Need info on MDC-1200 decoding. Have scanner QC2 decoder.

[AndrewJayPollack]

If it were me, I'd wait a week.

I'm closing in quickly on the new one.

[n0top]

Hello I am John Verser de N0TOP. I would love to have a copy of
your software for the scanner. I use Motorola radios for 2 meters hr.
Love them... Best 73s and Merry Christmas and New Year...
John verser de N0TOP....

[jban]

Just found the post. What ever happened to this project, Andy? I would be interested in trying it out also.

John

[AndrewJayPollack]

I am planning to release the free version of the scanner monitor by the end of next week. If you're on the email distribution of this list, you'll get the heads up and download instructions.

I have a question or two for you guys as well. If you have a minute, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Part of the service offering that makes up the reason for all this work includes the need for me to place a local PC running the software at a customer site (often a fire department hq) along with a scanner. I'm leaning toward something called a "Thin Client" which is a mini-pc that has no moving parts and a long life span. These are limited machines, but take up almost no deskspace or power. This option will give me something much easier to support and probably much less trouble prone.

I'm also wanting to include a scanner in the bundle. The thinking there is twofold. First, if they already have a scanner they're probably using it for something else. Second, if everyone has the same devices, support and instructions are much easier.

So much questions to you, who are experts on this subject:

1. If you needed a scanner for the sole purpose of listening 24 hours a day to a single frequency -- and your top criteria were reliability, sound quality, and reception on a single channel -- (a headphone jack is required) -- what would you pick? Reduction of background hiss and hum can be a real help in this case.

2. Which is your local department more likely to pick as a choice:

(a) A 'startup fee' which includes the scanner, a special purpose 'thin client' low power use PC with a cheap monitor (which could be disconnected and put away 90% of the time) and batter backup for the whole kit -- all pre-configured, including the scanner frequency being pre-set at a cost of around a thousand dollars. For those who need it, a couple of hundred dollars more buys a "ruggedized" thin client machine that can be bolted to a wall in any location that is dry and between 35 and 90 degrees.

(b) A 'startup fee' of about 200 dollars, but the requirement that the department set up and dedicate a scanner and a low-end PC (typical cost of a new low-end PC w/ monitor is about $450) with battery backup (about $80) and the increased time to set it up. This saves about $300 up front, but comes with the long term issues of hard disks and fans that tend to burn out, higher power consumption, and the liklihood that they'll do other things with the PC. On the upside, the machine is capable of doing more things and being re-tasked if at some point they stop using the service.

[W4WTF]

Just my .02, but I wouldn't trust departments to do setup for option 2b... way too many problems with hardware on thier end will get blamed on your software, right or wrong, and word of mouth will hurt you for problems you didn't cause as well as eat up your time. In public safety communications, $1000 is a drop in the bucket. Sell complete systems that you know work together.

For radios, if it will just be recieving a single channel, I would avoid scanners and go with a commercial radio of some sort. I am sure others will chime in here with good model suggestions, but I would go with some of the 1-4 channel models offered by any of the major manufacturers.

This offers several advantages:
Better reciever, less likely to suffer from interferenace or intermod.
Better PL decode, since most scanners don't offer it at all.
Less likely to have its programming messed with. If you put a scanner in a fire station, I don't care how well secured it is someone is going to get to it and dick with the programming. At least with a real radio they can't do that.

All for about the same price. I am sure some others will step in with better suggestions, but for starters check out the Kenwood TK-762/862 series, a low cost 2 channel VHF/UHF mobile radio. I bet you can buy them brand new for less than a scanner that has PL/DPL ability.

Of course if you are hooking into a trunked system that would also be easier with a proper radio for that system, in that case I would have the customer provide it and program it.

[spareparts]

(a) A 'startup fee' which includes the scanner, a special purpose 'thin client' low power use PC with a cheap monitor (which could be disconnected and put away 90% of the time) and batter backup for the whole kit -- all pre-configured, including the scanner frequency being pre-set at a cost of around a thousand dollars.

Sign me up! As PEP said, $1000 is a drop in the bucket for this type of stuff.

Did you ever consider using an OEM version of WinRadio? Stuff the board into a 1U server class box http://www.winradio.com/home/custom.htm and away you go!

[AndrewJayPollack]

(a) A 'startup fee' which includes the scanner, a special purpose 'thin client' low power use PC with a cheap monitor (which could be disconnected and put away 90% of the time) and batter backup for the whole kit -- all pre-configured, including the scanner frequency being pre-set at a cost of around a thousand dollars.

Sign me up! As PEP said, $1000 is a drop in the bucket for this type of stuff.

