TRX-1: Built-in automatic battery-save active?

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nanZor

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I'm wondering if the Whistler TRX-1 has any sort of battery-save ratio option built in when paused or monitoring a single object?

Unless I'm blind, I can't find any mention of one in the manual, or on Mark's Scanners page about it.

Some of the scanners I've owned in the past used to have an automatic battery-save ratio, like .2 enabled by default with no user manual-intervention capability.

That meant that sometimes the very first syllable might be missed on traffic - which back in the day when I used scanners for monitoring amateur packet transmission, that used to be an issue.

I solved it by putting two identical freqs in an empty bank, and scanning that bank - effectively defeating the battery save.

But I'm not sure if the TRX-1 also has an automatic battery save active or not. Anyone know? Wendy?
 

JD21960

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TRX-1 battery save?

I don't see any mention of such a thing either. Haven't since the GRE800/WS1080. They changed the BATTERY Voltage values from the original WS1080 when the TRX-1 had been out for awhile. If you look at the EZScan software form on ADVANCED features/Battery Options there's a scale of Voltage values. Those were changed to make the battery use longer. I'm sure Wendy or someone who worked on the scanners can address that. I'm guessing THAT IS the "battery save" feature. It's been changed to address too fast battery discharge. That along with being able to turn down digital volume and brightness of the screen are the battery savers, ha. I remember the GRE800 and WS1080 there were lots of complaints on battery longevity. It's a lot better now than in 2014
 
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Ubbe

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Why would anyone expect a scanner to have longer battery life while stationary on a channel compared to scanning mode? There so much digital now that it would only apply to analog channels so the scanners firmware had to check that it was on an analog only channel, not mixed ana/dig or pure digital, and then enable battery save.

Only reason to have battery save in a scanner would be to be able to show battery life figures that do not apply to real usage, like a dieselgate kind of fraud.

I beleive that the TRX-1 also has the IF OUT feature. Enable it and listen with an earphone if the audio are constant or intermittent. But then maybe the firmware disables battery save mode whenever that option are selected and an earphone are connected? Nah, too many parameters to have control over to do battery save and any slip up and the scanner would have problems resulting in complaints and service returns.

/Ubbe
 

BrianG61UK

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I sometimes leave a scanner parked on a single frequency, typically when I'm expecting something to happen that'll mean there will activity on that frequency or if it's a newly discovered frequency and I want to get a feel for what it is.

Whether or not it's a digital frequency, a power save feature, if it existed, could power down the whole radio and put the CPU and DSP processors in a sleep mode for, say half a second and then power them up again for, say a quarter of a second, and give a near 3:1 power saving.

I don't think Whistler scanners do this though. Nor do I particularly want such a feature.
 

nanZor

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Thanks guys - I just filed the request officially for a user adjustable battery-save feature when sitting and monitoring say just a single conventional object.

When scanning, or monitoring a trunked system - yeah no. But makes sense when loafing on conventional in pause. Those who don't want it just leave the ratio at zero, or just disabled. But I dig it, and has always extended battery life for me when doing that.

Don't make me made or I'll also request a "hit counter", that I used quite often on my 1040, and missed on the TRX-1. Some of us are intrepid hunter/seeker types. :) I still use the 1040 for that, among other things.
 
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