Meshtastic

mesh network built to run on affordable

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Cool, And there's nothing quite like searching, just searching, picking
a band, searching, yeah, just to see whether it's turning
the dial, clicking the mouth whatever. It's the searching for
that signal. Can you find something that's wait a minute,
what is that?

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (00:18):
Can I decode it? Can I figure it out? Where
is it?

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (00:23):
Sometimes on the weekends, if you tune just below our
forty band, you'll find some pirates in there.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Oh yeah, yep, have to. I haven't found any pirates ship,
not that I noticed.

Speaker 3 (00:35):
I only found them one night, and I found two
of them. One was on for well, I think I
heard him for about an hour, and as soon as
he shut down, another one came on.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
Oh yeah, yep.

Speaker 3 (00:47):
So apparently it's a coordinator schedule or something. I don't know,
but that's the way it seemed that night.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
I haven't no not that we do.

Speaker 3 (01:00):
And if you hear somebody that sounds like Tommy calling
out numbers somewhere, it's it's not him, it's not me,
unless they were repeating only the number four.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
I saw. I saw something today where somebody just a
spoof of one of those and he was calling out
like Mexican foods burrito all kind of stuff. It was
pretty funny stuff. I'll send you a link to it
later you can look at it. Okay, cool, Tommy, you
got I don't know what you call this. Is this

(01:34):
a news item or what is? It's a news item.
It's on the ABRL news site. I ran across at
Daytonham mentioned twenty twenty five award winners have been announced.
You know about that. You got one. You had a
major award from there. Yeah, special Achievement Award. Now it
wasn't a leg lamp, but it was still really cool.
It was it was honor. Yeah, it's pretty awesome. So

(01:55):
I thought it was just kind of mentioned that we know.
Actually one of these guys for sure the Achievement Award,
doctor Christina Collins k D eight zero x T. Congratulations
to her Special Achievement Award. That's the one you got.
Julio Ripaul, I'm probably reckon his name, sorry about that.
W D four R Club of the Year is r

(02:18):
V Radio Network.

Speaker 1 (02:20):
R v r N.

Speaker 2 (02:21):
I'm I'm not sure. I haven't heard of that when
he looked that up. But you know this guy, yeah,
I know that guy. Neil Rapp got the Amateur of
the year D nine vpg uh for his stuff with
the youth on the air. We talked about that a
good bit on here. Yeah, good guy, we know we preople. Yeah,
it's a congrats to everybody, but especially Neil.

Speaker 3 (02:44):
Were there others or was that the hull?

Speaker 2 (02:47):
That's it? That's it?

Speaker 3 (02:48):
Okay, Yeah, congratulations Nail and everyone else on the list
of Yeah, it was kind of interesting.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
Julio's up and y'all, y'all recognize that name. I don't.

Speaker 2 (02:59):
I don't recognize it.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
I think he was the lead ham at the National
Hurricane Center WX four anything.

Speaker 3 (03:05):
Oh yeah, Tommy, you've been playing with something new here.
I've heard the name. I'm just not that familiar with it. Yeah,
it's Mechantastic.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
It's really cool. It's off grids Network. Let's take a
look at the I'm gonna talk about that afterwards. How
about that. Well, today we're going to cover something kind
of different. I've been interested in something called Metastic. I'm
a little late to the party with it. Has I've
been seeing a lot of posts about it. Decided to
give it a try and see what it was about.
In a nutshell, is small little devices like this one

(03:37):
here that I've already put together because a little intenda
in here. It runs on nine hundred and fifteen Mega
hurtz are about and that's doesn't require license. You don't
have to be a HAM to use it, although there
is a HAM radio operator mode on it. We'll talk
about that later. If you get have more than one,
you can put so far apart and they'll make their
own network. And if you get enough of these together,

(03:59):
like California up in the northeast, there are quite a few,
you can use your phone with an app and message
people on the network without having to use the Internet.
No infrastructure required other than just these devices that are
all paired together. I haven't done a lot with it.
I just kind of get started on it. I bought

(04:19):
these little Helltech V three boards. They came to the
case and everything, and I bought the batteries separately. Let's
go ahead and put it together, flash the meshtastic firmware
on it. So I've got some here. I bought a
set of these hell Tech V three boards off of Amazon.

(04:41):
You could the link will be in the show notes
if you want to give it a try. These are
built on the ESP thirty two type architecture. I think
it's got a display already built on it. Now these
have the pins on the back. I wish they didn't
because they kind of get in the way of the case.
They stick out of the back of the case here,
and not too crazy about that. So I may either

(05:02):
take 'em off or get some other ones or something
or built or three D prints something to be covered up.
But let's go ahead and flash one. It's it's real straightforward.
The thing comes with uh. An antenna comes with uh.
This one became with the case cases. I didn't know
it did, honestly, so, and it comes with two of
these little uh I think they're called JST connector pigtails.

(05:28):
They plug in right here on the back, and it
came with two of those, and then the antenna. One
thing I didn't mention this is it's called a Laura
device l O r A, which stands for a long
range I believe. So we're gonna take it out later
and test it. Uh. Probably not this segment because I
don't have that much time, but uh, probably the next one.

