A Tale Of Two Decoders – OP25 & DSDPlus

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It was the best of decoders, it was the worst of decoders……… As you can tell I’m quite the literate bastard and highly up to speed on my Dickens.

I love digital signal decoding as it is almost something that you seemingly aren’t supposed to do, hence the attraction of it all.   There are several hunks of software that can decode digital signals and each one has it’s strength and weaknesses.  The ones I have dabbled around with are:

There are certainly others, not to mention maybe the most powerful one (but by far the one that requires the most geek foo) is GNURadio.

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DSD+ Trunking Tutorial

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One of my favorite programs for decoding digital audio is DSDPlus.  I’ve been using it a couple of years to dissect and decode SINGLE digital signals.  Like for instance if I’m in the airport or airport hotel I can listen to DMR radio where the baggage handlers are talking to each other, or the mall cops are planning how to be real cops.  Or you can hear the hotel staff on their radios which is sometimes really fun.

BUT…….DSDPlus also follows Digital Trunked Radio.  That is where there is a Control Channel which is monitored and then the calls are “trunked” to available frequencies allowing for more users to use the system without confusion.  Also users can be placed into Talk Groups which keeps down the confusion even more.  Entire cities can use one radio system to control municipal services such as Police, Fire, EMS, Public Works, Events, etc.

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Know Your Roots, Geek

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The goal in geekdom is to always advance the skills but we should NEVER forget where we came from and re-visiting it from time to time is nostalgic and cool to the up and coming geeks.

One particular rite of passage for being a geek is taking an Altoids tin and doing something geeky with it.   Here’s my favorite project and then right after showing this I’ll go further back into my geek roots with my first Altoids tin project.

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Red Oxx Bags

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RED OXX BAGS

Ok…..This started innocently enough.  I’m into short wave radio and saw a website where a guy had a little cloth bag that looked kind of sort of military in style, and looked very durable.  He used the bag for a radio, power brick, antenna, etc.   As I was looking at that picture I kept keying back in on that bag………..so I emailed the guy and said “what bag is that”?  Red Oxx was the reply.  So I ordered one of these bags which was called the Lil ‘Roy.

 

And wow is this thing ever built great!

So I used it for the shortwave radio and then this cute gal around the corner needed something fixed.  So I’m looking and looking for something to carry my tools in and then it hits me.  Lil Roy is a tool carrying machine!

 

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Whistler TRX-1 With P25 Phase 1 LSM system

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I have a Whistler TRX-1 Police Scanner and live in New Bern, NC.  There are two systems that I track in New Bern.

The New Bern Public Safety (NBPS) and North Carolina VIPER system.   VIPER works great however the New Bern Public Safety……..not so much. It only rarely grabs a transmission and then if it does it is very broken up or robotic. Not good.

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The Aftermath of Hurricane Florence

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Thanks to TV reporters pretending the storm was a lot worse than it was the entirety of the free world thinks that all of New Bern is destroyed and is now just like the Lost Colony of Roanoke.  I’m not trying to minimize the damage to New Bern as it was substantial but New Bern is a Semi-Large Small Town and everyone doesn’t own a home or business on the River.

Basically the Hurricane created HARD days all of Thursday and Friday with some wind and rain on Saturday but no so bad that you couldn’t perform your recovery actions.

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Hurricane Flo – Part Deux

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As Barry Manilow said……….”Looks like we made it”.  The hurricane is over but the aftermath lingers on.   This is me at 2AM.  What a fella won’t do for coffee.  When times are hard having your favorite beverage helps tremendously.  I can’t stress enough what a morale booster it is.

Day 3 of no power begins.  I have a full generator tank and 10 gallons of gas left. I also have 1 inverter generator with about half a tank and THREE more waiting that says I can keep the fridge on a few more days.

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Hurricane Florence

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Today is the day we find out if I’m as prepared as I think I am.   While it no longer seems to be a direct hit it does seem like we are JUST outside the hurricane force wind zone and will be in the Northeast Quadrant of the storm where the heavy rains are.  Some forecasts show 20-40 inches of rain in this area which will cause massive flooding.  I fully anticipate our neighborhood will get cut off.

I’m an RTL-SDR geek and in a pinch that means when the NOAA satellites fly by I can download the Automatic Picture Transmission signal (APT) directly from the satellite and receive real time telemetry.   That’s pretty cool I think.  Here’s one from Sep 12th in the late afternoon.

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Whistler TRX-1 Mini Review

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So at this point it is safe to say I’m a police scanner junkie.  This started with my love of Software Defined Radio (SDR) devices.  You get an SDR then you tune to FM stereo, then you track aircraft ADSB, then somewhere along the lines you start listening to anything you can which includes emergency services stuff.

First you just listen to analog police, then you find out there are digital trunked systems.  That evolves into using programs such as DSD+ with Unitrunker or another program called SDRTrunk or OP25.

 

Then you realize that you’re into hardware scanners.  I started out with a Uniden SDS100 which is probably the most technologically advanced consumer grade scanner on the market at this moment.  It probably unseated the Whistler TRX-1.  If you read the forums there is kind of a Ford/Chevy thing going on with Uniden/Whistler.  I had to see what all the fuss was about so I got the Whistler TRX-1.

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