Managing users on Smartzone System

[Jack]

Ok, lets go with this hypothetical....

Lets say you have a statewide trunked radio system. On this system is a large police agency that has thousands of users all over the state. Those users' radios are programmed for interoperability based on their location, which means a "home zone" is setup for their particular county; and this zone has all of the surrounding agencies programmed in it. This officer has a portable and a mobile radio. When an officer gets transferred to another location, said officer turns in his portable and gets a new one at his new location, but his car and his mobile radio goes with him. Lets say that this kind of thing happens all the time. Officers moving to different locations all the time based on transfers etc.

If you were given the task of finding an efficient way to make sure all of those mobiles are reprogrammed with a new template (home zone) based on location, how would you manage it? I ask this because the first thought was to program the mobiles with a basic codeplug (without a home zone) and use the portables for interoperability. While this might make things easier for a system manager, it makes NO sense for the officers because with certain types of agencies, most of their time is spent driving. If you're in a chase, the last thing you want to do is pull out your portable when you could just switch talkgroups on your mobile. Having the technology but refusing to use it just seems backwards to me.

I've been brainstorming on how to accomplish this task, so that mobiles who are transferred will be reprogrammed in a timely manner, and recorded properly. Keep in mind that agencies such as this might have anywhere from 1500-3000 officers. That's a lot to keep up with.

Any thoughts or ideas on this would be greatly appreciated.

[Mfire39]

Well lets start with how big is the system, ie how many total talkgroups are used on it state wide? What type of portables and mobiles are being used on it currently?



-Marc

[Jack]

Total users about 30,000
statewide
my question is related to about 2000 users. The other users would be local. xts2500, xts3000, xts5000, xtl5000 mobiles.

[wavetar]

How many talkgroups are we talking here? Those radio models have the capability to hold hundreds of talkgroups...all the interoperability needed should be able to be contained within the radios, just set up into different zones within. Sure would simplify things.

Otherwise, fleetmapping on the scale you're talking about is something some people get paid well to sit down & spend days/weeks/months (depending on level of involvement and number of the agencies in question) working on to get right.

[Mfire39]

That's exactly where I was going with my question... You should be able to make all the radios operate state-wide.. Instead of having radios only programmed to the area and surrounding that they are in, why not program all the control channels for the system, and all the talkgroups that are being used by your organization state-wide, and then set them all up for zone use. That way, no matter where an officer gets moved, the entire system will be in the radio all the time...


-Marc

[WB4JGI]

Would OTAP be applicable in this situation? Or is that a /\/\ P25 trunking system option?

[Jack]

I've got to research both of these options, especially OTAP. In terms of the talkgroups, some areas an officer would have in the neighborhood of 200 talkgroups depending on their location. Given that there are 100 different areas with different interop zones, we're looking around 1500-2000 talkgroups that would have to be programmed. That is just a guess right now. I really need to do some math before putting "all talkgroups" options on the table. Thanks for the ideas guys, this is good.

[mruwave]

How about setting up zones by county? Sounds like your talking about Highway Patrol, yes? North Carolina has 100 counties. If I were given this scenario, I would consider setting up 100+ zones, with each of the local agency interop channels within the zone. Officers are usually pretty aware of county lines and could easily switch zones depending on the county in which they're operating. Then they can select the appropriate channel within the zone for the appropriate agency. Sounds simple but I'm sure its more complicated than this .

[wavetar]

OTAP is P25 only, I believe. Yep, get a list of all takgroups in use for this particular customer...you may find it's a lot less than you initially think, as there may be a lot of duplication going on between locations & surrounding areas within the radios.

If you do end up going with a different "template" for each area's portable, you might as well duplicate it for the mobiles & have their Method of Procedure when transferring locations include getting the appropriate codeplug cloned into the mobile.

Todd

[Pj]

As Todd and Marc was going to... by county (or geographic location depending on how the agency operates) is usually the best way to go.

Not know what agency or how the patrol districts are setup...I can only speculate.

However in creating the codeplugs you can follow some of these simple steps:

1-Keep is simple
2-Limit the mobile zone size to 16 channels
2a-The above will make the transition from mobile to portable seemsless, unless you use the CHAN function)
3-Set Zone1 up for the troop "Troop A", Zone2 for surrounding agenices "Troop A Interop"

Putting ALL talkgroups or at least home agency talkgroups in the radio isn't a bad idea. You can always adjust the "Home mode/zone" setting on the radio.

The trick will come in, what surrounding zone(s) do you put next to the home zone? If Troop A is located in the northwest corner of the state, do you put Troop B to the east in next, or Troop C to the south? Then if you have a Troop in the center of the state in, who do you put in ahead or behind on the zone list?

To bring things back to reality, most patrol units are only going to use 1-3 (at the most) Troop talkgroups on a daily basis. If going to a call in "City A", do you really need or require to have that city (or county's) record/DMV, traffic unit, Detective, etc talkgroups in YOUR radio? I'd say not. Your going to have their main or citywide talkgroup and tactical talkgroup only.

Even far beyond that...many large/wide area SZ systems (take SC/NC/OH, etc) and with many multiple users on that system...your going to have county or regional talkgroups setup. For instances, for major events/pursuits your going to all switch over to "Anycounty 1" talkgroup and go from there.

AND, to top it off...your going to need to talk to the guys in the field and to the command staff if your going to be changing the templates. Cops (and daily users) get very protective over this stuff and there will be no short amount of grief coming to your phone/email/drivers side door if its hated.

Either way, with at least the XTL and the O5 heads, you have plenty of talkgroups/zones and display names to play with.

[jcobb]

How much trouble would it be to swap out the drawer unit and control head from the leaving unit to the incoming one? Take less time and energy than reprogramming, etc.

I don't have any O5 heads in my fleet, but I understand that they are "serialized" to the drawer unit. Maybe someone could comment/clarify that.

Just a thought.


Jack

[Jack]

I wondered about doing that, just pulling the radio from the mount and replacing it with a radio from another district. My concern was the control head, and whether that would actually work. Coming from a background of old school spectras and syntor X9000's, that wouldn't be possible without also replacing the control head.

[Pj]

The heads are interchangable (you can swap out O5/O3 heads all day long)... as long as the firmware is pretty close between the two. This is where people get jammed up, using say FW8 and FW 12. When doing firmware updates, the updater will update the head, radio and secure board if needed. I believe the current head FW is 5.x. The head does not hold data A9/X9000 style.

Check batdude's article on these radios, IIRC there was a blurb in one of the sticky's that addressed this.

[Jack]

Thanks for the info guys. I appreciate it. All of it has been helpful