Thoughts and opinioins on how to program for location based scanning...

Status
Not open for further replies.

b52hbuff

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Dec 19, 2002
Messages
1,736
First a little background... I have owned a BCD396T and a BCD996T since they first came out. I have created many 396T profiles. I typically copy the usd files from my 396 to my 996 directory, and don't take any advantage of the 996's location based scanning.

I am now thinking about taking advantage of this feature and I am considering how I migrate my older files. Mechanically, I understand that I could simply copy files, as I have done in the past, to get frequency information over. Then I could open the files with UASD 996, and enter the location information. But I'm thinking I might want to do a little restructuring to take advantage of the feature.

I will provide a practical example of my home county, but I'm looking forward to hearing from anyone with some suggestions to get me to think about differemt ways to do this.

Anyway, what I have done since the beginning of time (or since I got my 396T :)), is create a system per county and that system is assigned a unique quick key. Within each county's system are groups that contain a group per PD, FD, EMS, Sheriff. My home county is such a large geographical area, that I have divided PD and FD into three areas. PD North, San Jose (large metro area near center of county), and PD South. Since Sheriff and EMS are county wide, all of these county wide frequencies are stored in a single group within the county's system.

Here is an edited .usd file with frequencies removed, so that you can see the general layout:
Code:
// BCD396T UASD Ver. 1.4.1.1 10/9/2007 3:55:59 PM
SystemCT,CNV,01SantaClaraCnty,1,1,UNLOCKED,OFF,2,ON,0,0,AUTO,8
CGroup,PoliceNorth,1,UNLOCKED
CGroup,SanJosePD,2,UNLOCKED
CGroup,PoliceSouth,3,UNLOCKED
CGroup,CountyFire,4,UNLOCKED
CGroup,"Fire North",5,UNLOCKED
CGroup,FireSouth/SJ,6,UNLOCKED
CGroup,Sheriff,7,UNLOCKED
CGroup,EMS,8,UNLOCKED
CGroup,"SAR Teams/Parks",9,UNLOCKED
CGroup,"Public Works",0,UNLOCKED

For reference, here is a link to my county's entry in the db:
Santa Clara County, California (CA) Scanner Frequencies and Radio Frequency Reference

I don't think that having all of these frequencies in a single system is going to be very useful. I'd need to find the geographical center of the county, and then find a circle big enough to cover the county.

What I think I want is to 'promote' some of these groups into systems. So the 'PoliceNorth' group is now a system, as is 'Police South'. In order to make this look like what I have today, I could assign all of these new systems to the same system quick key as I've done before.

I think that is ok, but would like to hear some comments.

The one issue that I'm uncomfortable with is programming in something like San Jose PD. As those of you who live in a large metro area are aware, these municipalities often divide up their dispatch frequency. Here is a map for San Jose:
Bureau of Field Operations

...so this means if I want to use locationbased scanning, I'll need to create four or five systems with one frequency per system.

What do other folks do?
 

n4yek

Member
Joined
Apr 20, 2004
Messages
2,506
Location
Newport, Tennessee
...so this means if I want to use locationbased scanning, I'll need to create four or five systems with one frequency per system.

What do other folks do?

Or you could just make one system, call it San Jose PD, and have 9 quick keys - 1 for each dispatch district.
 

torontokris

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Feb 22, 2008
Messages
1,738
Location
Toronto Canada
Try FREESCAN I believe it can import the GPS settings (if co-ord set out already in radioreference) some are, some systems are not
 

b52hbuff

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Dec 19, 2002
Messages
1,736
Or you could just make one system, call it San Jose PD, and have 9 quick keys - 1 for each dispatch district.

Are you sure this will work? I thought that for conventional systems, the 996T only allows setting a location per system and not per group?

I'll go check the wiki...
 

b52hbuff

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Dec 19, 2002
Messages
1,736
You are correct.

Thanks. This is a new area for me and it's always nice to get confirmation.

So that means that if you were going to implement a per-district scheme where the radio tracks locations and enables/disables per-district, then you need to have a SYSTEM with only one frequency in it.

I guess I'm concerned because it feels a bit cumbersome. And having so many systems cuts down on the number of frequencies you can store.

Oh well, I'm guessing that since I'm not filling up the scanner that I have room to play around with configs like this...
 

soncorn

Member
Joined
Dec 1, 2003
Messages
546
Location
Fort Worth, TX
It is cumbersome and it is something that is fixed in the 996XT.

If you saw my programming for the 996T you would see how cumbersome it can really get :).

You can download the files that I have made (totally different area from you) and see how I organized things. The files are in the 996 yahoo group. My username is soncorn12.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top