(05:49):
We're gona take them out and see what the range is.
So before I flash, I wanna put the intenna on
here just in case. Uh, you don't want any transmitter
to transmit without an antenna on it, so you ch
it's take a chance on burning it up. Okay, So
it snapped on there. As you can see, it's got
a USB C connector on the back here that hook

(06:11):
it up to the computer. And I've already got a
cable hooked up to my machine. So let's go ahead
and plug it up this first time this one's been
plugged up at all, uh connecting connecting fail Wi Fi
set up. This is the uh hell tech software Laura
software that came on here, Laura Mode zero. But we're

(06:31):
gonna overwrite that with the mesh Tastic. I don't I
honestly don't even know what that does. I probably should
get one sometimes play around with it, So let's let's
try it. Go to flasher dot, meshtastic dot org. Pick
your device and you can see there are a lot
of devices that are supported this DIY stuff. Uh there's

(06:51):
some Raspberry Pie Pico stuff that you can get boards
for that. I'll probably play with that later if I
like the whole thing, and that one of these lily
Go t that plus is coming, so I'll show you
that when it gets here. Okay, so let's find the
UH the one we've got hell Tech here. It is
right here, hell Tech v three. Pick the firm where

(07:13):
you want. I think it's the faults of the latest
UH stable. So there's that twenty beta. That's what we use,
and let's flash known issues. You gonna read all that

(07:36):
if you want to, but I'm gonna go ahead and
just do it so we can get finished. And I
wanna do a full of racing install and I wanna
bundle the web UI because that's what we're gonna go
through to set it up. Erase flash install. You can
see over here on our device the screen went black. Now,

(08:00):
Mestastic doesn't really support voice. It's only for sending short
text messages. So you can set up one here one
somewhere else and message between them. There's there's an app
on the phone that we'll look at shortly that you
can connect to it as well. First of all, we're
just gonna focus on getting the software on the device,
because if it's finished, we boot it up. Okay, we

(08:23):
can closed the flash here and now we're finished with that,
so let's take a look at it. Uh. Let's go
ahead and set it up. Okay, so we're gonna use
the app and can and set it up to the
network so we can get to it. I've got a
mestastic app that installed off the app store of plus Masantastic.

(08:46):
Right there, there's the other device. It's gonna ask for you.
Number one eight seven one five nine is mom one
eight seven one five nine pair. Okay, so now I've
got my other one paired. Now we can do it.
Go in here to uh oh, so let's go into

(09:09):
radio configuration and see what we've got user. Let's give
it a name. My other one I call the N
five Z and O node one. So I'm gonna make
this one in five s you know two them lisn's

(09:30):
amateur radio operator. I don't know why that wanted ask that,
but I am. So I'm gonna go ahead and check that.
Every time you make a change, it sends it to
the device and it reboots it. Okay, so it's got
a name on it. Next thing I wanna do is,
uh go into device. Let's just see what we've got.

(09:52):
It's a client double taps or button press to say
with the led heartbeat. That's that white light right there.
We turn that off. It's kind of annoying to me.
I don't know why it's on there. I turned it
off on my other one. Somewhere in here we set
the region. Maybe it was over here, oh, region onset

(10:16):
United States. Reboot it again. Like I said, pretty much
everything you change on it is going to reboot the device,
which is fine. You can see my name right there's
n O two long fast as one of the channels.
We'll cover that in a few minutes. So let's let's

(10:38):
make this a little bit easier to set up. And
I don't really like using my phone with it. I
usually leave it disabled because it just floods floods it
when it's connected to the internet with the notifications. So
let's let's kind of skip that. Let's go over here.
Let's there radio configuration network. Why f I enabled. I'm

(11:04):
gonna do that. I'm gonna put my SSID in here,
which is my call sign and my key, which I'm
not gonna show you. It should put it on the
network now, click soon, and when it comes back up,

(11:26):
hopefully we'll have an IP address. So we'll go backwards,
go backwards again. There it is when eighty four to

(11:50):
work connect to that and so okay, let's let's stop
using the phone. Let's disable this and let's go back
to the browser now, So we'll go over here. Since
it's on the network, we can go to meshtestic dot
local and let's make a new connection messtesti dot locals. Fine,

(12:18):
if you had both of them on, you can put
the IP address in there, and the IP address shows
on the one of these screens you see here. There
are three pages. Those little dots right there show one
and you can tap the button, the top button. They'll
it'll scroll to the next page. One ninety two, one
sixty eight, one one four On this one. Uh, there's

(12:40):
my WiFi and there's my messhtesti dot local. One thing
to say, if you put the wrong credentials in there
for your WiFi, it's gonna freak it out and you
may have to plug it back up and reflash it.
I did. I had to do that with my other
one twice till I got figured out what was going on.

(13:01):
So let's uh, let's go in here now check it out. Okay,
it's very similar to what we had. Says it's one
hundred percent one hundred and one percent. But that's just
because we're plugged in. I don't even have the battery
hooked up to it. You can look at messages here,
send them.

