:8000/live.m3u

 

[CyberGoth1440]

Audio sounds good, nice to know it can be done. Thanks!

 

[bob-the-scanner-man]

Sounds good to me as well. At least all hope is not lost for listening in! Can't wait to get something set up to try that out with.