UniTrunker first public beta

[SCPD]

Hi Warren!

1) When the EDACS system is active - quite a few talkgroups and/or I-Calls - there seems not to be enough memory availabe to perform any of the menu functions, like finding talkgroups, subscribers, etc. You can press the keys and then wait before the desired function occurs or the keystroke appears.

Hmmm ... something else is going on here.

3) While running it in full screen, I see what appears to be a fast blinking underscore curser in different places on the screen. This only seems to happen if I have the view talkgroup, view subscriber, or view system information selected.

I can't even run it in full screen mode because the 80 character column width is too narrow (UniTrunker requires 132 columns). The screen flicker is another issue that needs work - the screen is being re-drawn more times than necessary - which is wasting CPU cycles (and probably causing the sluggish key response).

1) Could the analog/digital flag be placed in the .GID file to show if a talkgroup was analog or digital?

We could do that ... I'll have to take care of bug fixes first and work in small enhancements as time permits.

2) Right now it looks like it stores the first time and last time a radio id was active. Could a feature be added that would log everytime a radio ID was active and on what talkgroup? This would be helpful in figuring our what talkgroups are assigned to what users. I know the radio ID file would get pretty big, so this could be something to be turned on or off.

Not for this program - trying to keep it simple.

Also, I do have one question: How are you linking the radio IDs to the talkgroups when you view the subscribers? I suspect its the field after the last date field in the radio ID file, but how is that tied to the talkgroup?

Yes - you can see the most recent talkgroup used by a radio id (you can even see the talkgroup's alpha tag is one exists).

-rick

 

[SCPD]

Also Rick, are there any supported radios at all that will work for receiving and tracking?

That will be a post-beta feature. Right now there is zero code in the program to support this.

-rick

 

[SCPD]

Hi.
OK one othe rhting Rick I just noticed.
I just put in th e details of another site and changed the receiver over to the new control channel of this other site. I didn't take the Unitrunker offline, as I assumed ( like trunker ) It would detect the new site number and start up a new channel listeing. But instead of doing this, it imported the LCNs of the first site I was monitoring and stuck them in with the new channel it detected from the second site. I closed Unitrunker down and opened up the Moto****.HZ file in Notepad, and discovered all the channels from the first site I had monitored were all now marked with the new site number. I restarted the software again and the same hting happened. So I shut it down again and cleaned out the moto****.HZ file and restarted Unitrunker. Problem solved.
Just a note to everyone for now, if you are going to change sites or systems, make sure you take the decoder offline first!

Dave

 

[SCPD]

Just a note to everyone for now, if you are going to change sites or systems, make sure you take the decoder offline first

If you are scanning a band, looking for control channels, this usually isn't a problem. By the time the radio finds the next control channel, the decode rate of the previous one has dropped to near-zero and UniTrunker has already dumped the data to disk. If you have your radio set to scan a bank with control channels from two or more systems - you may run into this problem.

T4Win has a way of coping with this issue by "transacting" a block of updates to a radio system's data. If a new system id appears, the most recent block is discard since it likely contains a mix of old and new system data. This does result in some momentary on-screen confusion as the program adds several radio channels and/or talkgroups to system "A", realizes that it is now monitoring system "B", and revokes those changes.

UniTrunker will need to do something like that.

-rick

 

[Jay911]

Also, I do have one question: How are you linking the radio IDs to the talkgroups when you view the subscribers? I suspect its the field after the last date field in the radio ID file, but how is that tied to the talkgroup?

Yes - you can see the most recent talkgroup used by a radio id (you can even see the talkgroup's alpha tag is one exists).

Rick,

Is there a reason that 1073741824 (1024^3) is added to the affiliated talkgroup ID in the file as it is saved? What I've noticed is, if a radio has (for example) last affiliated to decimal talkgroup 48, the data saved in the file is 1073741872.

Just curious - I noticed it when I created my subscriber ID and talkgroup files.

 

[Comint]

Rick

Could you please supply a list of the field_names for all the records in the various files used by UniTrunker. Would make it easier to work out what the program is doing (or NOT doing, as the case may be).

Comint

 

[SCPD]

This is a good idea comming from ComInt. Might help us manually fill out files so that they work. sort of as a work around.
Rick, just thought you might want to know, that there is certainly some issues with the program saving data that you enter. I have stopped and started Unitrunker up a couple of times and ran the same site or a different site from the smartzone system i am monitoring. It saved the bandplan twice but the third time I shut down the decoder, then shut Unitrunker down. I started it back up again, and the bandplan information has gone, and the site doesn't show the frequencies in the band plan I had entered earlier. I'm just going to check the moto****.HZ file now and have a look at what has happened.

Dave

 

[SCPD]

Rick.
In these files ( The file for the band plans and the channels ) I see that the first number of everyline is the site number, and this ties the site number to the information after it, such as the channel information and the bandplan information.
Is it possible to tie the band plan information to the system Id instead? I think this would make more sense. It wouldn't matter really if it was a Motorola Smartzone, or a single site, EDACS or MPT. The system ID should really tie the bandplan together, instead of the site number.
Anyone else have thoughts on this?

