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jonwienke

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Why?

Talkgroups are not like frequencies--on a P25 system, any talkgroup will show up on the same control channel.

ID search already finds all unknown talkgroups, at no greater cost than searching only for talkgroups within a specific range. It's actually slightly slower to search for a range, because the scanner has to check to see if the talkgroup ID is within the search range before deciding whether to break squelch or not.

It's a totally pointless idea.
 

vocoder

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Now that we have upgraded from a Moto type system to a P25, there are many unknown TG's. And now there are open numeric ranges / gaps of unknown TG's between the groups of assigned TG's that are listed in the DB. Example TG numeric range of 10000 to 11000, then a numeric gap range of 12000 to 12900. Then 12900 to 14000....etc. Use the TG range mode to find unknown TG's in the numeric range of 12xxx to 128xx, instead of having to stop (during ID search mode) on all undiscoverd TG's that are not programmed in the scanner.
 

wtp

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the easy way

it might sound backward, but i use lockout to "save" new talkgroups.
quite a while ago someone wanted to know what talkgroups were being used in the county next to me.
over the next couple of days i was in the county.
if my radio (396T) made a noise i just locked out the talkgroup.
so my list of locked out talkgroups was a list of active talkgroups
all of them were of known talkgroups.
but just knowing what the number is does not tell you who they are.
so even if you have a list or range of numbers you still have to listen and figure them out.
 

troymail

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Now that we have upgraded from a Moto type system to a P25, there are many unknown TG's. And now there are open numeric ranges / gaps of unknown TG's between the groups of assigned TG's that are listed in the DB. Example TG numeric range of 10000 to 11000, then a numeric gap range of 12000 to 12900. Then 12900 to 14000....etc. Use the TG range mode to find unknown TG's in the numeric range of 12xxx to 128xx, instead of having to stop (during ID search mode) on all undiscoverd TG's that are not programmed in the scanner.

Easiest/best thing to do is just put the radio into ID Search mode and monitor. If/when it stops on a known talkgroup and/or you know a talkgroup and don't want to hear it anymore, just lock it out.

In some extreme cases, I sometimes use a spreadsheet to create a list of TGIDs and then copy/paste them into the programming software. I suppose you could do something like this and then break them into blocks if you wanted.
 

jonwienke

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Now that we have upgraded from a Moto type system to a P25, there are many unknown TG's. And now there are open numeric ranges / gaps of unknown TG's between the groups of assigned TG's that are listed in the DB. Example TG numeric range of 10000 to 11000, then a numeric gap range of 12000 to 12900. Then 12900 to 14000....etc. Use the TG range mode to find unknown TG's in the numeric range of 12xxx to 128xx, instead of having to stop (during ID search mode) on all undiscoverd TG's that are not programmed in the scanner.

You are making a lot of unjustified assumptions here.

First of which that the scanner has to scan talkgroups. IT DOES NOT. In ID Scan mode, the scanner does not increment through all possible TGIDs looking for traffic. There are millions of possible TGIDs, and scanning them all would take over 58 hours if the scanner scanned them like conventional frequencies. What the scanner does instead is listen to the control channel. When a user keys up, the control channel broadcasts the TGID and the voice channel that will carry the traffic. The scanner looks up the broadcast TGID in its programming, and if it finds a match, it displays the match while playing the voice traffic. If there is no match, and the scanner is in ID Search mode, it displays the TGID as unknown and plays the voice traffic. Limiting ID Search to a range of TGIDs would actually slow the process down, because the scanner would have to do a second lookup to see if the TGID was within the search range.

Second, if you knew the system well enough to know with certainty the number range where unknown talkgroups of interest would be found, they wouldn't be unknown, and you wouldn't have to scan for them. You would already know where they are. If you don"t already know what a TGID is, you should never assume you know what it will be, even partially.

What you are asking for is pointless.
 

vocoder

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You are making a lot of unjustified assumptions here.

First of which that the scanner has to scan talkgroups. IT DOES NOT. In ID Scan mode, the scanner does not increment through all possible TGIDs looking for traffic. There are millions of possible TGIDs, and scanning them all would take over 58 hours if the scanner scanned them like conventional frequencies. What the scanner does instead is listen to the control channel. When a user keys up, the control channel broadcasts the TGID and the voice channel that will carry the traffic. The scanner looks up the broadcast TGID in its programming, and if it finds a match, it displays the match while playing the voice traffic. If there is no match, and the scanner is in ID Search mode, it displays the TGID as unknown and plays the voice traffic. Limiting ID Search to a range of TGIDs would actually slow the process down, because the scanner would have to do a second lookup to see if the TGID was within the search range.

Second, if you knew the system well enough to know with certainty the number range where unknown talkgroups of interest would be found, they wouldn't be unknown, and you wouldn't have to scan for them. You would already know where they are. If you don"t already know what a TGID is, you should never assume you know what it will be, even partially.

What you are asking for is pointless.
I have a basic understanding of the trunking process, I guess I forget some of the processing sometimes. yikes! I just wanted to throw this TG idea out there and see what others opinions are, including yours.
I started thinking about this idea because of a question I had asked concerning EDACS wildcards.
My Uniden scanners allow me to break EDACS wild cards down to specific numeric groups. I was told it didn't matter whether I programmed id search mode or wildcards, the dwell time would be the same.
I wondered if the EDACS wildcard operation could be applied to Moto systems as well? Or is this type wildcard processing specific to EDACS?
Upman could you please clarify this, thanks.
 
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