Uniden's New Product Called Home Patrol

[Jay911]

There is no 12 or 16 Character Limit (scanner limitation)

Except that the RRDB limits itself to 12 characters inherently by design.

 

[nd5y]

The other thing I didn't see mentioned is - does it only pull down fire/police/EMS, or everything the DB has, or some arbitrary mix of tags? Some of the most useful channels to have in my locale include the roads crews, public works, and parks/conservation officers. A scanner which only downloads public safety channels (as I expect this one does from the "Home Patrol" moniker) wouldn't get that stuff.

Apparently it has all the RRDB tags (Law Dispatch, Fire Talk, Public Works, etc.) and you can choose whatever tags, agencies, systems, etc. you want.
You can create "Favorites Lists" and Paul said you will be able to upload your own files to it.

Larry Van Horn, Tom Swisher, Norm Schrein and others got to take units with them and will tell us all about them in their magazines and web sites.

 

[h8tdigitalradio]

Except that the RRDB limits itself to 12 characters inherently by design.

Yes, but for System Import software. There is no limitation for the HP-1.

73

Dave AKA The Tripzter

 

[Jay911]

Yes, but for System Import software. There is no limitation for the HP-1.

You are missing the point. It doesn't matter what the scanner can do since the database can't actually support it. If you have a box that can hold 100 bowling balls, but I can only give you 12, it doesn't matter that you can handle 100 at a time. You're only going to get 12 from me. It doesn't matter if the scanner has no limitation on channel name length when the RRDB has a limitation of 12 characters.

 

[UPMan]

http://info.uniden.com/twiki/pub/UnidenMan4/OpenHouse2010/HP_Launch.mpg

This is the video of my portion of the presentation. Sorry about the poor audio...you might want to use earphones. Next time we'll mic to the camera instead of picking up audio acoustically.

WARNING: This is a very large file (800 Meg). Don't d/l if you have a pay-per-MB plan.

 

[trido]

Tom been told you also can take say your 396 or 996 files and upload it as a favorite?

You can set up your own Favorites file using the included software. I've done this already and it was pretty easy, although it's currently limited to what's available from the internal database files. Additionally, software providers like Butel will certainly market a solution for this radio which gives you greater control over what is programmed into your favorites file so you can tweak it to your heart's content.

However, out of the box, this radio will fill a niche that has been rather empty, and that is a radio that's easy enough for the average consumer to use. Remember crystal scanners? All you had to do was ask the guy at RadioShack for the crystals for your area, plug them in, and you were off and running. The HomePatrol aims to get people back to that kind of simplicity without knowing anything about frequencies, talkgroups, CTCSS, DCS, NAC, control channels and the like.

 

[h8tdigitalradio]

You are missing the point. It doesn't matter what the scanner can do since the database can't actually support it.

All I can say is the Alpha Tags on the HP-1 are not Truncated. Full Descriptions of Systems, Groups, and Channels are displayed. As to what the RRDB supports or not is a different matter. The HP-1 is updated not directly thru the RRDB, but a different source.

73

Dave AKA The Tripzter

 

[DonS]

You are missing the point. It doesn't matter what the scanner can do since the database can't actually support it. If you have a box that can hold 100 bowling balls, but I can only give you 12, it doesn't matter that you can handle 100 at a time. You're only going to get 12 from me. It doesn't matter if the scanner has no limitation on channel name length when the RRDB has a limitation of 12 characters.

The short "Alpha Tag" field for conventional channels and talkgroups is not the only "text" field in the DB.

 

[rdale]

All I can say is the Alpha Tags on the HP-1 are not Truncated.

I think it depends more on the description than the Alpha Tag.

 

[Jay911]

The short "Alpha Tag" field for conventional channels and talkgroups is not the only "text" field in the DB.

Very obvious. However, there are tons of places in the DB where either the Alpha Tag, or the Description, are blank, or a value that depends on the value of the other. Alpha Tag might be "C1 FD TAC 1" and because it is described adequately in that field, Description is just "Fire Tactical Channel". So there's 36 "Fire Tactical Channel" in the trunk system, all different talkgroups, which will all presumably show up the same on the Home Patrol, despite the fact that they are different talkgroups.

A lot of stuff in the database needs significant work to make this radio's display useful. The state of Texas might be elaborately detailed in both Alpha Tag and Description, and structured really well with agencies and counties and groups all laid out, but it is just one location in a worldwide database, the majority of which is below that level of detail.

 

[h8tdigitalradio]

I think it depends more on the description than the Alpha Tag.

Yes, to be more specific.

73

Dave AKA The Tripzter

 

[DonS]

Very obvious.

It didn't seem clear that this fact was obvious to everyone, given the apparent fixation on "12 characters" above.

However, there are tons of places in the DB where either the Alpha Tag, or the Description, are blank, or a value that depends on the value of the other. Alpha Tag might be "C1 FD TAC 1" and because it is described adequately in that field, Description is just "Fire Tactical Channel". So there's 36 "Fire Tactical Channel" in the trunk system, all different talkgroups, which will all presumably show up the same

Unless, with sufficient space, the fields were concatenated, e.g. "Fire Tactical Channel: C1 FD TAC 1", or some variant thereof.

If one of the fields is blank, then it's clear that either a) the non-blank field would have to be used or b) someone (or something) has to fill in the blank field based on the contents of the non-blank field (and/or the record's "Tag" field).

EDIT: various PC-based software has done this for years: use the "Alpha Tag" if it's not blank; otherwise, use the first 12/16 characters of the "Description", perhaps allowing the user to choose at import time.

