Optimize your scan list

First an update to my Pro-668 post yesterday.  My adapt level change isn't working out as well as I had hoped.  I am going to swing it the other direction today and see if that makes a difference (I  went from 64 to 16, now I moved it to 90).

I also forgot to mention that they Pro-668 battery life is much better than the 436, however it does have 4 batteries vs the 436's 3.

Optimizing your scanner
The nice thing about these new scanners is you can put in your zip code, everything in your area downloads and off you go.  The problem with that is the way it downloads is probably not the most efficient way to scan.

The radio scans in sequential order, and you hear the first active frequency or talkgroup it comes across.  By moving things you want to hear to the front of the list, you will improve your chances of hearing the things that are most important.  Things that are less important, or tend to hog air time, put them at the back of the list.  This applies to the system level as well.  Put your most important trunk or conventional system first.

This is particularly useful if your county or state is migrating to a new digital system from an old one.  Many times the old analog systems are simulcasted, either part time or full time.  This is the case for example with Somerset County, and often NJSP talkgroups show up in the NJICS 700 System.  By putting the newer system first, you increases the odds of listening to that particular talkgroup on the digital side, vs the analog side.  If you want to increase your chances even more, add a hold time (if you have a Uniden) of 3-4 seconds to the digital group.

You can also use this method to your advantage while mobile (especially if you use GPS scanning).  Many trunk systems have fill in sites, which are fill in sites for area's with poor coverage (usually referred to as IR Sites).  NJSP has them all over the place for the 800 system, and Bucks county has a couple as well.  Since they are only active when a nearby radio affiliates to it, they are normally not worth monitoring, since you only hear maybe 1 or 2 talkgroups and even that may be inconsistent.  However while you are mobile, by putting these sites first in the site list, you will be more likely to lock on to those when you are in an area where the main site has poor reception and hear the local traffic more clearly.    Your mileage may vary with this particular technique.   A good example of where this works well is the NJSP on route 78.  The Bedminster IR site was setup to improve coverage on Route 78 between Clinton and Route 287.  By scanning the IR site first, the 5 Comm traffic comes in much better, than when I was only relying on the main simulcast site.

Uniden BCD436HP Vs PSR-800/WS-1080/Pro-668 Revisited

When I got rid of my PSR-800 last year, I never thought in a million years I would discuss it ever again.  In the end it turned into quite a hate/hate relationship.  Thanks to Radio Shack blowing out the Pro-668 for $150, it was an offer I couldn't refuse.  The timing is actually perfect, considering Uniden's popularity right now is neck and neck with Congress.

I had a lot of issues with my PSR-800, and some of that has not changed.  One thing I have noticed with the new 668 is I don't have as much front end overload.  My 800 was an early model (with the faceplate issue),  and they have seemed to have made some minor improvements under the hood over the last couple years.

Since I deleted all my EZScan files, I had to start from scratch with the radio.  It took me a few days to get everything in order and to re-familiarize myself with the radio.

First thing I missed was the LED light.  Uniden gives you 2 options, 1 color and either flash or solid for 5 seconds, then it shuts off.  The 668 (going forward includes the PSR-800 & Whistler 1080), gives you the option of a solid light or flashing.  You can change how many colors to flash, and how fast.  You can even change the pattern.  It also stays on as long as the squelch is broken.  

Another thing is the Scan Lists (now called Play Lists for some awful reason).    You can setup a lists for specific purposes.  For example I have a slim list consisting of a few NJSP Talkgroups, and my local Fire/EMS/OEM frequencies, for when I don't want to listen to a whole lot and just what is happening locally.

There are also the V Folders, which lets you setup an entirely different configuration.  I always found this useful for when I am going away and want to setup the scanner in advance.

When I first got my 436, I thought the display was much better, a year later I am not so sure:
They both show pretty much the same information.
The 436 can show 23 characters vs 16 on the 668.
The 436 text is smaller and the fonts are thinner, the 668 has nice bold fonts which are easier to read.  The 436 does have text in 2 different sizes to differentiate things, where the 668 kind of runs together.
The 436 is not that bright, in fact the brightest level is the 668's lowest level.
The 436 light can come on with the squelch, but it is time limited, where you can set the light on the 668 to come on (per channel), and will stay on until the squelch closes.
I have to say I have changed my mind and I like the 668 display better now. 

Another pet peeve I had was the front end overload, and with that being toned down (It is still present, but nothing like before), the 2 scanners seem to perform very similar, with the 668 pulling in signals a bit better than the 436.  I did have some difficulty pulling in some TMDA traffic, but changing the DSP Level Adapt to 16 seems to have helped the situation.