Did you ever consider using an OEM version of WinRadio? Stuff the board into a 1U server class box http://www.winradio.com/home/custom.htm and away you go!

That winradio is an interesting idea, but probably not ideal for what I'm doing. More likely I'll just produce a list of recommended scanners.

[HumHead]

As an alternative thought, why not consider using a low-end, limited feature mobile radio as the receiver?

There are a number of fairly inexpensive 1-4 channel low-power mobiles out there that would be easily cost-competitive with many of the scanners that would be viable for this application.

Using a mobile set up for RX only would offer several advantages:
1) Better RF performance than most scanners
2) Fixed audio output level
3) Resistance to unauthorized user tampering
4) Always powers up on the proper channel
5) Availability of a COR system to validate channel activity, if you ever need it.

Depending on how you spec your system, you could build the whole thing into one enclosure, and just add an exterior antenna jack. If you put a beefy enough power supply on the computer, you might even be able to steal an amp or two of 12VDC to run the radio in RX mode.

On the down side, changing frequencies would require programming hardware, and changing bands would require a hardware swap, but most of these are probably going to be left on the same frequency forever.

For the freeware version, let the users cough up an appropriate scanner.

[AndrewJayPollack]

As an alternative thought, why not consider using a low-end, limited feature mobile radio as the receiver?

There are a number of fairly inexpensive 1-4 channel low-power mobiles out there that would be easily cost-competitive with many of the scanners that would be viable for this application.

Using a mobile set up for RX only would offer several advantages:
1) Better RF performance than most scanners
2) Fixed audio output level
3) Resistance to unauthorized user tampering
4) Always powers up on the proper channel
5) Availability of a COR system to validate channel activity, if you ever need it.

Depending on how you spec your system, you could build the whole thing into one enclosure, and just add an exterior antenna jack. If you put a beefy enough power supply on the computer, you might even be able to steal an amp or two of 12VDC to run the radio in RX mode.

On the down side, changing frequencies would require programming hardware, and changing bands would require a hardware swap, but most of these are probably going to be left on the same frequency forever.

For the freeware version, let the users cough up an appropriate scanner.

The more I read, the more I'm convinced to not mess with the scanner/radio side other than maybe provide some recommendations. There are too many differences in department needs here. Audio output just makes the most sense.

[Mikey]

Can you add me too your list to try out the software? [email protected]

Thanks

Mikey

[AndrewJayPollack]

Can you add me too your list to try out the software? [email protected]

Thanks

Mikey

Done -- but you should read about it on http://www.Secondsignal.com

[W4WTF]

The more I read, the more I'm convinced to not mess with the scanner/radio side other than maybe provide some recommendations. There are too many differences in department needs here. Audio output just makes the most sense.

Its not as complicated as it seems, most likely 90% of your customers will be VHF-Hi, UHF or 800mhz trunked. For the trunked systems it would be easier for the customer to provide the radio, but for the rest it is simple enough for ou to provide it. In fact offering turn-key packages like this will help you sell them. Just stick with one model of radio for all you provide to make programming and setup simple.

providing them on your end would also allow you to have demo mocels you could setup as "loaners" for a month or so.

In the end programming radios lie the Kenwood 62 series is no more complicated than programming a scanner.

[AndrewJayPollack]

Yeah, I'm still working on the new free version.

What I've decided to do is if I'm not able to release the free version by Monday afternoon, I will re-release the current version with a longer license key (6 months) while I continue to work on the new free version.

That current free version is still functional and does 90% of what the new free version will do -- but doesn't have the updated look & feel, and is missing some improvements that I think everyone will like.

Sorry I'm not done yet as planned -- but I don't want to let software out the door that isn't stable and functional to a very high level of quality standard.

I will post a URL here by Monday evening with either the NEW download or the existing one with a much longer license key.

[ffexpCP]

For the audio source:

Almost every fire station has some spare minitors lying around. Just have them remove the reeds.

Perhaps you could configure somthing to tap into a tone remote line.

[dittrimd]

While the technerd side of me loves this project, the operational side of me has not fully gotten the benefits. With that said here are my questions.

My dispatch center which is a regional county wide center has a system which covers very well. For call notification we currently use two tone and voice as our primary and commercial alpha as a secondary. The dispatchers have a CAD system which automatically sends out the correct tones for the specific call as well as dumps the run card data to the alpha paging interface which then sends it out to all phone/paging companies.

