Batboard

MSNBC is reporting that former New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik will be named as the new Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. This is good news for Motorola, as Kerik is a big fan of Motorola's P25 gear, albeit Bernie plays hardball in terms of his vendor expectations. I bet the Big Wigs in Schaumberg are popping the champagne corks tonight! They can just see those big, whopping Christmas bonuses rollin' in! Imagine the nationwide orders gushing in for new ASTRO 25 systems. Bernie knows the advantages of the interoperability of P25, and especially Motorola's leadership role in this field. We may look to see a lot more encryption with these emerging P25 systems under Bernie's leadership. He is a recognized expert in terms of COMSEC. Here comes AES! Pop those corks! HooYaah...

Yay


mancow

Oh please.

Bernard Kerik knows squat about radios. He obviously has been brainwashed by someone in shaumburg if he thinks P25 works wonders for interoperabilty...Like for instance a plane goes down and a VHF P25 rescue squad from another city assisting in the effort can talk to officers/rescue personel and on the 800Mhz P25 system of the city the crash actually occured. Then the NTSB inspector on UHF p25 can't advise PD to keep the media out and block here and there if they see someone sneaking through the tape.....Yeah right P25 didn't improve that situation one bit. The only situation p25 improves is that of the wallets and checkbooks of the manufacturer's and the politician (s) in whom they grease like Bernard Kerik. America just made another bad move with this guy....mark my words.

BTW: Larry your ASTRO system is completely obsolete, although it is cutting edge if you look at tit from the point of "I can only own Motorola" because it is the best they make.

But really have much does Homeland Security (could they not think up a better name, it sounds like some the USSR should have had) have to do with what brand of radio/ radio system are bought. Most of system would be DHS grants to local/ state systems and as far as I know DHS can make then pick what brand, only that it P25. Even for DHS own systems I would bet that the Secretary can't just pick who ever he or she wants.

Interoperability seem to be the magic word to get money for new toys. Say you have some town with a that police on on UHF freq, Fire on one UHF freq, EMS on one and Public works on one. Now in the past the police couldn't talk to EMS and Fire could talk to PW because the fire dept radios didn't have the only had the fire freq and such. Now they get a new super P25 trunking system and move to say 800mhz. Now everyone uses the same freq but everyone COULD talk to each other if it wasn't for the fact that each dept only had there own talkgroups in there radios. They have no more interoperability then they did before with the next town over on VHF, even after the next town moves to P25. But hey they did spend a few million of your dollars.

Cam

P25 as an air interface, okay. It was born to keep air interfaces on an open standard. Remember the first digital systems (Astro VSELP and Aegis) were proprietary. Mix that with proprietary trunking (like Smartnet, EDACS, etc) and you kill the idea of "interoperability". If the goal was to implement a standardized air interface in the digital domain so brand X radio will work on a brand Y system, we missed the boat completely. Motorola and MA/COM lock you into to buying their OVERPRICED proprietary networks and subscriber units. It's called JOB SECURITY for the radio boys. But it totally flies in the face of convention if the idea was to make systems more "open" for interoperability.

P25 is yet another way for radio manufacturer's to make money. Bottom line. It isn't 10 times better than NBFM analog, there isn't this huge "spectrum crisis". It is merely a marketing gimick aimed at politicos who know NOTHING about radio. Anyone with a no-code ham ticket can tell you that a VHF radio of any kind can't talk directly to a UHF radio wether it be analog, P25, FDMA, CDMA, iDEN/whatever without a third party device or network bridge. But the magicians at Motorola are really pushing hard to drive everyone to their proprietary trunked system, where you will have no more interop than before (you'll just be poorer).

The time has come to see common sense on the issue. Equip every PS vehcile with a conventional open standard P25/analog radio on mutual aid channels and repeaters. Utilize ACU-1000's and the upcoming VoiP patches to bridge networks. You don't have to buy it just because it's Motorola. What is it with this "brand loyalty" thing anyway? Are we in high school? Is mine bigger than yours? WHO CARES. So long as it WORKS and is a COST EFFECTIVE solution that lasts is all that matters. Taxpayers are getting tired of getting anal rape with a plunger from paying for all this crap. And getting nothing for it.


If you want real interoperability, an ACU-1000 does a nice job. You can talk to anyone on anything. Nextel to FRS to VHF to P25 trunked. Two cups and a string can be interfaced if you get a good dynamic mike and preamp. The Motorola cheerleading squad really is pathetic almost to the point of silliness. Blind faith gets nothing but heartache and in the world of public safety it will get people killed.

WC4RAV is right...motorola will perish at the hands of their own marketing strategist....People will see the light eventually, and once the cat is out of the bag things will deflate rather quickly.

/\/\2....


if that were true, they'd already be gone.


have you read their profit / loss statement for last year?


i think they are doing just fine.



doug

APCO25 as a standard does provide interoperability, its free, its open and its not vendor specific. Great idea, but.....

However the implimentation of P25 systems is the problem as pointed out above by WC4RAV.

What good does do standard if you put neighboring agencies on different radio band without creating patches?

If that's how it has to be done in many instances, by creating patches, then what are we gaining that couldn't have been done with analog conventional or trunking products?

A few states got the idea and are moving everything over to a statewide system like North and Sout Dakota and Montana. They have or are building out VHF apco25 conventional. Of course these are states with small population and as such not a lot of users. Statewide band wagon is easy in their case. Now pick a state with with a huge population base and a multitude of local agencies and it sure gets harder to get EVERYONE to swtich.

