Local audio output missing

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Bote Man

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May 18, 2022, 2:53:38 PM5/18/22
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I host SDRtrunk for a person who lives beyond the range of my local P25 Phase 2 public safety system.

 

I configured the talkgroup for my local fire department Listen=ON.

 

I also configured aliases for the Unit IDs of those fire units and the dispatch consoles and set those to Listen=ON. I was hoping to hear my local fire station units on whatever talkgroup the transmit on.

 

Yet I very rarely hear them over the local speaker, only randomly. I do hear other random ambulance to hospital traffic, which I now understand I can eliminate using your talkgroup range trick, which looks very handy. I can hear them on my Uniden scanner, but only rarely hear them simultaneously on the laptop speaker. The talkgroup “Now Playing” grid shows the normal, expected activity, just no local speaker audio.

 

This is on version 0.5.0 Alpha 6 because we had some unexplained problems with Beta 2 back when it was released. Perhaps the latest release solves this, but it’s baffling to me that it occurs at all as it seems to have good decode of the control channel which is about 3 miles airline through the window looking in the direction of the transmitter site. The gain on both dongles is set to “Auto” which seems to magically work best.

 

Is it possible that because the Unit IDs are also set to Listen that this somehow interferes with delivering talkgroup audio to the local speaker?

 

Thanks.

 

 

Bote Man

http://www.botecomm.com/bote/radio/streaming.html

 

 

 

From: sdrt...@googlegroups.com <sdrt...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of wemana...@gmail.com
Sent: Wednesday, 18 May, 2022 12:57
To: sdrtrunk <sdrt...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Is this dongle supported?

 

 

On Tuesday, May 17, 2022 at 3:47:39 PM UTC-4 71t...@gmail.com wrote:

OK... I can now hear my local P-25 system. Is there a way to lock specific talk groups, to allow only certain talk groups?


What you need to do is set up ALIASES In the Playlist editor. Depending on your needs/wants/desires you may want to go differing routes... If you system is active with lots of groups that you do NOT WANT to hear and you are using LOCAL AUDIO ie: not feeding to an IceCast server, then you likely want to start with the following:

Create an ALIAS for a P25 TALKGROUP RANGE  Set it to 0-65535, and click LISTEN to OFF. This  BLOCKS ALL TALKGROUPS TILL YOU DO THE FOLLOWING, YOU WILL HEAR NOTHING.

NOW CREATE AN ALIASES for the GROUPS YOU WANT TO HEAR. WITH THE LISTEN SLIDER ACTIVATED (BLUE). This will then pass the audio to the local audio subsystem...

wemana...@gmail.com

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May 18, 2022, 9:41:27 PM5/18/22
to sdrtrunk
On Wednesday, May 18, 2022 at 2:53:38 PM UTC-4 bote...@gmail.com wrote:

I host SDRtrunk for a person who lives beyond the range of my local P25 Phase 2 public safety system.


Is this feeding IceCast so they can listen to it then????
 

 configured the talkgroup for my local fire department Listen=ON.

 also configured aliases for the Unit IDs of those fire units and the dispatch consoles and set those to Listen=ON. I was hoping to hear my local fire station units on whatever talkgroup the transmit on.

Yet I very rarely hear them over the local speaker, only randomly. I do hear other random ambulance to hospital traffic, which I now understand I can eliminate using your talkgroup range trick, which looks very handy. I can hear them on my Uniden scanner, but only rarely hear them simultaneously on the laptop speaker. The talkgroup “Now Playing” grid shows the normal, expected activity, just no local speaker audio.

This is on version 0.5.0 Alpha 6 because we had some unexplained problems with Beta 2 back when it was released. Perhaps the latest release solves this, but it’s baffling to me that it occurs at all as it seems to have good decode of the control channel which is about 3 miles airline through the window looking in the direction of the transmitter site. The gain on both dongles is set to “Auto” which seems to magically work best.

Is it possible that because the Unit IDs are also set to Listen that this somehow interferes with delivering talkgroup audio to the local speaker?


I configure aliases for TG's to: ID them ie: Big Time PD, Big Time FD etc.... and to send their audio to the appropriate IceCast feed.  for RADIO ID's I configure them to  ID them, so that I know which unit it is BigTimeFD E2, AeroEvac 1, BigTime PD Console, etc..  Adding in icons for some, although thats sort of pointless **for me** nobody is going to see them.. the ID's are a more for the metadata in the stream feeds so you see who is talking...