Speaker 1 (13:20):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (13:20):
You can look at a map of where the Meshtastic
nodes are, the active ones, I think, and you don't
see anything down here where I am. Actually I don't see anything. Oh,
we're not on the network. Let's let's fix that. Let's
go back to We need to configure m QTT, which

(13:45):
is Message Queuing Transport something or another. Uh, so we
want to enable that. Don't change the user name of passwords.
Everyone uses the same one proxy. This is UH. If
you're gonna send messages, it uses the client's internet if

(14:06):
you have it map reporting enabled, and I'm gonna leave
that off for right now, because you can put your
GPS coordinate send here if you turn that on and
within however distance, so you don't really you may not
want people to know exactly where you are. I'll leave

(14:27):
it like that. Mischief, fantastic work. All that stuff is
the same, the main thing. You just need to turn
it on, so let's save. Look over here, it's rebooting
again and it's back up, so let's go ahead. The
primary channel comes on by default it's called a long

(14:47):
fast uplink enabled down link enabled. I don't know that
this is required. Actually you can leave it blank. But
how I put that in there, because that's the standard one.
There's a lot of traffic over the internet. Now you
might ask why am I enabling the internet? Because I

(15:11):
don't have anything else around me to send messages to
right now. So later I'll probably turn this off, but
I'm leave it on for right now. Okay, I think
I must have some messages already. Okay, you can see
some are coming across. I don't know why I'm not
seeing them in here, because I should see them in

(15:31):
my browser. Let's close this or go back scratch new
mass task to local connect. There they are. I just
wasn't connected, so be sure after you make a change.
Sometimes you may need to close the browser if you're

(15:51):
using that. But you can see all these nodes that
are on the internet. I see tests over here, and
I see tests on my anyway, that's that's the just
of getting it started. I want to take it a
little bit farther, and I actually want to take it
a lot farther and to see what the actual usefulness

(16:12):
of the thing is. So I hope to take one
of these and put the solar panel on it, put
it out. I've got a little treehouse in the back
back there, sort of a treehouse thing, and I'm gonna
put it up in the loft where it's covered with
the from rain, and run the solar panel around to
the side so it'll keep it charged, and just leave
it there and see if I get any any notes

(16:34):
connected to it. People come and passing by or whatever,
and see what happens. I hope you find it useful.
We'll continue on soon and continue experiment and learn more
about it.

Speaker 1 (16:45):
Three.

Speaker 2 (16:46):
Yeah, I wanted to take it out and do some
more with it, but it took so long to go
through all the steps to do that. Just gonna make
it that would have been just a Tommy show tonight.

Speaker 1 (16:55):
You know.

Speaker 2 (16:55):
I had a treehouse when I was a kid too. Yeah,
I call it the tree It's like a little house
on stilts. Okay, it was for kids. You've seen it
back there, haven't you. Yeah, I know you've seen it,
because but it's been a long time since you've been over. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (17:11):
Probably it's more of a squirrel house. To be honest
with you, I'll say probably the last time I saw
it was after an episode of squirrel damage from this.

Speaker 2 (17:19):
Yeah, so the thing I was talking about the phone,
if you hooked up the m q T T and
you use that long fast channel, which is the fault.
I don't know why they named it that. That's kind
of weird, but anyway, there's so many every time somebody
connect to one of those nodes, it's gonna send you
a message of ascation. So I turned all those off.

(17:41):
I actually blocked a not case on my phone. It's better.
But I bought one of these T deck plus and
they released a two point six firmware for it. It's
kind of goodie on. It's pretty nice. I'll show it
later on too. But I've been having a good time
with that too. It's between that and the short wave stuff.
Been having pretty much pretty fine. So is it really

(18:02):
safe to connect with something on the internet called Flasher?
It depends on what you're into, I guess, yeah, just
don't search for it. I wouldn't want to leave it
to the internet all the time. But like if we
set one up in my tree house, Yeah, you got

(18:23):
how how tall is your tree house? Right now?

Speaker 3 (18:28):
It's on the ground, but you know, I can. I
could get it off the ground.

Speaker 2 (18:32):
I actually bought some hygiene antennas for it too, So
I'm going three D print a different box. But see
what I can do with that too.

Speaker 3 (18:41):
And so that's operating in two point four gigs orts.
Oh so it's not using the Wi Fi really in
the ESP unless it connects.

Speaker 2 (18:51):
To the internet for the Internet, okay, and.

Speaker 3 (18:56):
The low raw thing that's a different module. Yeah, well
that's all part of it. That's all the same device,
So that should be a better distance. Yeah, and then
you get with Wi Fi.

Speaker 2 (19:08):
Oh yeah, yeah, it's his long range. I don't know
how long. Yeah, it was like, no, it's gonna be
the line of sight, but how long. See what I've read,
he can get reasonable.

Speaker 3 (19:26):
I mean like I'm thinking HANDI talking distance. Oh yeah, yeah,
I think I've seen where people were doing that with.

Speaker 2 (19:32):
I'm gonna try to get one of them up pie
and then bring one over here. Maybe we just play
around with.

Speaker 3 (19:39):
Whoever's brave enough to climb my tower. I'm not climbing
that tower anymore. I did that before, all right, it
was in better shape, and so was I. Don't go away,
We're going to be back in just a moment, but

(19:59):
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(22:14):
one of those. I see seventy seven to sixties.

Speaker 2 (22:16):
Oh yeah, give me both, man.

Speaker 3 (22:20):
I've got seventy seven hundred, so it would be a
good you know, a good next radio for me.

Speaker 2 (22:27):
Yeah, it was supposed to be one coming here sooner
or later and gets play with There is yes man
down coming we do? I got a news item here?
What's you do tell?

Speaker 3 (22:39):
The new news is kind of the same as the.

Speaker 2 (22:41):
Old news meets It eats it cute boss.

