Trunked DMR Color Codes Missing

[mikey60]

Here's a question for the group. How important is it for us to track the color code associated with a repeater for a trunked DMR/TRBO network?

Very important. I've been noticing that when programming my DMR radio (non-Motorola) to try to scan systems, that there are duplicated frequencies with very short spacing on many of the UHF DMR TRBO systems in the area. Without the correct color codes for each frequency, we may hear voice channels from two or more systems.

This system: MGM Grand Detroit Trunking System, Detroit, Michigan - Scanner Frequencies and this system: Repeater Systems, Inc. Trunking System, Various, Michigan - Scanner Frequencies (Southfield site) are at most 10 miles apart but share the frequency of 422.65000. I've seen other examples of this as well.

The other side of that is when programming a DMR radio to scan these systems, you need the correct color code in most cases to hear them. Most DMR radios do not have an open squelch mode where you will hear any traffic on the system/slot without a color code.

Mike

 

[RayAir]

Very important. I've been noticing that when programming my DMR radio (non-Motorola) to try to scan systems, that there are duplicated frequencies with very short spacing on many of the UHF DMR TRBO systems in the area. Without the correct color codes for each frequency, we may hear voice channels from two or more systems.

This system: MGM Grand Detroit Trunking System, Detroit, Michigan - Scanner Frequencies and this system: Repeater Systems, Inc. Trunking System, Various, Michigan - Scanner Frequencies (Southfield site) are at most 10 miles apart but share the frequency of 422.65000. I've seen other examples of this as well.

The other side of that is when programming a DMR radio to scan these systems, you need the correct color code in most cases to hear them. Most DMR radios do not have an open squelch mode where you will hear any traffic on the system/slot without a color code.

Mike

Electrocomm uses a lot of DMR conventional repeater set ups with the same freq's but different color codes. They're within range of each other. They also have some set up using Hytera Pseudo Trunk.

These should all be in your listening area.

Cobo Center, Detroit Marriott Troy, Quicken Loans/Campus Martius area security and several unid users are on them.

I had been trying to sort these out but I'm working on a bigger project now.

 

[blantonl]

Very important. I've been noticing that when programming my DMR radio (non-Motorola) to try to scan systems, that there are duplicated frequencies with very short spacing on many of the UHF DMR TRBO systems in the area. Without the correct color codes for each frequency, we may hear voice channels from two or more systems.

Are you programming your radio to scan conventionally the system, or are you actually tracking individual talkgroups with your radio?

My point being here - when programming a TRBO/DMR radio to track a set of talkgroups, is each site's frequency color code required programming as part of the process?

 

[SCPD]

There are some DMR ham repeaters(as evidenced by websites that cater to this, such as (I think) that DMR-MARC site) and it is a small, but growing market. There's even a few DMR capable handhelds, as mentioned earlier.

SDRs are a rapidly growing market (probably a faster growing market than the Ham DMR one),

Mike

I think you underestimate the ham community. There are over 1,050 registered users and about 60 repeaters in North Carolina alone with new users added every day.

 

[ka3jjz]

Can you point me in the direction of some well filled out templates that has captured this info (representative entries)

Yep, see message 37. In addition, we have numerous Mototrbo categories for states, provinces, etc.

Mike

 

[mikey60]

Are you programming your radio to scan conventionally the system, or are you actually tracking individual talkgroups with your radio?

My point being here - when programming a TRBO/DMR radio to track a set of talkgroups, is each site's frequency color code required programming as part of the process?

Yes, and Yes. most DMR radios require the color code before they will decode anything. They're a pain to program to scan conventionally but it does work.

Mike

 

[Voyager]

Here's a question for the group. How important is it for us to track the color code associated with a repeater for a trunked DMR/TRBO network?

As important as tracking the CTCSS/CDCSS for conventional analog channels. You can listen without it (on some receivers for digital - any for analog), but you are going to be a lot happier if you can limit the reception to the system you want to hear.

Is there any reason NOT to include it?

DMR info should contain Color Code, LCN (where applicable), Slot number (where applicable), and TGID.

NXDN info should contain RAN, LCN (where applicable), Slot number (where applicable), and TGID.

And the LCNs should be the actual LCNs and not the lowest slot number used on the frequency.

 

[blantonl]

Let's completely disregard any references to conventional DMR/TRBO moving forward... It is a given that we need to track color code, LCN, slot, and TGID.

With that said, I still don't have a definitive position on tracking color code, per frequency, for Trunked DMR networks.

For instance, on a TRBO Connect Plus Trunked system, why do we need to track the color code for each frequency on the site? When programming a radio for a capacity plus Trunked system, is the color code for each individual site frequency required to be programmed into the radio? In my experience, I've seen a single color code used across all frequencies of a site for connect plus systems. The analogy here is for P25 systems, each frequency for a site uses the same NAC.

Is there any reason NOT to include it?

