scanner useless in 2014

telecinesk

I have been going through a box of radio related stuff and conclude the VHF/UHF scanner i have is a doorstop since nothing analogue is worth listening to esp here. The only thought is to mod it for the discriminator output & feed it to a laptop for decoding digital modes.

Watty any ideas on that front? Otherwise its surplus, like that old 088 phone and 486 laptop etc. Time for the skip or dump it on ebay.
Makes you wonder why anyone would spend over 30 euros for a radio scanner these days. The airtraffic is hardly exciting?

Your thoughts anyone?

PauloMN

Very little worth listening to unless you are specifically interested in something like air traffic. Decoding WX sat and things like that are interesting but I found while messing with ACARS that not all scanners were suitable anyway.

Plus you need a good antenna, so the portable scanner really has very little use. Mine is gathering dust here.

humaxf1

We had our fun listening to 088 phones and 455 MHz (go ahead there now !)

The yanks have it better than us due to public safety using P25 for which scanners are available whereas over here it's either Tetra or Mototrbo. The latter which can be decoded is not exactly "handheld" because it requires a computer.

No doubt some boffin is in his/her batcave beavering away at reverse engineering digital modes.

watty

Just add a connector before the de-emphasis Resistor / capacitor for connection to sound card.
My cheap scanner works better than my "communications" system for satellite WX as it has wider FM IF. So doesn't need continuous tuning to compensate for doppler shift.

I found that on my FT817ND that the data connector is before de-empahsis on FM normally, except on Band II. An external stereo and RDS decoder would not work. Examination revealed that the Band II or WFM mode uses a completely separate AM/FM IF chip as used in ordinary radios and the Data socket switching went after de-emphasis. So one small change fixed it. No change to speaker or earphone tone, but now on WFM (Band II) an external RDS and Stereo decoder works. I used a HW Philips chip which gives 1190 bps serial data and then a PIC programmed with JAL based RDS decoder driving a two line LCD and also USB emulating serial for PC. The Stereo decoder just a philips chip too (no coils needed) rather than old original Motorola chip.
There are several companies selling the special frequency crystal (similar but NOT PAL frequency!) needed for RDS decoders or encoders.

Lots of Air and Marine VHF here. Also 446MHz chatter. Hardly any 2m or 70cm Amateur. I have a discone.

GekkePrutser

In case you're still looking for the discriminator mod for your scanner: this site has a lot of them.

But yeah it's hardly worth it, there's really not that much interesting stuff out there anymore and digital modes are actually easier with an RTLSDR or something like that. I don't use any of my old scanners, though I do listen to the airband on my ham portable.

I think it won't be long before we'll see (bluetooth?) SDR receivers that can be paired with a mobile phone for modern on-the-go scanning and live decoding of unencrypted digital modes. A modern smartphone should be plenty fast enough.

telecinesk

Hi,
yes i have an sdr dongle thingy that was a massive 10 euros and it works as far down as 21mhz even.But yeah, I cant imagine how I would feel had I bought a 300 euro scanner or some yoke that is more or less useless nowadays.
Ive a Pro43 handheld which back in 2000 I extended the coverage to 30mhz by pulling smcs off the board but its a shame its more or less sitting in the cupboard now...

watty

The lack of tuned front end and the lack of dynamic range (only 20dB effectively as the last bit of 8 bit ADC isn't great) is the problem with those SDR based on a USB TV stick.

But for 10 Euro (about what mine cost too inc postage) it's a cheap SDR based DAB and FM radio if your laptop/notebook is enough CPU. The HD TV uses an MPEG chip on the stick, so for TV the USB data is a real MPEG2 Transport Stream. The host then only needs to run the MPEG2 or MPEG4 Codec, which relies on GPU, no SDR used in DTT mode, SD or HD. In SDR mode the COFDM to MPEG-TS chip is bypassed, but it's only a 8bit ADC (12 bit needed for good SDR, or 10bit with good pre-filter & AGC) and no sensible RF tuning/Filter.

uchgdave

Any update on when the new digital scanners will be out , was talking to a pal in the CG a few days ago and he reckoned that they were getting ready to launch them for the christmas market .


Im burstin to put a deposit down on one ,

the days of 088 were only super , .

I know we cant discuss the TXXXX word here ,but it wont be long now .



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Dublinflyer

uchgdave wrote: »

I know we cant discuss the TXXXX word here ,but it wont be long now .

There will be nothing ever to discuss as it will never happen.

telecinesk

Finally I see some light in the guise of AOR..
See this http://socalscanner.com/2014/09/09/aor-to-release-multi-mode-digital-scanner/

Thats a start though I can imagine the eyewatering price of this, but at least you dont need a computer hooked up to the discriminator for decoding stuff, anyway..

No it dosent to tetra ofc.. but for Dstar and other amateur modes it would be interesting.

watty

Dstar is an evil proprietary Icom thing, though some Kenwoods do it. The codec is poor and proprietary.
Netbook + scanner will do sensible "open" digital modes.

telecinesk

Yes i heard Dstar is rotten and icom propriety nonsense.
Stil this is a start as lugging around a netbook and dongle or scanner with wires hanging out of it isnt fun,just to listen to stuff thats open.
But I cannot imagine the pricetag on the above, give it another 5yrs I suppose.. Until chinese units will suddenly flood ebay.

watty

If someone ported the like of MixW to 6" android Tablet?
Also you could wire the discriminator / SSB detector to mic in of a €20 or less Bluetooth earpiece powered off scanner.
Really you want something that does SSB. FM only receivers would be useless.

I must have a look at what digital modes (if any) can run on Tablet or Android phone. I have cheap BT earpiece I could fit with connector and use with VR500 (receive only but all modes, 100KHz to 1300MHz) or the FT817ND.
Many Android phones and tablets the USB is USB2Go and you can add a prolific USB to serial (or even the USB via serial to TTL with Mini-DIN pre made for 817 / 857 /897 etc) so complete "scanner" interface can be on Tablet. I already wrote a PIC controller with 64 x 128 LCD to turn any CAT / CIV radio into a scanner with spectrum graph display too. Also I used PIC USB slave port in USB serial mode so the box would do USB CAT passthrough. The PIC 18Fxxxx family with USB port are not powerful enough to do anything other than very simple tone /CW decoding. But some ARM phones/tablets should be able to do PSK31 etc.