Batboard

Hello,

I was just wondering about Identifiers on the radios and the dispatching console.

Is there a limit as to how many identifiers a console can hold?
Does it depend on how you program the console, to accept only so many identifiers?

We are trying to add more portable radios to our truck, but we were told by the guy in charge of the dispatch center that we could get the radios but they wouldnt have the identifiers. He said there was no more room.

Am I right by saying the Emergency mandown button on the radios wont work because the radios wouldnt have identifiers, or will dispatch pick up an emergency mandown, but not know who it is.

Thank you very much,
Josh

what kind of console, running what program and what kind of system are you talking? with a little more info someone here can be of help to you



btw...where in ct?

yeah sorry about that.

I dont know what is being run, right now i know it is motorola.

Will get more info.

thank you


BTW- i live in West haven

A Centracom II console will do upto eight characters...0-9 & A-F

A Centracom Gold Eliete (PC Based) will do upto 14 charaters.

The radio only transmits 4 digital 0-9 and some A-F.

As how many aliases the console will hold, most likely more than you can put in there. I have never heard of the actual number, but seeing that some consoles have over a 1000 aliases in use, I wouldn't worry too much.

ok the guy in charge of systems sounds like he doesn't want to do anything. MDC or trunking ID's are for the most part limitless for the average agency (unless you have 20 thousand users running around)

Are we talking trunked or conventional ID here?

Either way you'll end up with this result if an ID comes up that isn't "aliased" in the system.

raw ID displayed with no alias

easy work-around here is to see if you can make the raw id match the vehicle number

such as your truck is number 551 then make the portables ID as 551A, 551B etc etc

same applies if its the longer trunked ID character set.

It sounds like he is refering to aliases and not ID's.. You can't run out of unique ID's until you've used up every number between 0001-9999 and then mixed it up with ABCDE as well. That is far more possible ID's than your system can possibly have in use. The console is going to display the ID regardless of who is using it.

If you are limited by the number TEXT ALIASES you can create, that is possible depeneding on the software doing it. A Gold Elite will in all liklyhood not have tihs problem. If your software does, then it will simply come up as a number and not a name.

"...MDC or trunking ID's are for the most part limitless for the average agency..."
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It depends on the console. Motorola Centracom II Plus consoles store their alias data in EEPROMs on the TOMI boards. These EEPROMs have a finite size. Several things are stored in these EEPROMs including SPI, channel name, and private call aliases in addition to the trunking and MDC unit ID aliases.

The RSS keeps track of the EEPROM useage and shows how many aliases are in use and how many are left. Any one operator position can only have a few hundred aliases at best.

As others have said - not having an alias does not mean that the console would not respond to an emergency - it would, but it would just show the raw ID. The idea of assigning the ID to match a vehilcle or function is a great way to save alias space.

xmo, that's what I was getting at. Unless they are a huge agency the limits aren't that big of a deal.

I advocate the same practice for LE - if using all numeric designators.