Gee if this weren't in the ASTRO forum, I'd have thought I was reading a LOUNGE post.....

The Lounge is gone. Hopefully, we can open up discussions in the remaining categories a bit more liberally, now that the Lounge is forever gone.

larry

What is an acu-1000? Who makes it and where can I see or laern more about one please?o

Tandy makes a compatible model, but its only available online.

an ACU-1000 is a JPS Communications product http://www.jps.com
(hardly a RadioShack product as larry implies)

It is basically a glorified network bridge, you can connect any type of radio to any type of radio and not have to get RIPPED OFF buying overpriced Motorola trunking radios and actually have real interoperability. It operates on the same principle hams use for "cross band repeat" operations, just alot more streamlined for PS users.

Many have been sold and they come in handy at mass incidents more than any overpriced trunking system can. You can patch low band to 800, UHF to Nextel (even Direct Connect as detailed on the JPS page), etc etc.
Anyone can talk to anyone. The system is designed so it can be rolled out and setup within 30 minutes or less. It is completely portable or can be installed at a comm center if need be.

The ACU1000 isn't the only one out there, but it is the most known type of network bridge. Why aren't the feds pushing this? Is this type of solution a better use of taxpayers money than 5,000 dollar a pop trunking radios?
Makes sense to me...

Here is the best cross radio linker I've seen (I prefer LINK's unit over the jps acu-1000 that Erik was expounding upon).

http://www.link-comm.com/security.html

Tandy also has a similar unit. Not nearly as nice, but a lot cheaper. These things are being cranked out a dime a dozen off-shore. Not bad for stuff like ham radio use.

Enjoy!

larry

Are these just for short distance comms....or can they link one repeater to another?

You can link any radio to any radio, even Nextel so the possibilities are endless. Yes, you could link repeaters using subscriber radios or patch into a backhaul just like hams do it. And I like the Link Comm myself Larry though the JPS was first on the scene since "interoperability" became a household word not long ago.

(I am thinking back to the day when I got my first TM-732 and showed a comm manager for our county's PS system how I could link to the NWS in Peachtree City and they sat back and said "wow...you can use a 300 dollar radio link to a repeater and talk 50 miles away on another RF band and our 45 million dollar Smartnet system can't talk to anyone" to which replied "sometimes the most simple paths are the most logical." )

Time to stop listening to the radio sales pitches and use common sense and we can indeed have "interoperability" one day.

What is this Radio Shack / Tandy unit you all keep referring to?

They have an interconnect box that interfaces any 2 radios. It is not available in their stores, but I have seen it on their on-line Tandy store.

ASTROMODAT wrote:This is good news for Motorola, as Kerik is a big fan of Motorola's P25 gear...

Except he pulled his name out of the hat tonight.

Don't get me started about Bernie. The only thing he's an expert in is kissing Guiliani's ass. An un-polished mope and an embarassement as a police commissioner. Putting Bernie in that spot was strictly a power play
by Rudy to show everyone that he could promote his DRIVER to the top spot the ego maniac that he is.

Interesting,
This might be a solution for us. Our casino security is on UHF LTR trunking and our local Sheriff/PD is on EDACS 800 analog. I would like to see something where when SO responds to an incident on property, they could switch to a special EDACS talkgroup.
The outside bike security could remain on thier working LTR talk-group. The device would then link them. Is this something that has to be "turned on" manually at the unit or could this link the two automatically? I was thinking of a device installed in our repeater shed. Thanks

The P25 air interface is not completely open, despite what the marketing goons say, because IMBE is proprietary. The rest of the air interface is not, but IMBE is.

The Europeans have solved their band problems by putting everyone on 380-400 with TETRA.

mr.syntrx wrote:The P25 air interface is not completely open, despite what the marketing goons say, because IMBE is proprietary. The rest of the air interface is not, but IMBE is.

I am glad that somebody else pointed that out.

IMBE and AMBE (which is being considered for the next generation P25, and is what is used in the DSTAR HAM system) are licensed products of DVSI.

While DVSI is required to license them to any P25 implementor on a Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory license, all that means is that everybody pays US$100K for the license - whether you are Motorola making hundreds of thousands of radios or a company making hundreds of units.

There is no way, for example, that the GNURadio project can support fully decoding APCO-25, since the vocoder is not available.

I'd love to see these organizations at least consider Speex as an alternative, as it is truly Free.

Wowbagger wrote:IMBE and AMBE (which is being considered for the next generation P25, and is what is used in the DSTAR HAM system)

As well as XM Satellite Radio

Wowbagger wrote:
I'd love to see these organizations at least consider Speex as an alternative, as it is truly Free.

It's amazing how good it sounds even at low data rates.
I would think everyone would want to go to this as soon as possible.



mancow

I think the problem is that the Speex folk aren't members of APCO.

mr.syntrx wrote:I think the problem is that the Speex folk aren't members of APCO.

I've contacted Xiph and suggested they contact APCO and the TR-8 committee.

I'd suggest to Rob Barden that he bring it up and the next TR-8 meeting, but considering that Aeroflex has to work with DVSI, it might not be a good idea for an Aeroflex representative to be bringing something like speex up at the TR-8 meetings.

Besides, I don't know that I could brief Rob well enough to say the right things....

Can't be that bad---Uniden is in.

Secondly, if you are so TINY, and/or SHAKEY that you can't afford a measly 100 Grand for an IMBE license, I don't want to see 'ya in the P25 business.