There are still plenty of things I think the 436 does better, and I also prefer the HP Sentinel software, and I like the one touch recording, and being able to actually make changes without a computer.  That is the one reason why I would probably take the 436 with me on vacation vs the 668.  I was burned too many times when my programming wasn't correct on my PSR-800 and I had no way to correct it.

In conclusion, for $150, this is the scanner deal of the year and you can't go wrong.  You will not find a deal like this again anytime soon.  After a year with the 436 and Uniden's drama over the last 6 months, the 668 (and it's clones) have redeemed itself.

Whistler 1095 Mobile scanner finally appears

Please see this thread on radio reference for pictures:

http://forums.radioreference.com/general-scanning-discussion/305241-ces-2015-starts-tomorrow.html#post2316267

From the pictures, the scanner has a nice minimalist look to it.  The SD Card is easily accessible from behind the detachable radio head.  The display is nice and of course the remote head is a much welcomed and overdue feature.

If anything beats the Uniden 536, it is the remote head.  I never liked the fact of having to use my phone, or an old ipod/tablet for a remote display.  The last thing I want to do when I get in my car is have to manually turn something else on, worry if the batteries are charged, or even coming up with a way to mount it.  Lets all not forget that this is still speculation, and that a year later, we still have no remote head option from Uniden.  I would not be surprised if the 1095 comes out before Uniden has the software out.  Fortunately, I never planned on using the wifi option to begin with.

Operational wise, I posed a blog a while back comparing the Uniden's to the PRS-800/WS-1080 radios.  My opinion hasn't changed much.  Bear in mind that this is essentially a 2+ year old scanner in mobile form.  If you already have a PRS-800 or WS-1080, you already know the pluses and minuses.

Without GPS, or an easy access to the scan list, I still don't feel this is really a great mobile scanner.  The exception is if you only keep to 1 or 2 area's, or plan on monitoring a statewide trunk system.  The radio can by design change to the trunk site with the strongest control channel.  There will come a day when most of the state is on the NJICS Trunk system, or their own county 700 systems, tied into the state system.  When that takes place many years from now, this scanner would surely be a winner.

As a base scanner, this is sure to be a nice addition, however you will probably run into the VHF overloading if you have a base antenna.  From what I have seen and read, the GRE/Whistler scanner either works great for some people, or it works like crap.  There seems to be no middle ground.  If you are one of the lucky ones, then this radio will be for you.  I had been considering this one to replace my Home Patrol 1 on my desk, however I am probably more likely to go with the HP-2.   Now that I have perfected the radio id import script, it makes more sense for me to stick with Uniden (despite how pissed I still am at them).  I also had problems with VHF overloading, so the Uniden makes sense for me.

I give Whistler credit for jumping into the scanner arena and coming out with this finally.  Although I will be passing this one up, I am hoping that within a few years, we will be seeing newer scanner models designed by Whistler and with improvements over the current scanner shortcomings.

Importing a Radio ID listing into your HP Series Scanner Favorite List

Yesterday I showed how you can export a list of Radio ID's from Unitrunker.  Today I will show how you import those into your Home Patrol Favorite list.

If you do not have Unitrunker, but want to import the ID's, you can always download my list (which is updated several times a week) from here:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/4rxgywkd7xe6fch/AAAxFoNA-CToO9WxjT2iLqJka?dl=0

Again, you will need access to a bash shell to follow my instructions.  Again I suggest installing cygwin on the same computer where you have your Uniden software installed.

I should also point out that since I have so many radio id's in my NJSP and NJICS systems, each one has their own favorite list.  This will probably not work if you have multiple systems in the favorite list you want to import ID's to.

I will say this again, BACK UP Everything before attempting this.  If you do not back up and render your favorite list un-usable, you are out of luck.  I managed to break mine several times before I got the process right.

First thing you need to do is determine which file you need to copy.  Usually the folder in is your Documents, Uniden, BCDx36HP or HomePatrol, FavoriteLists.

You will find a bunch of files similar to f_000001.hpd or favorites_000001.hpd.  look for a f_list.cfg or favorites_lists.config file.  Open it with notepad and you can figure out which list you need to edit.

Because there are hidden control characters in the favorite lists, we need to take the radio ID list I exported from Unitrunker and reformat it.  Also, the Home Patrol list is formatted somewhat different than the BCDx36 lists.

