What would you change in ASTRO products?

[Ford]

Hello all,
Been reading these forums for a while now, thought I would toss my hat into the ring. What would you change on the ASTRO line? What features would you like to see? I've always thought the emergency button is too small, and that the XTS series should get a top-mounted display. How would you make things better (besides reducing cost)?

[WCHija]

I think the ability to use multiple encryption algos would be great. Many agencies I know of cant talk to each other securely because one uses ADP and another uses OFB. How ridiculous is it that we cant have all algos loaded on the radio and use the one we need.

[Ford]

Hasn't this been addressed by the XTS5000s?
"Multikey Feature
This feature allows the radio to be equipped with multiple encryption keys. It can support up to two
different encryption algorithms simultaneously (e.g., DVP-XL and DES-XL)."

I think even the 2500s have the capability as well.

[akardam]

This is true, if you have ADP on hardware.

You cannot, however, switch between ADP in software and OFB in hardware, without editing the codeplug.

[Josh]

-MDC radio check
-Conventional RSSI

[MTS2000des]

Hello all,
Been reading these forums for a while now, thought I would toss my hat into the ring. What would you change on the ASTRO line? What features would you like to see? I've always thought the emergency button is too small, and that the XTS series should get a top-mounted display. How would you make things better (besides reducing cost)?

well ma M made a top display Astro 25 portable, it's that elusive SSE5000, but they only made it for the NYPD...

[Pj]

Think of it this way, would it be easier to see a LCD screen backlit on top, or a back lit number aka the XTS series.

I don't forsee LCD top display on a radio that has back lit channel knob...

[N4DES]

I'd like to see a speaker mic with display capabilities and a trunking capable pager.

[Tom in D.C.]

I'd like to see an XTS model 2 or 3 with one, or preferably two, more
programmable buttons. Hard to imagine where they'd go but it would
be good to have. The top toggle switch has limited usage because
whatever you have assigned to two positions gets disabled when you
go to the third position. The Vertex VX900 has a total of eight programmable
buttons in the keypad version, as a good competitive example.

[Josh]

I'd like to see an XTS model 2 or 3 with one, or preferably two, more
programmable buttons. Hard to imagine where they'd go but it would
be good to have. The top toggle switch has limited usage because
whatever you have assigned to two positions gets disabled when you
go to the third position. The Vertex VX900 has a total of eight programmable
buttons in the keypad version, as a good competitive example.

Perhaps buttons with short press/long press would be choice, like the HT1250.

If Moto combined the XTS line with the HT1250 style and had the best features of each combined, the radio would be phenomenal.

[Ford]

These are good ideas, keep 'em coming. I've always heard lots of complaints about not having a top display, and I think that that feature would be requested fairly often. The problem with the 5000s and the 2500s is they really don't have the real estate up top to put a display there. Maybe the Model I could be modified, but I'm not even sure I've seen one before. I've only seen Type II and Type III. The short button press and long button press is something I also agree with. The display on a microphone would be interesting; I'm not sure the current connection can support it. It's something I'll look into. Only concern I have with that is that when the emergency button is pressed, unless they have it set to silent, it'll display emergency on the screen. Kinda gives it away if you're at the wrong end of something. I don't know fully what an MDC is, so I'll have to read about that a bit more.

[jmr061]

Hello all,
Been reading these forums for a while now, thought I would toss my hat into the ring. What would you change on the ASTRO line? What features would you like to see? I've always thought the emergency button is too small, and that the XTS series should get a top-mounted display. How would you make things better (besides reducing cost)?

When manufactures have comparatively compatible radios and the cost of one is significantly less than the other, who is going to get the big contract??

I have seen a worrisome trend in my area recently. TAIT is taking large contracts out of Motorola's hands and why?? It all comes down to how many radios can I get with X dollars.

Price should be a consideration. You can make the top notch product but if I can get 2 TAITS to 1 Motorola and both will work on the same system, what one is the gov't agency going to buy? I'd like it to be Motorola but OH NO!!!! It isn't.