Yes, if it is a data point that only 2% of our users even have the ability to collect and "use", and it exponentially increases overhead by our admin and management team to manage, and it isn't a required data point to functionally "do" what we want (track the system), then we open ourselves up to managing a data point that will more than likely be incomplete or wrong than helpful and correct.

A good example of this is Project 25 Trunked site NACs.. Meaning the NAC that is in use for each frequency on a P25 site. It is a data point that people begged us to collect, so we do at the site level. Yet that information is probably 10% complete across all P25 sites in the database.

 

[wa8pyr]

That AOR is not a scanner by any means, Tom. It's a very expensive receiver that happens to have some scanning capability, but certainly not like a Uniden or GRE scanner.

Correct, which works more to my point about the availability of DMR scanners. . . there are essentially none, unfortunately.

And I'm afraid you're ignoring an admittedly secondary market - the ham community. Else why have all those repeaters in the database, and have software from RT Systems and CHIRP able to access it? There are some DMR ham repeaters(as evidenced by websites that cater to this, such as (I think) that DMR-MARC site) and it is a small, but growing market. There's even a few DMR capable handhelds, as mentioned earlier. Why you appear to dismiss that market, given the reach RT systems has, is,frankly, a mystery.

I'm not ignoring it, I just didn't specifically mention it. We already have the capability to put color codes for conventional repeaters in the database, and it's been used extensively; if someone submits the color code, an administrator would have applied it to the appropriate record (I've done many myself). I have a TYT portable for ham applications, and got information for it from this very site.

As long as the software for a radio has access to the API and utilizes the data appropriately, it should work just fine for those radios. The major problem there as I see it is that the DMR portables currently available are commercial devices, and the commercial manufacturers (especially Motorola) certainly aren't going to set up their software to download information from this site. At one point, Motorola even forbade their techs from accessing this site and apparently had it blocked at the campus in Schaumburg.

SDRs are a rapidly growing market (probably a faster growing market than the Ham DMR one), and one must remember that you don't necessarily need to use the web service to get data out of the database. Copy / paste methods using Excel and similar may not be as elegant, but they work.

This is true, but but you also have to look at how much of the market is using the SDR devices. It's a very small percentage, mainly limited to more technically-inclined folks like ourselves; the bulk of the market is the guy who couldn't care one way or the other about a doohickey he has to spend an inordinate amount of time configuring. He just wants to download the necessary information to his scanner and listen to the local police and/or fire.

Oh and just a small correction - not only do we catalog DMR single frequency (so-called 'conventional') systems, we catalog trunk systems in the wiki, too.

Aware of that; my statement was that "...color codes for other than DMR conventional repeaters is currently being placed in the Wiki; we're putting it there pending the day when we can put it in the database." That pretty obviously implies trunked systems but maybe I should have come right out and said it.

I'm not saying this will never happen; it will likely happen sooner or later but there's a lot of work involved in making it happen. To paraphrase what Lindsay pointed out, if it increases complexity and our workload yet is utilized by only a small percentage of our users, we have a much greater probability of managing data that could be incomplete or incorrect.

 

[ka3jjz]

I'd grant that in comparison, that these new DMR systems are used by a small percentage of users, but I would also point out that, years ago, the exact same condition existed for simple Moto trunk systems- something we take for granted today, given how pervasive this technology has become. Put another way, the database has to evolve to include new system types and their unique requirements, much as it had to when Project 25 came about (yes, the changes were relatively small, but evolution is often made in small steps).

Mike

 

[ka3jjz]

By way of explanation, and for those that aren't familiar with what has been developed in the wiki to document these 'single frequency' systems, look at this...

Template:Table Trboconventional - The RadioReference Wiki

This is the template that creates a form where such systems, along with their respective groups and timeslots are defined. Now look about 1/2 way down on the left to the Toolbox and you will find an entry (a link, really) called What Links Here. Click on that, and you are presented with a list of every article (less than 2 dozen) that calls this template. Click on any link on that list to see the article.

You can see that we haven't defined 2000+ entries to cover all the possibilities, but the table can be expanded without much effort. So far we haven't seen the need. This template can additionally handle Ham DMR repeaters, as shown in one or two of the articles. Mike

 

[EricCottrell]

Let's completely disregard any references to conventional DMR/TRBO moving forward... It is a given that we need to track color code, LCN, slot, and TGID.

With that said, I still don't have a definitive position on tracking color code, per frequency, for Trunked DMR networks.

For instance, on a TRBO Connect Plus Trunked system, why do we need to track the color code for each frequency on the site? When programming a radio for a capacity plus Trunked system, is the color code for each individual site frequency required to be programmed into the radio? In my experience, I've seen a single color code used across all frequencies of a site for connect plus systems. The analogy here is for P25 systems, each frequency for a site uses the same NAC.



Yes, if it is a data point that only 2% of our users even have the ability to collect and "use", and it exponentially increases overhead by our admin and management team to manage, and it isn't a required data point to functionally "do" what we want (track the system), then we open ourselves up to managing a data point that will more than likely be incomplete or wrong than helpful and correct.