Dave

 

[wwhitby]

Yes - you can see the most recent talkgroup used by a radio id (you can even see the talkgroup's alpha tag is one exists).

-rick

Hi Rick:

I was wondering if you wouldn't mind sharing the algorithm that links the groups to the subscribers? That way I could import the files into Access or Excel and then quickly link up the subscribers to the groups for faster entry of alpha tags.

Thanks again for a great product!

Warren

 

[NDRADIONUT]

AUTO SAVE

Is there a way to confirm if the Autosave feature is on or off ??

 

[loumaag]

Re: AUTO SAVE

Is there a way to confirm if the Autosave feature is on or off ??

When you press "O" for Options, it should display what options are set for when the menu swaps. If you can't see it, it may be a color thing as the Options display in cyan on a black background.

Rick, just thought you might want to know, that there is certainly some issues with the program saving data that you enter....

This is an issue which seems to be system dependent. I noticed it a while ago and could not pin down what caused it on my system. Perhaps everyone losing the already saved data (actually the program just acts like it is a brand new system and starts over again) should let Rick know System and O/S setup. Rick already has mine, but I will repost here for clarity:
Dell Precision 410 Workstation, Pentium II, 256M Ram, Windows 2000 Serv Pack 4.

I have to say that I just started working with sub-version 17 today, and it has not yet wiped out my previously saved data.

 

[W4KRR]

I was able to get the program working after some tinkering, Win XP Pro 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 w/ 512mb RAM. I'm getting constant 99 to 100% decode rates.

At first, it was only displaying the last 10 or so frequencies of a 28 channel Motorola 800 Mhz system. I then exited and restarted the program, and it seemed to work fine after that.

I discovered that if you put commas in the alpha text tags of the talkgroup ID's, the program won't display any text to the right of the first comma.

BTW, is there any way to import or use the talkgroup data created by Trunker for DOS 3.8.3 so you don't have to retype all those talkgroup tags?

 

[Forts]

I imported my DosTrunker/MTrunker files into Excel and stripped out the columns that were no longer needed. I then inserted the new columns (for colour and such) and just used an autofill to insert 0x000000 into each row. It takes a little tinkering but it works... and sure beats retyping all that stuff! I'm sure that someone that's far more knowledgeable in Excel than myself could likely whip up a macro to make it an automated process.

 

[W4KRR]

I imported my DosTrunker/MTrunker files into Excel and stripped out the columns that were no longer needed. I then inserted the new columns (for colour and such) and just used an autofill to insert 0x000000 into each row. It takes a little tinkering but it works... and sure beats retyping all that stuff! I'm sure that someone that's far more knowledgeable in Excel than myself could likely whip up a macro to make it an automated process.

I may give that a try. I've already tagged all my local trunked systems in Trunker 3.8.3, this would save a lot of typing!

 

[kd5dga]

Where can I get a copy of unitrunker?


Glenn

 

[Forts]

It's attached to the 1st message of this thread

 

[SCPD]

HI Rick and list.
OK I found another bug no one has report, but maybe someone else can test this one out as well.
I set the receiver to a new site, and started up Unitrunker. Last save on Unitrunker was set so that it would have the decoder online on the start up. While Unitrunker started up, and was aquiring the new channels and displaying them, I went and set the view mode to subscriber, just so I could have a look at the current list of Ids it had collected.
As Unitrunker started to list more channels on the site I was monitoring, the growing list started to list over the top of the seperation line, and into the subscribers listing I had in view below it. Hitting escape and going back to the main menu fixed it straight up.

Other then that Rick, if you want to suggest a few things you might want people to test out that would be great. If I get time today, I might have a crack at MPT1327 monitoring. I know this is only in the early development stages, but its would be good to see what bugs there are here so that can be fixed in the next beta.

Dave

 

[kd5dga]

unitrunker with a Icom PCR1000

can anyone give me some hints for the set up for a Icom PCR1000?

Thanks. :?

 

[fuctea2k]

Motorola radio ID

Hi Rick

I noticed that the public beta still misreport the radio ID which the radio setup a I-call. for example, the radio 091A call to 0312, Unitrunker display the 091A as 0910, always a 0 fill the last number.... even I changed the display mode to DEC, it still misreport the ID.


Sorry for my English

Best regards.

Wang.

 

[SCPD]

Is it possible to tie the band plan information to the system Id instead? I think this would make more sense. It wouldn't matter really if it was a Motorola Smartzone, or a single site, EDACS or MPT. The system ID should really tie the bandplan together, instead of the site number.

I'm anxious to hear other folks thoughts on this. My understanding is that different sites can have different band plans. This is only an issue for networked systems - Motorola SmartZone systems and APCO P25 systems with multiple subsystem ids (or "towers" as they're called in pro96com).

This could be done as one bandplan per system instead of one bandplan per site - I just want to make sure there aren't any real-world systems out there where this wouldn't work.

-rick