Speaker 3 (22:45):
Yep HR ten ninety four. The Amateur Radio Emergency Preparedness
Act is out there again and they are proposing to
amend the Communications Act of nineteen thirty four to prohibit
the application of certain private land use restrictions tamateur radio

(23:07):
antennas and for other purposes application of private land use
restrictions to amateur radio antennas Part one of Title IREE.
The Communications Act of nineteen thirty four is amended by
adding at the end the following application of private land
use Restrictions to amateur radio antennas Section three forty six.

(23:30):
In general, a private land use restriction that prohibits, restricts,
or i compairs, or has the effect of prohibiting, restricting,
or impairing an amateur radio operator from operating, installing, or
maintaining any amateur station antenna on property subject to the
control of the amateur radio operator may not be adopted

(23:52):
or enforce except as permitted by Subsection B. Now you
can look this up for yourself and at all the
details by going to the link at Congress dot Gov
shown here below. It will also be in the show notes.
I was wondering what was in subsection B. How what
could they still hold against you. That's a good question.

(24:14):
Well let's see you a good answer. Yeah, I'm not
sure how good it is, but it got an answer.
Got an answer, or at least I can't answer it.

Speaker 2 (24:27):
It is.

Speaker 3 (24:30):
Permissible restrictions one in general, subject to paragraph two, the
following private lend use restrictions applicable to amateur station antennas
may be adopted or enforced. So these are things that
won't help you as an amateur, but the h o

(24:52):
as will still be able to do this stuff. A
restriction that requires an amateur station antenna to be installed
in compliance with the specifications of the manufacturer of the antenna,
applicable zoning ordinances, amateur radio tower ordinances, if any and
governmentally adopted building codes. So yeah, those things. If your

(25:19):
city outlaws towers, you can't do it. But if the
city doesn't care, the neighborhood can't stop you. But the
way I understood that the city couldn't stop you already,
I thought I thought it was only the h o
as well. Yeah, and you know you'd want to. I

(25:40):
could see them saying you gotta install it within the
specifications of the manufacturer. Okay, be a restriction that requires
an amateur station antenna to be maintained and structurally safe condition.

(26:03):
You can see that, you should do that anything, you
could live with that. You can understand why they'd want
it to be structurally safe.

Speaker 2 (26:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (26:12):
C A restriction that requires any deteriorated or structurally unsafe
component of an antenna system to be repaired, replaced, or removed. Yeah,
it seems somewhat reasonable. That seems reasonable. D A restriction
that requires an amateur station antenna to be removed at

(26:33):
the property on which the antenna is located ceases to
be subject to the control of the amateur operator. Well, yeah,
if the hand's not there anymore, Yeah, then I could
see why.

Speaker 2 (26:47):
Sure.

Speaker 3 (26:47):
Yeah, you couldn't claim an exemption. There E a restriction
that requires an amateur station antenna ground mounted electrical enclosure,
ground mounted controlling enclosure, or guy wire anchor to be
visually screened if such enclosure or anchor eye is visible

(27:09):
from the street faced.

Speaker 2 (27:11):
By the dwelling.

Speaker 3 (27:14):
Oh, you can't see your antenna. Are your anchors in
the street. It's got to be visually screened the ground stuff, right.
A restriction that requires an amateur station antenna, ground mounted
electrical enclosure, ground mounted controls enclosure, or guy wire anchor

(27:38):
to be visually screened. If such enclosure.

Speaker 2 (27:41):
Anchor, just the stuff that's on the ground. Ye, so
you've got a planet pushing for a note. Okay, all right,
that seems like a possibility. Maybe are II is located

(28:01):
in an unfed side or rear yard and is visible
from an adjoining property. M means your neighbor can't see it,
and the plant one on both sides. Then yep, So.

Speaker 3 (28:22):
You can have an antenna as long as nobody sees it.
As the way I'm reading that, I got it. Okay,
just park the old car around there instead you blocked
the wires anchors. Okay, pull pull old car or something
around there. They like that better look a chain around
it to you, bumper and if they ask you what's there?

(28:44):
Don't keep anybody from stealing the car there? Okay, I
don't know. So some of this was added. This is
some of this is new language added to the Amateur
Radio Emergency Preparedness Act that hasn't passed in the past.
So they're trying to get I guess, get more people

(29:08):
satisfied to allow this to go on through.

Speaker 2 (29:11):
You're going to make everybody happy.

Speaker 3 (29:13):
Ever, go to that link right there and you can
read more about it for yourself. Don't take my word
for it.

Speaker 2 (29:19):
I'm not so sure. I think our Senator Roger Wicker
might be one of the ones. No, he's not one
of the sponsors. He did it one time, he did.

Speaker 3 (29:27):
Yeah, you can get more details on it right there.
Check it out for yourself, because you'll it'd be a
good idea if you contacted your representatives. And right now
it's just then it's in a sub committee, so it
helps it gets out of there and advances to the
next stage and eventually makes it all the way through.

Speaker 2 (29:47):
But you know it's a tough push.

Speaker 1 (29:49):
So you'll have any of those cell phone trees.

Speaker 2 (29:53):
Oh yeah, we got to help in my town for sure.

Speaker 1 (29:57):
Yeah, I forget I predict tree amateur radios.

Speaker 3 (30:03):
Yeah, we even got a Washington monument over here.

Speaker 2 (30:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (30:07):
I passed that on the interstate a few times.

Speaker 2 (30:10):
Yep. Yeah. When I was working in Missouri, they're like, hey, Tommy,
you're from down there, what's to do with that Washington monument?
Everybody up there knows that they have a customer the
company I work for as a customer, right around the
corner from it, and so they turned right there to
go to the what's to do with that Washington monument
thing there? Yeah, the obelisk email.

