Minitor V-in depth professional assistance needed

[cduda]

Ok...here is what our situation is.

We (County 911) has implemented a common dispatch channel followed by appropriate response channels. Over 500 Minitor V 2 freq VHF pagers were purchased by 22 different fire companies. Our dispatch (priority channel F1) is 153.995 (which we know unfortunetly has a birdie carrier) but nothing we can do about that. followed by F2 being 151.430. We began our new system on Nov 14th and now are running into more serious problems with the Min V than the normal falsing/charger related issues. Now we are getting reports that the pagers are not going off at all. Mode A is silent scan Audible, Mode B is silent scan Vibe, Mode C is Probibility Scan audible, Mode D is priority scan audible. No matter what switch the unit is in, it is not alerting 90% of the time when it has even after the cut-over. Another pager from Georgia was temp programmed with our software and tone codes and when the original codeplug was put into that pager, now this user is having falsing issues and missing calls when it worked fine before it was changed with our software.

Could all this be due to the firmware/software versions we have(which is up-to-date) that we know of or could it be a bad batch of pagers? What the mind boggling thing is the unit that has worked fine all of a sudden after our equip programmed it is now having problems.

Any/all help is greatly appreciated.

Any emails can be directed to

Brian Melcer-911 Director @ [email protected]
Jeff Parish-Deputy Director @ [email protected]
Caleb Duda(me) @ [email protected]

Thanks all.

[tvsjr]

I would sorta doubt the programming software/hardware would have all that much to do with it. You can always download the latest M5 PPS for free from Moto, to make sure you're running the latest version.

The M5s are far pickier than previous Ms as far as RF frequency and tone frequency. I'd have someone test the pagers with a service monitor to make sure they're actually alerting properly. If so, I'd start looking at the infrastructure - is the transmitter spot-on on frequency (especially if you're running narrowband), what are the measured tone freqs., what do the tones look like (are they being sent too hot and are thus being clipped by the repeater or forcing it to deviate outside the passband of the pagers?)

Assuming the infrastructure is in good shape, I would then call Mother Moto and open a case with them. 500 units should be enough to get their attention.

[Lake Effect]

I would first suspect the way they are programmed. All 4 of your switch positions involve scan and having a 2-tone decoder pick up the tones in a scan environment is usually a problem. Even in priority scan with your paging frequency set as the priority, if the sample time is too long, it will miss the first tone. If the sample time is 2 to 3 seconds, it is going to miss the first tone much of the time. It's easy enough to test by setting one position as a single channel ( the paging channel) and see if you get a page from dispatch.

L.E.

[tvsjr]

I would first suspect the way they are programmed. All 4 of your switch positions involve scan and having a 2-tone decoder pick up the tones in a scan environment is usually a problem. Even in priority scan with your paging frequency set as the priority, if the sample time is too long, it will miss the first tone. If the sample time is 2 to 3 seconds, it is going to miss the first tone much of the time. It's easy enough to test by setting one position as a single channel ( the paging channel) and see if you get a page from dispatch.

L.E.

I run silent/tone alert on two channels all the time (city and county) without issue. This was one of the big features introduced with the M5. Shouldn't be a problem.

[ard099]

I'm gonna agree with tvsjr. I doubt you have that many bad pagers, or the software is the problem, but then again you never know. What I would do is program a couple of pagers with the capability to monitor the dispatch channel on one of the modes. That way they can determine if the pager is actually able to receive voice from dispatch, then if they can, you need to go back and address your programming. Don't forget to uncheck the wideband box if the channels are narrowband. The lower tones aren't very reliable-like 288.5, so if you are using that tone you may want to change. Also you might want to get motorola involved, or your local MSS if you have one to get them to check the pagers. Latest software, to my knowledge is ver.1.4 and the firmware is 3.0.

[HRN]

I agree with what everyone is saying about scan. I keep my pager on scan all the time and have never had a problem. I did, however, have 1 fire company who I sold several minitor Vs to that had problems with not alerting. When I programmed their tone sets into my pager, mine tripped most of the time. I had gone back and forth with these pagers to motorola for warranty work 5-6 times and each time, they never seemed to work correctly. Our County kept saying it was the pagers and not the county system. However, in the end, when the company replaced their pagers with Minitor Vs, none of them worked, but did work with other company tone sets. It turned out the problem was with the tone sets that were programmed into the board. I am not sure if it was a volume problem or what, but the older pagers all worked but the minitor Vs didn't. They corrected the problem (which was only with this one set of tones) and the minitor V has worked fine since.