Take my situation, At my day job, I can listen to my county and recieve calls for my town on my tone pager, my alpha pager, a scanner at my desk and my portable which I carry at work. I not only know what is going on in my town but other towns as well. My only issue is that I work 25 minutes away from my town. I am pretty much useless for responding to most calls. I have made it to a couple of fires but usually just in time for overhaul.

So if this system is primarily for people who live outside of the coverage area for their area how will this make them any more effective for an emergency response? If they cannot receive thier call alerts normally then either they must live pretty far away or their system does not have great coverage. Plus depending on where they live if cell phone coverage is a problem that feature becomes an issue. Wouldn't be easier and more reliable to just purchase scanners for the people who live out of range? New scanners will do two tone decode and with a roof mounted antenna have great reception. Yes they will not be able to listen to the recorded call info but in most incidents you can get an idea of what is going on just by listening to the active call.

Maybe I am not fully getting the concept but these issuse sure seem like important quesitons to ask if you want to market this service.

[Leadenwah]

Geeks and Firefighters: Sounds like a good comiination to me, best of both worlds.

This is a very interesting project. I would love to be included in any version which is to be distributed for testing.

e-mail address: [email protected]


Many thanks.

[AndrewJayPollack]

At my day job, I can listen to my county and recieve calls for my town on my tone pager, my alpha pager, a scanner at my desk and my portable which I carry at work.

This makes you very unusual from what I've been able to determine personally and based on interest. In fact, there are huge numbers of people who work within 20 minutes, but are outside the range of their Minitor radios. In our area, going more than a few miles from town finds them unreliable. This is of course terrain, congestion, and tower related.

We also have many people who work in offices manufacturing facilities which further degrade reception or in some cases simply make using a scanner unacceptable.

Wouldn't be easier and more reliable to just purchase scanners for the people who live out of range? New scanners will do two tone decode and with a roof mounted antenna have great reception. Yes they will not be able to listen to the recorded call info but in most incidents you can get an idea of what is going on just by listening to the active call.

Scanners don't allow you to catch up if you get that message when you're away from the scanner. Most people don't work with a scanner near by that they can quickly access. That's what we're finding.

Maybe I am not fully getting the concept but these issuse sure seem like important quesitons to ask if you want to market this service.

That's fair - not everyone will see value from this. The fact is there are 35,000 call/volunteer departments in the U.S., more than half serving under 2500 people. Although I've had interest from some larger cities, in general this isn't something a larger city area is going to benefit from.

The only thing I found odd in your post was that you've said after 25 minutes you're not much help at a scene. That's not the same attitude I see with the guys on my Engine company. A big incident will take hours to resolve, smaller ones only a few minutes. In either case, there is still hours of work to be done after. Sure, you'll miss the initial attack if you're 25 minutes out, but as those guys are on their way out to rehab, someone needs to be in there with a fresh bottle. Someone needs to be arriving for RIT teams, and a lot of other jobs that don't get started as quickly.

Again, a larger department or a department where daytime manpower isn't a problem is going to find this less helpful. That's ok with me, I'm not limiting myself to only producing something that is useful to 100% of the people out there.

[dittrimd]

I am only one individual just putting forth a few questions. It certainly sounds like you have a lot of interest which is great. Anything out there that can help any and all fire departments with staffing is a great thing. As with most departments we have staffing issues in our town as well. Mostly EMS staffing for the ambulance transports. Our town cannot justify paid staff as of yet but our volunteers are getting stretched thin. We do over 600 ambluance calls a year and another 400 fire related calls most of which are minor.

I was kind of speaking tounge and cheeck when I mentioned about not being useful. Myself like most fire fighters like to be on the first line in but I am always willing to do whatever I can. No job is too small or beneath me. I seem to find a many of the younger guys give me grief about doing overhaul or rolling hose.

In rural Connecticut we very rarely have calls that last more than 30 minutes on scene. If we have 2 to 3 structure fires a year we are lucky. For those few call where we might need more personnel we just add another mutual aid company to the assignment rather than worry about a couple of members who did not get the tones.

Again all my comments are just from my little corner of the world. It sounds like you have caught on to something and I hope it works out for you. Best of luck.

Mark

[AndrewJayPollack]

Because I promised and I'm not ready with the latest quite yet, here is a link where you can fill in the form and download the last released scanner monitor software with a 180 day license. To renew after 180 days just go back to the site. You won't want this one in 180 days anyway as I'm nearly done with the new one.

https://www.thenorth.com/clients/nctsea ... keyrequest

If you can wait a day or two, I recommend it. The next version is very much enhanced including:

1. MUCH better tone detection -- my testing is picking up a 312hz tone played over a background noise of radio traffic in less than .25 seconds.