Speaker 3 (30:35):
George, Yeah, I know we were talking earlier about searching.
Tommy is still not searching around on HF. Yeah, you
like to do some searching around on higher frequencies.

Speaker 2 (30:50):
I think, yep, you're.

Speaker 1 (30:52):
Right, You're right using older tools and technologies, And occasionally
I do a double take or look backwards, trying to
get my ring light out of it. Yeah, occasionally I'll
take a look back to see what's changing, what's new,
because the chief old man might be on the proal

(31:13):
to actually open his wallet to find out what's happening.
So I wanted to go back and look to see
what's around my new location and what's around here using
the old So I did that double take and learned
a thing or two.

Speaker 2 (31:29):
I think the cheap old man might be more prone
to keeping his more rare thing from he keeps his
wallet closed.

Speaker 3 (31:40):
You're saying the wallet does not properly close anymore.

Speaker 2 (31:44):
I think.

Speaker 1 (31:46):
There may be a disposition shift. There may be, Yeah,
I'm learning some things. So Hello George, Tommy, Mike, Amateurlogic
TV viewers. So every once in a while I changed
topics go talk about something else that I'd usually involved
in with either computers or in other communications type systems.
In this case, it's all about public service and just

(32:10):
being aware of what's around you using some technologies that
are out there that are pretty advanced and coneheard to understand,
but got to hand it to Uniden in this format
in their latest group of monitors and scanners, they knocked
it out of the park and its hands down to me,

(32:30):
the best presentation or organization of information and tactics, if
you will, or methods used for finding and being aware
of what's around you. We'll take a look at the
user in a face here. One of the most important
things about this particular receiver, besides the fact that it's

(32:55):
a trunk tracker, which I'll get into a little bit later,
as well as able to receive digital modes, it's the interface.
The user interface touchscreen lets you control it directly from
the unit and you can enter either your ZIP code

(33:17):
and or plug in a GPS to it and let
it figure out where you are, and it will use
the entire nationwide database that's built into the unit as
an SD card in the back to determine or you
can put your city and other information in. It's a

(33:39):
really neat interface and it works really well to actually
see what's happening there. You can also buy category departments
and unlock I'm gonna unlock this category here. You can

(34:01):
basically lock it into a particular band or radiotype service.
Otherwise it's going to go through all of them based
on your location in the distance you select or range
as they call it here, the range option. So that's
a really neat interface and just makes it totally easy

(34:21):
to zoom in and figure out what exactly you want
to hear, if there's anything around you or not. Plus
you can do the standard type scans just going up
and down a range of frequencies, and or like I said,
lock it into a specific department and or you know
a category of things that they've categorized and people have

(34:47):
input it into the system which you can download to
it and update it, keep it updated from the computer.
There's a software that comes with it, so really awesome
user interface there really makes it useful. Comes with a
stand there on its own, but just a little bit

(35:08):
of a look around. You have the USB port there
for connectivity, the power supply if you want to keep
it there. It also charges the batteries that are in
the back of it, as well as a port for
GPS power and the volume for the actual physically unit
up front, antena ports and audio headphones, headphone jack, antenna

(35:35):
and line out, which is neat for when you're wanting
to hear it maybe on a better system, and or
to send it to the audio elsewhere. It's very clear.
The digital decode is very fast and it's pretty impressive
to me. Now, with that said, this is a ten

(35:57):
year old scanner. There are some new things that are
happening within the might even be longer than that, maybe
fifteen years old. There are new things happening within the
public services. They're changing from app Co twenty five Project
twenty five to a different phase, Phase two, which is
basically them adding time division multiplexing access, so basically doubling

(36:22):
their available channels and bandwidth using their existing equipment. So
it's a win win for them. But you do have
to it's backwards compatible, which means you can still listen
to here, but I'll probably wind up getting the other
versions of these that have that built in as well.
So lots of similarities between amateur radio and public service scanning,

(36:46):
like the AMBE chips right that we're all familiar with.
In the time division multiplex like DMR or some systems
used the nextdend and some are even encrypted, which this
will not pick up. So if you live in an
area that has that, this will not do what you
needed to do. It might be able to trunk it,

(37:08):
but it's not gonna be able to decode it because
there are certain things that they don't want to be heard.
So anyway, great little package here, especially with that GPS
function and wherever you go, zip code is all it takes,
and it's going to load the entire national database for
your area within a thirty mile range of whatever range

(37:29):
you pick. It'll limit the scans to just those channels.
So extremely effective little device here, and it just works well.
Not only are you of is it possible to avoid
or lock it into a particular service, which you can

(37:51):
also avoid a particular service that's in it within or
department that's within That comes in really handy when they're
there's a Birdie frequency or you know a nuisance things
or something that you just don't want to hear or
listen to. It's up to you. This gives you literally

(38:11):
a one touch avoid button pressing you know screen or
touch sensitive screen, which means you can do it all
from right here, and you can either make that temporary
and or permanently in order so it'll resume after a while,

(38:32):
or if you don't do anything, it's not going to
avoid it like I just did, so it's a it's
a toggle. Basically, you can go on and off with
the avoids and it does keep track of that over time,
which is neat. You can mess with the display options.

