Unication G5 Alerting

[AdamHLG]

Early testing is promising. The false positives stopped this is very nice development. There was a fire box today and while 'alternate' was 'enabled' it did seem to alert because it started recording but the alert tone I was expecting to hear seemed like a blip of a sound instead. This too was a positive development.

I am curious if the alert tone, when triggered by the warble, will play the selected alert tone to completion, or does it only play for the same duration of the warble. In other words, in your Step 2 (Tab 4) above, I am using Tone 5. I am wondering if the G5 will play tone 5 in its entirety, or will the duration of Tone 5 cut off early if the warble is shorter. Maybe this is why I only heard a short blip of Tone 5 when the warble was received.

I note that under Tab 7 (Pager Configuration), I have both the Receiving Alert Tone Volume and the Notification Tone Volume set to "By Volume Knob" if that matters. But it was a comfortable volume to hear the call so that's probably not it.

I also note that under Tab 7 (Pager Configuration), under "Receiving Alert Mode Setting", the setting "2-Tone Alert Duration Type" is set to "By Tone". I am wondering if the phrase "By Tone" sets this to the duration of the warble - and maybe that is the issue. Maybe I should set that to "Fixed Duration" and make it "2 seconds" which is the duration of Tone 5. Does this make sense?

All of the above is qualified by the fact that there was only one warble tone today. Some of these questions I can answer myself by playing around after there are future warbles to trigger things.

I'll follow up as I continue to test. This thread has been very helpful - - much appreciated.

 

[tkowalik]

If you have it set to ‘by tone’ my experience has been it will alert for the duration of the second tone. If it seems like a blip, that’s why. If you configure it to alert once it detects the 2 tones, it will play the duration of the internal tone which is why on my video the alert obviously outlasts the warble tone. If you set the voice delay, you won’t miss anything.

 

[tkowalik]

Be sure to reverse the warble tones like I mentioned because I have noticed you will miss some tone outs depending on which first tone comes out.

 

[AdamHLG]

Be sure to reverse the warble tones like I mentioned because I have noticed you will miss some tone outs depending on which first tone comes out.

Thanks. Interestingly, you and Texas1313 have different tone duration and gap settings. You raise a good point on reversing tones. This is going to take days if not weeks to experiment depending on how many times I am actually listening when warble tones are generated in the real world.

For now I am leaving my duration settings the same as Texas1313's settings because I know these settings did trigger the alert and there have been no false positives. But I am on the lookout for missed alerts given your comment and will create another entry to reverse tones if it happens with his settings.

I changed the Alert duration to 3 seconds because you confirmed my suspicion as to the 'blip' of the alert tone. We will see how that goes moving forward today.

I did notice on the voice recordings that they only recorded for a bit more than 4 seconds and the recordings were then cut off. My "Delay N Function" was set to 5 seconds. I changed this to 30 seconds and will try that. My "Record Delay Function" was set to 5 seconds. I turned off the "Record Delay Function" entirely for now. I do not really understand the differences between these timers but I suspect this is why my voice recordings are getting cut off. This will take some playing around. In particular, I do know that sometimes the dispatcher will hit the warble, and then there is a delay for anywhere from 5 seconds to 30 seconds while the tones get dropped on VHF low band (which is not simulcast on 800 mhz unfortunately so there is just silence on 800 mhz), and after the silence the dispatcher will simply talk, or other times the dispatcher will briefly hit the warble again and then talk. I need to account for these scenarios in the "Delay N Function" and "Record Delay Function" settings.

Working from home today and monitoring all day. We will see how much progress gets made today.

 

[texas1313]

When the dispatchers send out the "warble", it's a manual key press. The warble is as long as the key is pressed. I have seen keypresses so short that you only hear one high and one low tone. With those short periods, my G5 may activate, but not generate the alert tone.

If you have another radio you can use to monitor the entire transmission, that may give you some clues as to what's happening .

It sounds like you are making progress, and will need to "tweak" the settings for your particular system and preferences. Mine is set up so once an alert (or channel marker) tones are heard, I switch down one knob position, where I have it set up to hear everything.

I did experiment with the "Monitor Manual Reset" setting once, but it didn't work. I need to go back and relook that when I have time.

 

[AdamHLG]

For future readers, I wanted to post an update.

We had 2 calls today with warbles and both those calls had a second warble for additional units a few minutes later. I can report the alerting function is working great. It alerted every time as expected with no false positives, and it did not miss any of the 4 warble tones. This is using "minimum short tone to 100 ms, minimum long tone to 200 ms, leave gap at 1000 ms", and thus far I did not create a second entry to reverse the tones (which I will do if it ultimately starts missing alerts).

The alert tone itself is now working great and plays for the duration of the programmed alert tone. This required that under Tab 7 (Pager Configuration), under "Receiving Alert Mode Setting", the setting "2-Tone Alert Duration Type" needs to be set to "Fixed Duration" and make it "3 seconds". Now it plays the complete tone. I may tweak that to "2 seconds" but that is me being OCD.