This file with the ID's is 700ids.txt, and the favorite list is f_000011.hpd

First step is to process the radio id list and create a new list that can be imported into Sentinel (BCDx36 lists only).  Also, if you are planning on importing the ID's into multiple favorite lists, you only have to perform this step once.

rm rid.out
cat 700ids.txt | while read line
do
a=$(echo $line)
echo -e "UnitIds\t\t\t"$a"\tOff\tAuto\tOff\tOn" >> rid.out
done

If you are doing this for a Home Patrol 1, replace the echo line with this:
echo -e "UnitIds\t\t\t"$a"\tOff\tAuto" >> rid.out


This may take over 5 minutes to run, however if you are working with multiple favorite lists, it will save time in the long run.

The next step is to cut the top and bottom of the favorite list (the id's are in the center)
sed -n '/UnitIds/q;p' f_000011.hpd > top.out
sed -n '/Site/,$p' f_000011.hpd > bottom.out

Now we put it all back together again
cat top.out > f_000011.out
cat rid.out >> f_000011.out
cat bottom.out >> f_000011.out

Finally, we need to run the unix2dos command, otherwise the software will not read the file properly and it will not work.

unix2dos -n f_000011.out f_000011.hpd

If you did everything properly, it should have worked.  Because everyone's setup is different, it would be impossible to a simple script for everyone to use.  Since I have several favorite lists, I setup a script that copies all the favorites over, creates the new radio ID section, updates all the lists and copies them all back.   I also incorporated the Unitrunker export from yesterdays blog, so I can accomplish all this in 1 step.

Finally, I do not have a Home Patrol-2, so I have no way of knowing if this will work on that.  If someone wants to provide me a favorite list from one (Trunk System with Radio ID's), I can look at it and I will update the instructions.

Remember, if you are going to try this...BACK UP EVERYTHING FIRST, and make sure your backup works.

Exporting Radio ID's from Unitrunker

Happy New Year!

I still have to complete my GPS series, but for now I am changing gears for a bit and going to post how to easily export Radio ID's from Unitrunker, so you can easily cut and paste them into Uniden Sentinel or GREComm software.  In my 2nd part to this, I will show you a way to update your Sentinel favorite lists without the hassle of cutting and pasting.

First a warning, unless you are somewhat familiar with Linux, this probably isn't going to be for you.  2nd, before attempting anything like this, BACK UP EVERYTHING.  I would go so far to back up your files, move them to another computer if you have one, and make sure they work there.  I am not responsible if you make a mess of your stuff.

Unitrunker is a great problem, and for keeping a watch on a trunk system, it is invaluable.  You can alpha tag all the talkgroups and radio id's and keep watch for new users and/or new talkgroups.  Where it falls short is that it does not really give you an easy way to export the data into something usable.  You can load up the unitrunker file in excel and do the manipulation there, however it is messing and time consuming.

It is very simple to export the radio ID"s out.  My method requires you to have access to a linux bash shell.  This means either a PC with linux on it, running it in a virutal machine, or you can install cygwin (https://www.cygwin.com) and do everything from there.

First step is to copy your Unitrunker.xml file over to a working directory.  Before you do, you should hit the "X" on the main unitrunker screen.  It will say it saved the data and ask you if you want to quit.  We do this to make sure all the updated data has been saved.

Since I have cygwin on the computer that runs unitrunker, I do this:
cp "/cygdrive/c/Users/John/AppData/Roaming/UniTrunker/Unitrunker.xml" .

Next we want to pull out only the Radio ID's
grep User Unitrunker.out > uni.out

Which leaves you a file with a bunch of lines that resemble this:
<User id="9681" label="Troop Car 2212P" color="00FF00" lockout="0" rank="50" group="53296" first="20140318174455" last="20140718182323" hits="11" voice="1" mask="1" logon="2" />

Next we issue this command to grab only user ID and Label, it also will move label to the left for easier import into Home Patrol.

paste <(cut -d "\"" -f 4 uni.out) <(cut -d "\"" -f 2 uni.out) > uni1.out

Finally, more often than not, there are a bunch of radio id's that have not been identified or alpha tagged yet, you won't want to import those, so we issue this command to ignore those, and create the text file:
grep -Ev '00FF00' uni1.out > 700ids.txt

You now have a text file that you can load into excel and  cut and paste into Sentinel or the GRE program.  That User id entry above now looks like this:
Troop Car 2212P 9681 (There is actually a delimiter between 2212P and 9681)

One final caveat to this, if you have several systems in your Unitrunker file, you will have to isolate the system before pulling out the radio id's, otherwise you will wind up with a file with all the id's from all your systems in your Unitrunker setup.  By looking for a unique pattern (The system ID is usually a good one), you can do this this the sed command:

Cuts from the top of the file to a pattern match:
sed -n '/pattern/q;p' old_file > new_file

Cuts from a pattern match to the bottom of the file:
sed -n '/pattern/,$p' old_file > new_file

You can combine the 2 commands above if you have a bunch of systems and the one you want is in the middle.