Jason

[alex]

One thing that would be nice that you can do on the 1550's and Model III MCS2000's is make use of more than 1 line of text for a channel. You can have a zone name on line one, and channel name on line two. The radios have the current display capability for this, however, it is not taken advantage of, yet we are still stuck with the "take characters away from the name to get zone names". I understand back in the day when you have limited memory, but when you can go out and buy a memory stick with 1gb for $15, there's no "well, the radio doesn't have enough memory bs..."

Another option would be to take the soft keys and make them programmable like someone else mentioned, and then setup the 4 way arrow pad so that you can change channels/zones, or make it like the cell phone where you tap it, and it brings up a more interactive and informative menu than the simple soft keys as most the time when you hit left or right, it's to change the softkey options.

Multiple bands, 1 radio. There I said it.

-Alex

[Ford]

The argument that I've heard against multiband radios is the preselector filter. Nevertheless, I've brought it up again. It's a great idea, and would be pretty useful for UHF and VHF. I imagine it could be done fairly easily with the 700/800s. Are there any band prefs? Keep it coming.

[alex]

Are there any band prefs? Keep it coming.

Well, I don't know if there's an ideal band combination, but I'll say UHF Range 2 (450-520) and 800mhz. No one here that I know of is taking the 700mhz plunge as of yet. Doesn't mean it's not happening.

To give you an idea as to how big a pain in the ass it is not having a dual band radio, when on duty with one agency I am with, we must carry an 800, UHF, and VHF radio. This is so we can JUST talk to agencies that respond either within our town, or with 1 outside agency.

Granted, the above example is NJ where one hand couldn't possibly think to talk to another about interoperability, but this isn't the place to discuss that problem.

I'll try and think of other idea's.

-Alex

[jmr061]

I agree with Alex that what bands depends on the region your in. Here VHF is pretty much the main thing, a little UHF for some public safety stuff but not much at all. In the southern part of WI a few agencies are on 800 from my understanding, so for them a VHF/800 radio would be the one.

I would like to mention control head style. I think one of the biggest mistakes Motorola made is getting rid of the W9 head. Lots of complaints from law enforcement agencies around the area that were forced to go to the O5 head. Keeping it simple is the key for most users. Many departments were some how able to switch back over to W9 heads. The siren integration in the head is important, less stuff to mount.

I'll try to come up with more.

Jason

[alex]

Jason -- You made me think of another thing with the control heads... You should be able to hook up a microphone to the rear of the control head, and not only to the front of it. As I understand it, M did all it's usability testing WITHOUT the microphone hooked to the control head (yeah, smart...) so that's why the connector wasn't designed differently. Make us a right angle adapter or something that makes mounting the things in consoles easier and look less cluttered.

-Alex

[Ford]

Jason and Alex, I'm not as familiar with the mobile/consolette line. Can you give me a picture?

[PeterGV]

Alex hit on my favorite "want"... Multi-line display.

With all that space on the radio display, why can the ZONE not go on one line and the CHANNEL NAME text on the other. Or, even allow two lines for display with the space dynamically allocatable between channel name and text (IOW, 24 characters total instead of 12). I was really surprised when I discovered you can't do this on a 2500 or 5K.

I'm just tired of labels like "Z5: D-PTL1 N", I guess.

PeterGV

[libuff]

make the sse5000 available to the public.
price, price, price... the motorola premium is a price most companies can't afford.

[alex]

Jason and Alex, I'm not as familiar with the mobile/consolette line. Can you give me a picture?

I will see what I can come up with in the next day or two.

-Alex

[MattSR]

The price.

And their attitude towards private/non-govt users.

[jmr061]

Front panel programmable (FPP) mobiles would be nice. I'll get some pics of the W9 for you.

Jason

[txcc08]

Conventional RSSI
Wider UHF range (430-520) would be nice
Front panel programmable
Price
Access to software

[mikegilbert]

I'd like:

The second line for zone name- I've gotr "radio ID" turned on just to use the real estate.
Call log- as in a list of the last 20 astro IDs that popped up and the time of the call
Bluetooth- Er, wait a minute...
FPP functionality while in the XTVA
03 Head for the XTVA

[Ford]

The last twenty calls is an interesting idea, how useful would that be?