A good example of this is Project 25 Trunked site NACs.. Meaning the NAC that is in use for each frequency on a P25 site. It is a data point that people begged us to collect, so we do at the site level. Yet that information is probably 10% complete across all P25 sites in the database.

Hello,

I have programmed a couple of Motorola radios for Capacity Plus and you do enter the Color Code for each repeater. The repeaters get entered in the channel pool rather than the zone. In turn the repeaters in the channel pool get added to a Voice List where they are associated with a Channel pair (1/2, 3/4, 5/6). The channel (talkgroup(s)) in the zone references the voice list.

Connect Plus uses a Network Frequency File. The color code is entered along with the frequencies for each repeater number (LCN). A good example is Telepath in the Bay area of California. The Network Frequency File showed different color codes being used for repeaters at the same site. Telepath Corporation Frequency Order and Color Code List - The RadioReference Wiki

73 Eric

 

[Jay911]

I can confirm that different color codes are used on individual frequencies within the same trunked system here, though I have never tried to program them into anything more complex than DSD+.

 

[DaveNF2G]

DMR radios will not scan or track any kind of system without knowing the color codes.

 

[DaveNF2G]

The whole paradigm for "channels" in DMR is different from what we are used to with any other kind of system.

Channel = frequency + slot + color code + talkgroup(s)

 

[blantonl]

Hello,

I have programmed a couple of Motorola radios for Capacity Plus and you do enter the Color Code for each repeater. The repeaters get entered in the channel pool rather than the zone. In turn the repeaters in the channel pool get added to a Voice List where they are associated with a Channel pair (1/2, 3/4, 5/6). The channel (talkgroup(s)) in the zone references the voice list.

Connect Plus uses a Network Frequency File. The color code is entered along with the frequencies for each repeater number (LCN). A good example is Telepath in the Bay area of California. The Network Frequency File showed different color codes being used for repeaters at the same site. Telepath Corporation Frequency Order and Color Code List - The RadioReference Wiki

73 Eric

OK, perfect, this is exactly what I needed.

We'll put together a DMR rearchitecture for how we manage data in the database for DMR trunked and conventional systems. Stand by for updates.

 

[mikey60]

Let's completely disregard any references to conventional DMR/TRBO moving forward... It is a given that we need to track color code, LCN, slot, and TGID.

With that said, I still don't have a definitive position on tracking color code, per frequency, for Trunked DMR networks.

For instance, on a TRBO Connect Plus Trunked system, why do we need to track the color code for each frequency on the site? When programming a radio for a capacity plus Trunked system, is the color code for each individual site frequency required to be programmed into the radio? In my experience, I've seen a single color code used across all frequencies of a site for connect plus systems. The analogy here is for P25 systems, each frequency for a site uses the same NAC.

Yes, the color code must be programmed for each frequency.

Here's just one example of a DMR Con+ system that uses a different color code for each frequency in the system: Detroit Zoological Society Trunking System, Royal Oak, Michigan - Scanner Frequencies.

To program that system into a MD-380 for conventional scanning requires the correct color code for each frequency, and then duplicating the TGID as many times as needed to cover all frequencies and time slots. With the system above that's 6 programmed channel (3 frequencies x 2 slots) per talkgroup.

Without the color code for each frequency, it's not possible to set that up and have it work.

Mike

 

[jcardani]

In Orlando there are several Capacity Plus/Linked Cap + systems that use different color codes for the same site. For example:

Site 1
460.100 LCN 1 CC 1
460.200 LCN 2 CC 5
460.400 LCN 3 CC 6

(using LCN terminology to be in line with Uniden)

Let's completely disregard any references to conventional DMR/TRBO moving forward... It is a given that we need to track color code, LCN, slot, and TGID.

With that said, I still don't have a definitive position on tracking color code, per frequency, for Trunked DMR networks.

For instance, on a TRBO Connect Plus Trunked system, why do we need to track the color code for each frequency on the site? When programming a radio for a capacity plus Trunked system, is the color code for each individual site frequency required to be programmed into the radio? In my experience, I've seen a single color code used across all frequencies of a site for connect plus systems. The analogy here is for P25 systems, each frequency for a site uses the same NAC.



Yes, if it is a data point that only 2% of our users even have the ability to collect and "use", and it exponentially increases overhead by our admin and management team to manage, and it isn't a required data point to functionally "do" what we want (track the system), then we open ourselves up to managing a data point that will more than likely be incomplete or wrong than helpful and correct.

A good example of this is Project 25 Trunked site NACs.. Meaning the NAC that is in use for each frequency on a P25 site. It is a data point that people begged us to collect, so we do at the site level. Yet that information is probably 10% complete across all P25 sites in the database.

 

[W2SJW]

I agree with Joe - I just pushed a massive site update for OneVoice from a private submitter:

OneVoice Network Trunking System, Various, Multi-State - Scanner Frequencies

A large amount of their sites have numerous color codes in use at each location.

 

[ka3jjz]

And as I alluded to earlier, the MOTOTRBO category in the wiki has many such examples

Mike