2. MUCH better non-tone filtering -- with that same file, in "open scan" mode which is used to figure out what tones are out there, I'm seeing massively less false positives.

3. Less 'tweaking' -- the software is much more self regulating. It handles it's own tone "power" detection internally and works with average volumes from very small to very high without altering the ability to capture the tones and leave out the non-tones.

4. Better resource management -- I dont' think it was bad before, but it should take even less resources and processor time now as each thread is "self regulating" and will slow down or speed up just enough so that it uses about 50% of it's internal buffers at any given time.

5. Internal buffers prevent any missed samples and smooth out processor requirements.

6. More sensible "actions" to take when one of your configured tones is caught.



-----------------

oh, and also....

I am only one individual just putting forth a few questions. It certainly sounds like you have a lot of interest which is great. Anything out there that can help any and all fire departments with staffing is a great thing. As with most departments we have staffing issues in our town as well. Mostly EMS staffing for the ambulance transports. Our town cannot justify paid staff as of yet but our volunteers are getting stretched thin. We do over 600 ambluance calls a year and another 400 fire related calls most of which are minor.

I was kind of speaking tounge and cheeck when I mentioned about not being useful. Myself like most fire fighters like to be on the first line in but I am always willing to do whatever I can. No job is too small or beneath me. I seem to find a many of the younger guys give me grief about doing overhaul or rolling hose.

In rural Connecticut we very rarely have calls that last more than 30 minutes on scene. If we have 2 to 3 structure fires a year we are lucky. For those few call where we might need more personnel we just add another mutual aid company to the assignment rather than worry about a couple of members who did not get the tones.

Again all my comments are just from my little corner of the world. It sounds like you have caught on to something and I hope it works out for you. Best of luck.

Mark

No offense was taken -- your department sounds a bit like mine, maybe a little smaller. If you get to the web site, take a look at the tv spot the news did (It's on the site). You'll hear what the Chief here has to say. We're seeing a pretty big increase in daytime responders. YOu'd be surprised how many people just don't carry their minitors around with them.

[AndrewJayPollack]

Sorry to take so long getting back to you. I've been kept busy with the part of my work that pays the bills.

Explanation and up to date feature list:

The software is finally nearing release as long promised. The delay has been that I needed to re-write large parts of the tone detection code. The problem was that I was consuming too much CPU time. Sure, it worked great on my dual processor multi-gigahertz development machines, but when I put that sucker on a 1ghz Via Eden based thin client machine it set the processor over 75% and held it there constantly. Since those are passively cooled units, I was afraid I'd melt the thing down to slag with a 7x24 application hitting it that hard.

The good news is that I'm now running at 2-3% on that machine most of the time when the scanner is quiet, and boost to 30-40% briefly during chatter or tone noise. On most of your home computers you won't even notice the thing running in the background.

I've been throwing everything but the kitchen sink at the thing in terms of noisy signal and the ability to pick out the tones from background noise and chatter is really impressing me (finally). Normally, when there is a tone it should be the only thing on the channel. In practice I've found that isn't always true. My torture tests include one sample where I've overlaid five or six tracks of radio chatter (spoken voice) and a single track of valid tone, then saved it as a wave file. The software is picking out the tone at 500 milliseconds without logging inaccurate possible tones from the voice chatter. Another torture test I use is to play captured radio traffic that was captured by a scanner, encoded as "gsm" VoIP traffic (cellular phone quality), relayed to voicemail server, and recorded. That file is then played over the computer speakers and the software again picks out the tones from it.

One thing that gave me complete fits was picking out DTMF touch tones. Some of the code that lets me see tones from the background makes it very hard to pick up the less dominant of the two frequency dual tones. I've solved that problem and find that I can spot touch tones just like any other tone I've tried at a time window below 185 milliseconds. Realistically, setting the threshold to a minimum of 375 milliseconds (and better yet 500) will give you a much cleaner log file to sort through.

So, current capabilities seem to be:

1. Stable and fast enough to run on machines below 1ghz without taxing the processor.

2. Able to pick out tones below 300hz in as little as 185ms. Of course higher frequencies are less problematic.

3. Currently able to handle a range of about 250hz to about 4000hz - which more than covers all the tones I know about.

4. Frequencies are measured in steps of 2.7hz, meaning a frequency of between 269.148hz to 271.84hz (for example) would be reported as the approximate midpoint frequency 270hz. That's a common practice in digital frequency representation and is a function of the math. This gives a tolerance at 300hz of +/- [0.9%] and at 3000hz of +/- [0.09%] which is well within any tolerance I've read.