(38:54):
There's quite a few of service types that you can
go through and check out, and you can also set
all of this up from the software that is a
part of the computer program. The Sentinel is what it's called,

(39:15):
and there's other updates too and unlocks and things that
Union allows you to buy in or license, so pretty
neat the thing. They are definitely on the expensive side,
not cheap old Man compliant. However, if you want to
hear what's going on around you, then that's the way.

(39:39):
So neat stuff. You can set up all the audio options,
display options. The weather mode is in there too for
listening to the alerts, although I usually keep a separate
radio for that. Can't do it all in one or
I won't at least and plenty of advanced options that
you can set depends on your what you learn from it,

(40:03):
I guess, or what you want to hear and or see.
So really really good interface to me, it took all
the fun right out of trying to figure out all
of that trunking nonsense and all of the other things
that are built into systems or systems designed. And we'll

(40:28):
talk a little bit about that coming up. Let's give
it a look with some AI about the questions what
is at CODE twenty five or P twenty five, I
should say, just to get a look into that. There

(40:55):
you go set of digital radio communications standards designed for public,
say the organizations in North America. I think the idea
there was they wanted to standardize for interoperability across agencies.
And one of the things I wanted to bring up
while looking at this is the different phases. Right there

(41:16):
are Phase one and Phase two type receivers that are compatible,
and the difference is, as you can see here, they
use phase two is half the bandwidth, and they're adding
t DMA or time division multiplex access to it, which
is similar to DMR and slots. So they effectively doubled

(41:38):
their channel capacity on their trunk systems. And speaking of that,
what is a trunk system, let's find out I know

(42:00):
from my experience in it. Trunked systems on a phone
system or a business phone system is you know, when
you hit the or doll nine on a system, you'll
wind up with an outside line that you can call outside. Well,
there's a trunk or a group of twenty five lines,

(42:21):
let's say in a TV one that is selected as
soon as you hit that nine button. So again it's
all about if you have a thousand employees, you're not
going to have a thousand radios for each employee. You're
going to have a trunk of maybe twenty five of
them that can use them because they're not all going
to use them simultaneously at the same time. So let's

(42:42):
make sure I get this spelled right. I don't think
there's a C in there. Let's see what they say
here they go. A trunk radio system is a type
of two A communications that automatically assigns available channels to
users and moving efficiency and making large volumes of traffic

(43:05):
or managing traffic. So again they're not going to locate
everyone in the company or a public service agency a channel, right,
it would be too much radio. So what they do
is they use a lower number. Again, I'll use that
same thing. If it's a thousand employees, maybe you'll have

(43:29):
one hundred channels, or you know, it might be some
subset of that. So so basically ensuring that those spectrums
or those channels, the existing repeaters are using the spectrum
efficiently is what this is all about. So Phase two
effectively doubled the capacity, and therefore you've got to have

(43:50):
a skin or a receiver that's capable of using and
digging into those slots. The TDMA so neat stuff.

Speaker 2 (44:00):
I call that the kids are now going to be
back in the park. There's gonna be.

Speaker 3 (44:05):
A hole in the that they go through.

Speaker 2 (44:07):
That's pretty cool, man. I haven't seen that one. I've
actually got the union in HP four thirty six andy
OL scanners.

Speaker 1 (44:15):
Yep, Trump, there you go. So you got phase one
in two with a trunk track of five which all
which is all the different systems that are out there.

Speaker 2 (44:22):
So yeah, put you put your ZIP code in there
and uh, yep, tell how what the range is you want?
Like I think I might set to like thirty miles
something like that. It's pretty nice scanner. I actually bought
to use it to Jackson Amfest for three hundred bucks. Yep.
So is that compliant email? It's probably no.

Speaker 1 (44:46):
Neither neither is mine. And and that's the thing. So
the one he just showed in this one as well
is the analog. It's the older path right even in him.
Now we're doing the digital uh modes, and so are
they of course with Project twenty five for the whole
interoperability thing. But that use of the spectrum, just like

(45:09):
DMR George, you know, there can be two simultaneous discussions
on that same single frequency. So when they switched the
phase two of the P twenty five, they automatically doubled
their bandwidth and they had fifty channels and I got
one hundreds.

Speaker 2 (45:25):
So did you did you buy the extra keys for
years for the different modes?

Speaker 1 (45:29):
Now I was true to chief old man status and
that's regards.

Speaker 2 (45:33):
I wasn't true to it, so I bought three of them.

Speaker 1 (45:37):
So yeah, and So one of the things they're changing,
and I don't know if this is on yours or not, Tommy,
but instead of the analog HATH ways of coding right,
just like Icon is doing and other things that are
digitizing the RF coming in right and then putting it
through SDR process and you didn't call that true IQ,

(46:03):
and that technology is just applying the same thing we've
always seen on the hand side of sampling, the direct
sampling from Icon and other texts. That's turning it important
pushing the data through the SDR process you know, FPGA
or whatever it is, and that tech. So they're getting

(46:26):
really good at it. But yeah, the prices are also
getting really good.

Speaker 2 (46:30):
Yeah, that's pretty expensive. I got mine for about half
what it really sells for normally. But anyway, I'm pretty
happy with the find.

Speaker 1 (46:40):
Yeah, he's a three hundred man. That's the five hundred
and something.

Speaker 2 (46:42):
All of scanam eighty nine dollars on Amazon.

Speaker 3 (46:46):
And you're saying that it's eighty years old.

Speaker 2 (46:48):
You've got your meal.

Speaker 1 (46:49):
It's ten. It's tensing for whatever.