As you can see, this is very specific to how each person has things setup, so there really is no way to come up with a universal setup.

The next segment will show how I take apart a Home Patrol favorite list, and re-assemble it with an updated ID list.

GPS Scanning Part 1

I have been trying to figure out the best way to go about this particular blog.  This would really be suited for a youtube video, but that really isn't my thing, so I will span this over several parts.  This part we will focus on a basic overview and the GPS hardware.

What does adding a GPS do for you?
If you setup your scanner right, everything will turn on and off automatically and you won't have to touch a thing.  In my personal setup, I can drive anywhere in NJ or the surrounding areas and never have to touch anything except volume and the occasional locking out an annoying channel.

Which scanners support this and the differences
If you are a GRE/Whistler person, you are out of luck.  Only Uniden's do this currently.
Most of T Models (BCD996T etc)
All the XT Models
All the Home Patrol Models

Supported GPS's
You need a GPS that supports NEMA and has a serial connector.  The Garmin PC 18 is a popular one and works very well.  Uniden makes one along with other manufactures.  Some you can buy on ebay very cheap and just add your own power source and connector.  

Some hand held GPS units will work too, such as the Garmin eTrex Legend.  I would suggest going with a newer model, since they tend to lock on to the satellites a lot faster and tend to hold the signal.

My first experience was with the hand held eTrex and it would take 5+ minutes to sometimes lock and would often lose the signal.   At the time, they did not have an external power option for my eTrex, so I would have to run it on AA batteries.  As you can imagine, I would often get halfway to work and the gps would die.  They is now a splitter/power cable available for these units, but I still highly recommend against using these for your scanner install.

Another advantage to the "Hockey Puck" style GPS Units, you can have it hooked up to your ignition power, so it will power on and off with no action from you.  I have found that these units will generally lock on before I get out of my driveway.

My next installment will focus on the differences between the scanner models.

The Future WS1095 Scanner vs the BCD536HP & Home Patrol 2

Up until recently, it was easy to program your scanner for wide area/mobile listening.  Each bank had a quick key, you hit the key and at first you had 0-9 to select from.  Uniden upped the anti when they expanded it to 99 keys, then you had to hit .21 for bank 21.  Still not a bad system and it works (and still does with the BCD536HP).

Thngs got more complicated with some of the newer radios.  The Home Patrol has no quick keys, and fumbling through the menu's while driving is just as bad as texting.  Same will go with the WS1095 if Whistler doesn't change anything.  The 1095 menu actually is worse than the Home Patrol when it comes to that.

Uniden introduced GPS scanning with the BCD996T scanner and has improved upon it with every new radio, and if properly setup it works great.  This puts the WS1095 at a major disadvantage, at least for anyone who wants to use the scanner outside their local area.

The one advantage whistler has (and some of the older Whistler/GRE scanner's do this), is the ability to lock on to the trunk site with the strongest control channel signal.  That will eliminate the need to manually turn trunk sites on and off.  I have never found that feature to work all that great while stationary, but mobile I think it would be better.

My programming has the entire state of NJ, Eastern PA and parts of NY & CT.  The Whistler radio just wouldn't work for me.  Where I do see value in it, is the Statewide 700 & 800 systems.  If that is all you listen to, or as a dedicated scanner (with a matched 700/800 Mhz antenna), the scanner could be a big win for people who just are interested in the state systems.

On the physical hardware side, the 1095 is supposed to have a detachable head, that is a big plus, especially in these newer cars.  The Home Patrol has no remote option, but the slim design actually would make it much easier to install in a modern vehicle.  Unfortunately, due to how the cables hang off the site, and the crappy audio outputs Uniden decided to use, really doesn't make the HP series all that easy to setup in a mobile environment.   I won't even address the 536 siren app issue, but if you don't need a remote head, the 536 works great in the car.

Conclusion:  The 1090 has potential to say the least.  If you need P25 Phase 2 capability and don't travel outside your area much, it may suit your needs.  As more of the state joins the 700 systems, there may come a day when all you need is just 1 system in the scanner.  Until then, you need something with at least quick keys, or GPS.

My next blog will give an GPS scanner over view and some advice for those who are interested in jumping into it.