 

[Drafin]

Very obvious. However, there are tons of places in the DB where either the Alpha Tag, or the Description, are blank, or a value that depends on the value of the other. Alpha Tag might be "C1 FD TAC 1" and because it is described adequately in that field, Description is just "Fire Tactical Channel". So there's 36 "Fire Tactical Channel" in the trunk system, all different talkgroups, which will all presumably show up the same on the Home Patrol, despite the fact that they are different talkgroups.

A lot of stuff in the database needs significant work to make this radio's display useful. The state of Texas might be elaborately detailed in both Alpha Tag and Description, and structured really well with agencies and counties and groups all laid out, but it is just one location in a worldwide database, the majority of which is below that level of detail.

That's a simple fix. All one has to do get that remedied is submit more detailed information for the blank fields. I know the things that I have submitted have been complete within 48 hours (less in most cases).

Draf

 

[DonS]

That's a simple fix. All one has to do get that remedied is submit more detailed information for the blank fields.

It's simple on a one-off basis (e.g. one agency in a county, or one trunked system). It gets a little more tedious when one wants to submit a big change list for some large subset of the ~263,000 "frequencies" and "talkgroups" in the DB - especially when one has no idea what those blank fields are supposed to be.

 

[Drafin]

It's simple on a one-off basis (e.g. one agency in a county, or one trunked system). It gets a little more tedious when one wants to submit a big change list for some large subset of the ~263,000 "frequencies" and "talkgroups" in the DB - especially when one has no idea what those blank fields are supposed to be.

An excellent point, one I hadn't considered for large systems. If there is an influx of information then maybe a few more volunteer data entry people would be in order. But the way it stands now (at least for my area) the current people do a bang up job.

If the information is not there because there is "no idea what those blank fields are supposed to be" because the TG/freq has not been totally identified then it would not be a problem because it is either not active enough to be totally identified or no one has submitted the information. Eventually, with time, this would be remedied by the monitoring public.

If the problem is that the definition of the aforementioned blanks in the database is unclear then all that would take is clarification from a database admin.

Both solutions would help everyone, not just future owners of the Home Patrol as more information is always a good thing.


Draf

 

[Jay911]

It didn't seem clear that this fact was obvious to everyone, given the apparent fixation on "12 characters" above.

Another poster said "There is no 12 or 16 character limit" which may be true for the scanner but is irrelevant since the DB imposes this limit on the Alpha Tag field by its very design. And if you don't want to use that field to provide an Alpha Tag to the scanner, one wonders why we put it in there in the first place.

If one of the fields is blank, then it's clear that either a) the non-blank field would have to be used or b) someone (or something) has to fill in the blank field based on the contents of the non-blank field (and/or the record's "Tag" field).

That would be a good plan.

EDIT: various PC-based software has done this for years: use the "Alpha Tag" if it's not blank; otherwise, use the first 12/16 characters of the "Description", perhaps allowing the user to choose at import time.

Again, not a bad idea; however, you are asking the user to make a choice, which champions of this scanner design say is a big no-no.

And yes, cleaning up the database is a solution, but it's far from easy. The amount of data to be dealt with is staggering, and despite the "DB admin manual", admins still use all sorts of short forms, abbreviations, and terms that might have some meaning to them but are confusing to everyone else. (Example I have seen in the DB: "FSP" for "fire department"??)

In any case, as I said originally. this appears to be a decent scanner for one particular market, and an excellent platform for exploring some new, long-awaited technology such as simplified programming and multi-color touch screens. I don't see this particular "niche" market being as big as others would lead you to believe, but if it sells, good for Uniden. If the scanner isn't restricted to this "simplistic" performance, I might even get one. Either way, I am eager to see this technology trickle down into the next-gen devices in the years to come.

 

[magee31]

I cant get this at all, is it anywhere else, hangs my computer up, nothing comes up

 

[DonS]

An excellent point, one I hadn't considered for large systems.

I wasn't referring to any single system(s) or actual end users. I was referring to the guy who writes the software that grabs a snapshot of the entire RR DB, perhaps converting it to some other format, and is left with a list of "anomalies" - since that's the person who is charged with making the scanner accessible to "everyone" (including people who are not RR members). The resulting list wouldn't be limited to such trivialities as "blank Alpha Tag field"; it would also include things like: frequencies in site don't match any known bandplan, "Offset" and "Spacing" fields swapped, TRS frequency has an invalid "use" field, apparent free-form text in CTCSS/DCS/NAC field, non-numeric garbage in Frequency field, etc. Fortunately, these kinds of things were mostly cleared up last year.

This not-hypothetical person could come up with a list of "either the Alpha Tag or Description field is empty for these frequencies and talkgroups", but he wouldn't know what those fields should be (because he's thousands of miles removed from the affected objects). He certainly cannot submit any change requests of the form "change this blank field to xxx".

I don't currently know how many conventional channels and talkgroups might be affected by the blank field "problem" under discussion, but I will tomorrow morning.

 

[grb]

http://info.uniden.com/twiki/pub/UnidenMan4/OpenHouse2010/HP_Launch.mpg

This is the video of my portion of the presentation. Sorry about the poor audio...you might want to use earphones. Next time we'll mic to the camera instead of picking up audio acoustically.

WARNING: This is a very large file (800 Meg). Don't d/l if you have a pay-per-MB plan.

Is it compatible with macs?

 

[Highpockets]

Example of a NJ Description Field:

Police Emergency Service Unit (ESU) Suitcase Repeater (APCO 25 and Analog Capable)

If it displays all of that, will it eliminate something else that should be displayed or will there be room for that and everything else that's supposed to displayed.