Speaker 2 (46:52):
It's been around a long time.

Speaker 1 (46:54):
They have this is the home they call it the
Home Control one, and they have a two in phase
two of that outco And like Jerry's saying in the
chat room, they don't see the crypts. They don't participate
in any encryption, So if they want to hide what's
happening on there, they can and they do. So you
got to really see FX and what's available in your

(47:16):
area isn't or is capable of being used otherwise that
six hundred dollars investment is going to get.

Speaker 2 (47:22):
Really most of stuff around here is on that ms
WIN network that you're using. That you you showing there,
like by our local police to fire all that stuff.
For everything's on there. How can you hear Yazoo City
all that stuff, just like it's in my backyard. I
need an out from my pie good luck.

Speaker 1 (47:44):
A pie amp.

Speaker 2 (47:47):
Yeah, well that's pretty cool, man is Yeah. I thought
they said you got the STS one hundred or somewhere.

Speaker 1 (47:55):
I saw that and in the January edition QST from
the Al they did a review on that STS one hundred,
very similar radio to what Tommy just showed and has.
And the differences here is that color screen is the
way they packed everything. Yeah, you know, there's everything built in,

(48:19):
then there's the keys you can get so that it's
decodes n XDN and DMR and pro voice and all
sorts of things. Yeah, which is pretty obscure these days,
but there are some places that use that. So you
just got to figure out what's in your area. But
the thing here about this one, the reason I'm listening

(48:40):
is because this is an example of the one of
the ones there have out that is using the SDR. Okay,
so you know, the prices on these things obviously were
reflective of the compute power that's in the entire nationwide
databases are in them, the GPS that automatically selects at

(49:00):
where you are, and you don't have to do anything anymore.
You know, scanners used to be in putting a whole
bunch of stuff, grouping and banking them. Not anymore. And
and the trunking makes it even more fun because you
gotta you used to have to know what kind of
trunk system it was and tell it that. Not anymore. Yeah,
it just it just knows. So lots of good tech

(49:24):
in here, plus the SDR where it's digitally sampling the
RF coming in. They call it true IQ, other companies
call it different things. But that's why. But you know,
go check out that review of this and you'll see
what I'm talking about, what they're doing. So anyway, I
was with you.

Speaker 2 (49:45):
We bought it. We were up in Ohio going to
work and he uh went to Universal Radio and he
bought one there while we were in the store.

Speaker 1 (49:52):
Yep. Yeah, and they've been around for a while for sure.
But I just again, every once in a while, I
take a look back a little my shoulders to see
what's new in that realm. And that's what I found.

Speaker 2 (50:04):
George.

Speaker 3 (50:06):
Okay, so you don't have this one currently.

Speaker 1 (50:10):
I do not.

Speaker 2 (50:11):
It won't arrive for the next week. Is that what
I'm when it delivered.

Speaker 3 (50:16):
I'm not.

Speaker 1 (50:17):
I'm not saying anything.

Speaker 2 (50:18):
Okay. Well, that's a nice one. That's the best one
you can get. As far as I know.

Speaker 1 (50:25):
There is one hire is it mobile Mobile? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (50:33):
Wow?

Speaker 3 (50:34):
You guys in your fancy scanning machine.

Speaker 2 (50:37):
Do you The units are nice because you get that
software I think it's the Sentinel software and you can
download updates to it.

Speaker 1 (50:44):
So that is an awesome system. I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 (50:47):
It different work.

Speaker 1 (50:48):
It just work.

Speaker 2 (50:50):
It's just really nice.

Speaker 3 (50:52):
You know, the last scanner I had, it was an
eight channel realistic canhill.

Speaker 2 (51:00):
How many crystals did you have in it. No, I
didn't need crystals.

Speaker 1 (51:06):
Direct entry.

Speaker 2 (51:08):
It's a direct entry. Yes.

Speaker 3 (51:11):
It was about the size of a brick. And I
had a rubber ducky you could beat a vandal. I
mean it was a heavy deity rubber ducky on it. Yeah,
and it works. I don't know what happened to that.

Speaker 2 (51:25):
An analog scanner. I got a clearance at Radio Shack
for like thirty bucks. Yeah, it's it says realistic or
whatever it is on it. Pros I forget anyway. But
it's a unit. And you've seen them.

Speaker 1 (51:37):
Before, Oh, absolutely, Yeah. When you take them apart the board,
they're all uniting.

Speaker 3 (51:43):
I used to use a lot of bear Cats in
the years past. Yeah, my grandmother had once.

Speaker 2 (51:50):
She usedless to it all the time, really bloodless to
the police and the fire. She had crystals in it. Yeah,
oh yeah.

Speaker 3 (51:58):
We used to sell crystals when I worked in the store.
We had some of the Bearcats gunners and had all
the local crystals. Yeah, and one of those little drawers there,
I'd pull it out if you wanted to, you know,
whatever channels you wanted. And eventually they came out with
a direct entry synthesized that just that just changed the

(52:19):
whole ball game, right there. Yeah, plame fair for us
people that still had crystals.

Speaker 1 (52:25):
Yeah, and that's what that's what Unit did. The same
idea you just talked about twenty years ago is what
Union has done again. And I don't know if you've noticed,
but just about every vendor that's out there, it's disappeared.

Speaker 2 (52:39):
Yes, yeah, because.

