Batboard

I am trying to standardize an identifier protocol for my county. The problem is that each department has different types of radios. The two departments that are currently using identifiers are using HT1250 with MDC1200. They only encode and decode between themselves as our dispatch center does not have a decoder of any type. My department has VX-900 which I believe with an aftermarket board can do MDC1200 encode and decode. My question is about any other manufacturers like kenwood or Icom etc can they do MDC1200? Do they need a third party board like the vertex. Specifics would help as far as manufacturer, radio type and third party hardware.

Thanks for the help,

Mark

Kenwood radios support MDC through the installation of a board from Cimarron Techologies. It is a third-party board, but it's available as a line item on the initital purchase or as a replacement part direct through Kenwood.

I assume it is only for the higher end public safety radios like the 3180 which is one of my committee member recommendation as an alternate to the HT1250. I will look at the kenwood site to see what they say. I will also look at the third party site to see if they list the radios that are supported.

Mark

The Cimarron website was helpful in identifying radios that can use this technology. One question is do these board which to encode and decode allow for alias assignment like the motorola radios or are you only going to get the 4 digit id displayed when you decode?

You can add the TK-290/390 to the list.

-Mike

There are a couple of companies that have add-on MDC boards. I think transcrypt also offers them.

Only thing you have to watch for is if you specifiy Pre-PTT ID. The user has to wait a sec before speaking or they will cut themselves off. In this situation, post-PTT is usually the better option.

If you want full featured MDC1200 logging, alias, etc, check out SystemVu at:
http://www.fn-software.com/SystemVu2/

This was developed in cooperation with Cimarron

Sam

Has anyone had any experiance with these, programming, installing, etc.? How much does one cost? I am trying to decide if I should install one in my gm300 and kenwood portable or just sell them and buy an ht1250 and a cdm 1250/1550.

Vertex radio's use a third party board from Midian, kinda a pain to program the board, you have to program the board out of the radio and then install it. If you want to change MDC Id, you have to remove the board again. You have to use a special programmer and software from Midian. I think they make several other baords for other brands of radio's, but i do know that Vertex just repackages Midian products and sends to there dealers.

Mikey