Batboard

Our Turbo guru setup a CTI Products TurboVUi gateway and the android client in our shop today as a demo for an existing Trbo customer. That worked slick. The customer has a wide area five site Trbo digital system that replaces their previous UHF analog repeater system. They love it. The new Droid app from CTI just adds to the functionality. Now anyone with a Droid phone can use the system. They just point their client at the static ip of the gateway and connect. They have to buy enough licenses for all the phones they anticipate would connect at one time. This customer is starting with twenty five, and may increment up if necessary if their people adopt it like they did the radios.

There is about a two second delay from real time caused by the gateway and wireless carrier. But audio quality is as good as Trbo ever was. The PTT is a bit clunky - it's a soft key on the screen like Tikl. It takes some finesse to get used to it. Mic audio from the phone is acceptable by you have to hold the phone close, or use a headset. Other than that, you have full control of the radio connected to the gateway. You can change talk groups. You can private call. You can text. And the radio does not have to be on a digital mode. We set up a couple analog repeater channels and talked through them just fine. Pretty amazing product.

Someday I'll get to play with Trbo and no be just looking on (sigh).

I guess a link to CTI would be good!

TurboVUi link

Oy. No need to buy a radio to add to your system. Just get a license and deal with the delay. Great technology, big threat to radio sales. Not sure Motorola saw the forest for the trees when they approved that one. Smartphone penetration is only to get more pervasive.

Granted, but it's a continuation of the bite that cellular has already put into two-way, and into telco for that matter. It is the direction things are going. On the plus side, LTE is not perfect. When our guy attempted to demo it at the customer location, he had very poor Verizon coverage. The link to the gateway kept dropping while their dsl based dispatch maintained connectivity to their sites. Purpose built systems should have a place into the future to fill the void that cellular leaves.

One downside noted from the demo is the unit ID that shows up on the radios is the gateway radio. In other words, no matter who is using the droid app, they are all the gateway. It is impossible for the other Trbo users to initiate a call to a specific droid user. The customer will push forward with the project, warts and all, and deploy it for their management that do not normally carry a radio. We hope to show it to a number of other Trbo customers that also have personnel that only require occasional use of the radio system.

Bill_G wrote:We hope to show it to a number of other Trbo customers that also have personnel that only require occasional use of the radio system.

Exactly, it's a niche market. Bell offers the same sort of thing in Canada for the last year through a company called Twisted Pair, for any customer on any radio system. I can tell you how many deployments have taken place in Atlantic Canada...zero.

How much does the TrboVUI Gateway that you hook up to the radio Cost?

I'll have to find out.

I have a demo system running Turbo Vui with Android as well, and it's neat. It shows your customers what is possible, and there is a lot of "wow" factor.

Actually using the radio portion is a little bit...wonky? Like Tikl, you would think it would be the best thing to ever come along, but in practice it doesn't threaten to take over for the actual radios. The PC client solution works better. But for occasional use outside of radio coverage, it is compelling.

We have one at the shop. Iphone app is out now. It works pretty well over 3g

Can someone record a demo to show us??

ces911 wrote:Can someone record a demo to show us??

It's at the CTI TurboVUi site, or you can download the app from the Google Apps store.

TurboVUi Android Client

I don't have equipment to test yet with it. Wanted to see a live demo on video or such.