Speaker 1 (52:42):
They that gooey just blew it all the way and
the way it goes for the trunking. I mean, the
only other higher radio I can think of, quality wise
would be that AOAR, right, the Japanese company. I believe
it's called AOAR, but I'm not sure they're even doing
the trunking part that Unit is doing.

Speaker 2 (53:01):
Yeah, but I like my high Comm R eighty six
hundred receiver. Yeah, pretty nice, but it does do drunking.

Speaker 1 (53:10):
Yep. No, a different, different idea behind that completely right.

Speaker 2 (53:16):
It's still an.

Speaker 1 (53:16):
Awesome piece of equipment there, Man, I wish I had
that one expect when that thing it's phenomenal.

Speaker 2 (53:24):
Yeah. I use it every single day, is it?

Speaker 1 (53:26):
None?

Speaker 2 (53:26):
The day goes by, I don't turn it on infect
sometimes I don't turn it off.

Speaker 3 (53:31):
Any user information we need to pass along before we.

Speaker 2 (53:35):
Get out of here tonight. Were they same?

Speaker 3 (53:38):
College's going to be twenty eight That is a good question.
It could It could be March twenty eighth. That'll be
in two weeks.

Speaker 2 (53:47):
When's the net? When is the net? You know?

Speaker 3 (53:50):
As a matter of fact, there is a net coming
up as you mentioned there, that is coming up. Well,
that'll be the fourth Tuesday of the month, that comes
up to the twenty fifth, March twenty fifth, March twenty.

Speaker 2 (54:08):
Fifth, So you guys put it on your calendar and
join us. It's a big time. So March twenty fifth,
eight pm and all those places listed on your screen right.

Speaker 3 (54:20):
Now, yep, join us there and that'll be all one
hundred UTC.

Speaker 2 (54:27):
Good will this time. Email what's with the speciy new hat? There?

Speaker 4 (54:33):
You know you guys remember the winterfield Day video we
yes uh presented last episode from k for kJ Q
the Bluegrass Amateur Radio Society Club or Bars and.

Speaker 1 (54:50):
Lectington, Kentucky. Well, they done sent me a hat and
a pretty snazy one at that. Oh nice show you
the back of it, Okay, I did Minagraham going on
and from the ballpack showed out to W nine KAZ

(55:12):
again for hooking me up with the flag from the
Bars club out in Kentucky. And that was David richardson
W nine KZ, long time viewer of the show.

Speaker 2 (55:24):
Yeah, that's pretty awesome. Man, looks good.

Speaker 3 (55:28):
You had some cards or something there too, didn't you?

Speaker 2 (55:31):
I did? I did.

Speaker 1 (55:32):
He sent me a QSL card which I have to
respond to and reply to. A very nice card. Thank you, David.

Speaker 2 (55:41):
And did you tell me that they watched the show
up there?

Speaker 1 (55:46):
Yeah? Did you send me a picture or of them
all in the club looking at the TV that they
have in their club watching the show, so like they've
been watching for a while.

Speaker 2 (55:58):
Awesome. That's like extra points right there, and that's absolutely well.
Thanks David and the club there for that.

Speaker 3 (56:07):
Eveil, you look good with a how sound purple colored hat?

Speaker 1 (56:13):
Do you like that?

Speaker 2 (56:14):
I like that? Very nice.

Speaker 1 (56:18):
I was. I was wondering, you know, he he he
sent me it's purple and gold, purple and uh gold
in the back, and I was wondering because they're in
the big Blue nation up there, so yeah, they know,
I guess they know.

Speaker 2 (56:30):
I'm l s U.

Speaker 1 (56:32):
Yeah, and Tommy's Alabama. So that's all. If we could
have some interesting conversations on the net.

Speaker 3 (56:41):
Any any final news information you need to pass.

Speaker 1 (56:44):
Along, keep it cheap unlike me.

Speaker 2 (56:50):
Yeah, don't don't do what he says, not what he
does exactly for me. I don't know. Just uh.

Speaker 3 (57:00):
We'll be back around the middle of April probably, I
don't know. It'll either be the eleventh or the eighteenth.
That's a month away.

Speaker 2 (57:09):
I have to say. The supplies for my project this year,
this sub month year, it seems like a year. It
was only like thirty five bucks for both of those
devices with the cases and everything. So okay, this is March. Yeah,
that'll work out. Yeah, it's pretty cheap. Yep. All right,

(57:31):
thanks for being here.

Speaker 3 (57:31):
Everyone join us again next month and on March twenty
eighth for the next time college where we're studying for
the Amateur Technician exam. Tell you maminem. Any friends you
got that might be interested in coming Ham radio operators
or family. We're right there to do some explaining.

Speaker 2 (57:54):
Yep. And we're not doing many gazintas not yet. Could
be coming. Yeah, there'll be some of it. Yep. Who
you got there with you? Email?

Speaker 1 (58:05):
Well, lo and behold you get a new hat unless
she shows up.

Speaker 2 (58:10):
It must be hungry.

Speaker 1 (58:12):
This is the dog that you see in my video
by the way, with the Paul dragging the hat off
the table. That's her. She can sense the new hat.

Speaker 2 (58:20):
Okay, she smells if she could taste it, I have funny.
You are too funny. You a hat retriever. M yep,
see you guys on the net. Put save it, save
to the date and check it out. You'll enjoy it.
Ye seven three, good night.

Speaker 1 (59:00):
What what's like?

Speaker 5 (59:02):
Black question? Let's let your web let's left webs like
black bay? One h