3. Able to handle DTMF (touch tones)

4. Much less sensitive to input volume levels -- it handles a wider range without any tweaking being necessary. In general, there is much less tweaking necessary with this version and I've been tempted to just remove some of those controls. The idea of "input power" or "input level" is so automatic now as to be meaningless in this version so I've removed it.

I'm doing the last work on it now, with the re-integration of the "traps" and actions. As of tonight I've got a successful test of a two part trap (the most commonly used) though the form used to create, edit, save, and delete those traps isn't quite right yet. In fact, it's downright ugly -- but that's just 'grunt work' and isn't anything hard to 'figure out' how to do.

I do plan to make this version able to minimize to the system tray and get out of your way, and also to give it the ability to unmute your pc speakers as one of the trap 'action' options so that it can make your PC work like a Motorola Minitor.

[AndrewJayPollack]

Finally, the tool is stable, fast, efficient, and pretty. I'm working on the documentation and download process tonight and should be posting the link tonight or tomorrow.

[bulletproof-791]

will you please add me ? [email protected]

[AndrewJayPollack]

I have literally just finished packaging the thing for you testing types! It's so fresh I haven't written the online help files yes -- that's tonight.

Go get it here.... I'll write a lot more about it later, as right now my Beloved Spouse is about to get home with the kids and my time goes away for a while.

https://www.secondsignal.com/clients/nc ... keyrequest

New Functionality:

1. WAY more accurate

2. WAY less processor heavy (0-20% on a 1ghz cpu, where the old one was 80% all the time)

3. WAY less sensitive to volume changes.

4. Can mute/unmute the speakers on your PC as an action.

5. Better logging.

6. Better touch tone support.

Go take a look.

[AndrewJayPollack]

I've put together a list of all the reported issues I can recall, along with a few paragraphs that should really help you understand how the settings all work together to avoid falsing. I strongly recommend taking a moment to read this one.

http://www.thenorth.com/northern.nsf/html/SSSMB3ISSUES

[N8RTN]

Hi all.

I'm looking for details (similar to the fantastic Quick Call II documentation found on this site) on decoding Motorola MDC-1200 identifier codes. Does anyone have this documentation?

Also, I've written software which monitors a scanner via line-in to the pc, and can capture QC2 tones, identify the cap code, then use that code in the future to trigger 'events' (like turning on the pc speaker if a tone-event happens). Combine it with streaming audio and you can get alerted when things happen. Does anyone need this but me?

please add me to the list, software which monitors a scanner via line-in to the pc, and can capture QC2 tones, is all i need that would be great..
[email protected]...

[AndrewJayPollack]

please add me to the list, software which monitors a scanner via line-in to the pc, and can capture QC2 tones, is all i need that would be great..
[email protected]...

Please read the last few messages in this thread for instructions. Thank you.

Update for everyone else:
Second Signal (the service offering) is now up and running. The marketing push to sign up departments will begin next week (when this storm is gone and I can finally go home --for now the damn power line calls keep leaking 'lectricty all over the darn place).

The beta 3 is still current, and I expect to finalize it for a release version with longer license and some additional features later this week.

--Andrew

[WV8VFD]

Soulds like cool software. If you would add me for the free software too.

wva012[@]gmail.com (replace [@] with a plain @)

[AndrewJayPollack]

Soulds like cool software. If you would add me for the free software too.

wva012[@]gmail.com (replace [@] with a plain @)

What list? There is no list. The software has been available for download for a really long time now. The link is posted in this discussion many times. Please read the topic before asking for free stuff. You may find it.

[WV8VFD]

Soulds like cool software. If you would add me for the free software too.

wva012[@]gmail.com (replace [@] with a plain @)

What list? There is no list. The software has been available for download for a really long time now. The link is posted in this discussion many times. Please read the topic before asking for free stuff. You may find it.

I am so sorry, I was in a rush at school and didn't see the date and time stamp. I thought this was a new topic.

[AndrewJayPollack]

For those who hadn't seen any of the press releases or tv news coverage, Second Signal has begun general marketing finally.

The free software for local-only decoding is still available at
https://www.thenorth.com/clients/nctsea ... keyrequest

We also have the following marketing programs going on, which may allow some of you to make some referral money.

#1. First new department in a region gets the monthly service for half off
#2. Dispatchers, Firefighters, Engineers, EMS people, etc. get $200 cash for bringing in a department (and this is in conjunction with #1 above)

I probably won't post any further info here, because it's now pretty much a closed issue.

The site and information about the service, the software, etc. can all be found At the website
http://www.secondsignal.com

Thanks for all your help.