The only issue I am now tweaking is the recording function. I had noticed on the voice recordings that they only recorded for a bit more than 4 seconds and the recordings were cut off. My "Delay N Function" was set to 5 seconds and I changed this to 30 seconds. This seemed to partially work on some of the recordings and I believe the cut-offs was due to the fact that my "Record Delay Function" was not enabled. Some recordings were getting cut off as soon as the communication on the talk group was over. I have now set the "Record Delay Function" to 15 seconds. Of course, there has not been a warble since then. This is going to take lots of testing and tweaking moving forward.

So this is great progress over the last 3 days. I am posting this because one day someone will be reading this and hanging on every word trying to set this up, much like I was hanging on every word a few posts up. I want to pay it forward so when I get recording working flawlessly I will post the settings. Everything else is working. I continue to love the G5 and I am learning lots as I tweak things.

 

[texas1313]

I just noticed that this thread has over 2,000 views, so that indicates there's more than a handful of people interested in this.

Great catch on the Tab 7 setting. I had overlooked that.

I'm also wanting to tweak some settings so the first 30 seconds of any voice traffic after the warble is recorded. My intent is for users to either switch to a different knob position, and/or have the radio play all traffic until manually reset.

Thanks for the feedback!

 

[AdamHLG]

The alerting feature is working perfectly on the warble. However despite my attempts I am unable to get voice recording working properly. The first recording after the warble is about a second long and then a beep. The second recording that has the same time stamp Is always just under 5 seconds long. I am starting to think there is no way to fix this under our "warble" configuration. In a perfect world, I would like the recording to start as soon as it hears the warble and to continue for 30 seconds - even if it hears a second warble - and then stop (if it hears a second warble, it can simply keep recording and extend the recording by another 30 seconds or just ignore the second warble within this 30 second window). However it seems there are no settings that will allow this. One theory I have is that the recording stops once the activity on the talk group is over - or it is resetting when it hears the next 800/1500 combination of warble tones - which would be immediate since the warble is always 800/1500 while its turned on. However the "Delay N Function" and "Record Delay Function" settings I thought were meant to address this. Both the timers for the "Delay N Function" and "Record Delay Function" settings were between 15 and 30 seconds depending on which round of testing I have done. However I cannot understand why I do not get recordings longer than 5 seconds.

I'll keep playing but I may just turn off recording and I am tempted to turn off the warble alert all-together and wait until we have real P25 paging one day for our county.

 

[texas1313]

I wonder if unchecking the "Voice Buffering Prompt Tone" will keep all the traffic in a single file?

I've watched my radio after it alerts, and there is a countdown timer on the screen, and all the audio is playing, but I don't remember if it is recording properly.

Another group on our system plays the long tone on the half hour for announcements and such. I'll set that up to alert/record and see what it's doing.

 

[AdamHLG]

I wonder if unchecking the "Voice Buffering Prompt Tone" will keep all the traffic in a single file?

I've watched my radio after it alerts, and there is a countdown timer on the screen, and all the audio is playing, but I don't remember if it is recording properly.

Another group on our system plays the long tone on the half hour for announcements and such. I'll set that up to alert/record and see what it's doing.

Good idea. I just turned it off. I also turned off "Delay N Function" and "Record Delay Function" and "TGID Stay Function". This is as clean as it gets and I will test this methodically moving forward by enabling one setting or combination of settings a time during the coming days and week.

 

[texas1313]

Turning off the TGID Stay Function may not be a good idea. Before I had it checked, my radio would alert, and then for some strange reason it would play whatever talk groups were busy on the system, which was really weird, since I only had the desired talk group on the list.

The TGID Stay Function forces the radio to stay on the desired talk group.

 

[AdamHLG]

I am now pretty much complete with my testing. There have been about 7 warble tones over the last 24 hours. I have confirmed that no matter what record - related settings I choose, I will always have 2, and only 2, recordings. The first recording is the actual warble tone until the warble is over. The second is the dispatcher's initial announcement of the call, which is usually about 5 seconds, but it does include the address. The talk group then goes silent (as expected - this is when the tones drop on VHF low), and then the dispatcher calls out the equipment and the address again, but this part never gets recorded no matter how long I make the delays for "Delay N Function" and "Record Delay Function". It's as if those delay settings make sure the second recording actually records, but any third or later recording will not be recorded, even if one sets the delay counters to 60 seconds. I guess this is by design.

This was fun to chase down, but with all of this done, as is typical with me, I am going to consider this 'experimental'. I duplicated a new talk group alias in Tab 4 specifically for the warble tone settings and set the 800/1500 tone in the duplicate setting, and allocated a channel position down in a lower zone when I want to play with it.

Thanks everyone for the help getting this to work. My next effort is to convince my department to simulcast the real tones on P25 :--)

 

[texas1313]

I've been playing with the settings the past couple of days, and have successfully recorded single messages as long as 49 seconds after alerting to tones.

If I can verify this is working better, I'll post a follow up soon.

 

[AdamHLG]

I've been playing with the settings the past couple of days, and have successfully recorded single messages as long as 49 seconds after alerting to tones.

If I can verify this is working better, I'll post a follow up soon.

I am curious if your recording is either a single message, or, 2 messages with a 'drop' on the talk group between messages. My summation of the issue is that the delay settings account for a single drop on the talk group, i.e., the tone alert is recording 1, then talk group is silent (and this is the Delay N countdown), and then message 2 is recorded for however long it is. The second message would record as long as the maximum message length set elsewhere in the settings. However, what does NOT work is the tone alert is recording 1, then talk group is silent, and then message 2 is recorded, then the talk group is silent again, and then the 3rd message never records, even if the "monitor timeout" is 200 seconds to capture audio activity, you cannot record more than 2 messages with the 'drop' between recordings 1 and 2. In other words, there is no setting to simply record all audio for the "monitor timeout" period, regardless of gaps of activity on the talk group.

 

[texas1313]

I’ve been adjusting some parameters, and have had some success with the latest settings.

Let my G5 turned on overnight while in the charger, with the volume down, and captured several alert tones, with the longest one 1 minute and 8 seconds of continuous audio stored in a single file. My goal was to capture the tones and record the first minute or so of traffic afterwards, and it appears to be working.

Particular settings (Tab 5, Desired Knob Position):

- Reset Mode: Monitor Timeout Reset
- Timeout reset time: 60 seconds
- TGID Stay Function: Enable
- TGID Stay Timer: 60 seconds
- Delay N Function: Enable
- Delay N Timer: 30 seconds
- Record Delay Timer: 30 seconds
- Voice Storage: ID Match
- Voice Buffering: Enable
- Voce Buffering Prompt Tone: Disable

In addition, I have two knob positions set up identically for the same talk group I want to monitor. One has the “Sub-Group Setting” “Alternatives” enabled, which lets me listen to all the traffic and also alerts to the tones, and the other knob setting has the “Alternatives” disabled, which only plays the voice traffic for about a minute after the alert, and then goes silent.

 

[AdamHLG]

Thanks I will check this out!

 

[Devito96]

Sorry...I didn't see this until today. I have the warble working fine on my G5 (plus the long alert tone and the Channel Marker tones)

Quick steps:

1. Tab 3, Protocol Type "P25 Trunking", set minimum short tone to 100 ms, minimum long tone to 200 ms, leave gap at 1000 ms.

2. Tab 4, add a new group, name Group Alias to "Warble" (or your choice), set Alert Mode to Tone, check box to record (so it will record anything after the tones to verify operation), P25T Sub-Group (2 Tone Phase 1) to T1:40 and T2:18. The tones are fast, and the short tone setting at 100 ms seemed to work well after adjustments. The default of 200 ms wasn't always reliable.

3. Tab 5, select any knob position for the group you want to monitor (preferably a single Talk Group), set Binding Feature to "Sub Group Feature", Reset Mode to "Monitor Timeout Reset", Timeout Reset Timer to 30, TGID Stay Function checked (this forces the radio to stay on that talkgroup after receiving tones), Talkgroup Stay Timer to 30 (adjust to your needs), and Voice Buffering Prompt Tone checked to "enable".

4. In the talk group list, add the talk group you want to monitor that has the warble tone.

5. Click the "Sub Group Setting" and "Edit" that talk group. This opens another window.

6. Enable the "Warble" group alias.

7. Check the "Alternative" box to "Enable" if you also want to monitor that particular talk group all the time, plus have it alert when it hears the tones. If you do not check the box to enable, the radio will stay silent until it receives the 2 tones.

With that setup, it records about 30 seconds after the tones. If you have the volume up pretty loud when the tones come out, it can surprise the daylights out of you!

Suggestion 1 - I've programmed our radios with several knob positions, so personnel can keep the radio silent until it hears tones (I call the position "Page", and another knob position to hear everything and also alert (I call that position "Monitor").

Suggestion 2 - Only put a single talk group in that knob setting, because if you have more than one talk group, the radio may land on another talk group and not hear the tones.

Suggestion 3 - The consoles also send out long tones (1000 hz), and the "Channel Marker Tones" (690 Hz on our system) that are used to indicate Emergency Traffic, and go out about every 5 minutes. You can also add Group aliases for each of those tones (Tab 4), and add them to Sub Group Settings.

Suggestion 4 - Change the Tones and Background Color for each Group Alias (Tab 4). Just because it looks cool and sounds cool.

Hope that helps. Once you get it set up, you can tweak some of the parameters to your liking.

Unication published a paper that explains it pretty well, but it still took some experimenting to figure out the best way to do it. There may be some improvements that can be done too.

Good luck!

I have a P25 phase 2 tone set up and I am getting a mute icon can fix that. Heres two pictures

 

[farmtruck551]

Feel free to move this to wherever appropriate but I thought I’d post the incredible ability of the G5 to alert to an array of tones. A couple of people that I know personally (not on here) expressed doubt that it would alert to very fast tones.

Welp, here’s the proof.

G5 SAFD Structure

I cannot get my G5 to play the alert tone. I have check everything and cannot figure it out. Any ideas why it will not play the alert tone?