LOCAL AUDIO IS  FIRST COME FIRST SERVED ROUND ROBIN... So if you have NOT BLOCKED OUT other TG's as in disabled the Listen Slider then they should be coming through in who ever is decoded first, and if you have stereo mode you should get 2 audio channels from what ever 2 TG's get to it first... As they drop away the next TG to come active should output audio..... basically if I listen locally there is a flood of audio coming out.... I don't listen locally, as I 99.9999% of all listening is via IceCast feed.

As for GAIN, I find the auto setting to be well, the worst... If you are 3 air miles to the tower then you should have no problem setting a decent gain in the tuner section probably about 19-32 on V3 or similar tuners..... the AirSpys will be in the 11-14 range... Too high on a local tower like that, and you will start to create artifacts all over the place especially on the V3 devices.  The Tim Allen More Power method don't work here.  Less is sometimes  more, a lot more.  This is based on having a DECENT TUNED antenna OUTSIDE on a minimal loss coax setup.... Inside a house or something will likely mean you need to increase the gain, as most building materials are about a 10db drop immediately, and others are even worse into 20-30 db loss with metal roofs, UV window films, concrete block, stucco, plaster with chicken wire inside etc..
 

Bote Man

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May 19, 2022, 1:02:57 AM5/19/22
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The local speaker is mostly silent, with only random, sporadic speech when it feels like it; no flood of audio here on this VERY busy public safety trunked system. (The sound files recorded by SDRtrunk are uploaded to his server that works its magic to distribute them via a web page, but none of that relates to this discussion.)

 

It is not my setup to tinker with as I please, I was simply trying to take advantage of a feature in addition to the other stuff that the laptop is already doing. I didn’t think it was asking too much to hear the desired talkgroups out of the local speaker.

 

I even applied your suggestion to mute (Listen=off) on the talkgroup range 0-65534, but as soon as I restarted SDRtrunk I heard an ambulance report to a hospital because it did not decode the talkgroup number at all, it was simply blank (from what little I could see as it flashed very rapidly in the grid).

 

Then my scanner was pumping out audio on the fire talkgroup while SDRtrunk only let me hear one transmission, so I know there was more to hear. SDRtrunk very rarely misses transmissions on the recordings so I just listen via the web player, which is pretty silly since I’m a few feet away from the very device that’s receiving it over the air.

 

The 2 dongles are pressed against the glass window looking toward the transmit site, but I don’t see any spurs on the spectrum display. The signal spikes look clean and the noise floor looks normal. I doubt there could be much improvement to the RF environment. It’s likely that the CPU is just overloaded; Java has always appeared to be a resource hog in my experience.

 

I understand that this is alpha software so if there’s no solution I’ll just live with it.

 

 

Bote Man

http://www.botecomm.com/bote/radio/streaming.html

 

 

 

 

 

From: sdrt...@googlegroups.com <sdrt...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of wemana...@gmail.com
Sent: Wednesday, 18 May, 2022 21:41
To: sdrtrunk <sdrt...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: Re: Local audio output missing

On Wednesday, May 18, 2022 at 2:53:38 PM UTC-4 bote...@gmail.com wrote:

 

 configured the talkgroup for my local fire department Listen=ON.

 also configured aliases for the Unit IDs of those fire units and the dispatch consoles and set those to Listen=ON. I was hoping to hear my local fire station units on whatever talkgroup the transmit on.

Is it possible that because the Unit IDs are also set to Listen that this somehow interferes with delivering talkgroup audio to the local speaker?

I configure aliases for TG's to: ID them ie: Big Time PD, Big Time FD etc.... and to send their audio to the appropriate IceCast feed.  for RADIO ID's I configure them to  ID them, so that I know which unit it is BigTimeFD E2, AeroEvac 1, BigTime PD Console, etc..  Adding in icons for some, although thats sort of pointless **for me** nobody is going to see them.. the ID's are a more for the metadata in the stream feeds so you see who is talking...

LOCAL AUDIO IS  FIRST COME FIRST SERVED ROUND ROBIN... So if you have NOT BLOCKED OUT other TG's as in disabled the Listen Slider then they should be coming through in who ever is decoded first, and if you have stereo mode you should get 2 audio channels from what ever 2 TG's get to it first... As they drop away the next TG to come active should output audio..... basically if I listen locally there is a flood of audio coming out.... I don't listen locally, as I 99.9999% of all listening is via IceCast feed.

 

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wemana...@gmail.com

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May 19, 2022, 10:37:08 PM5/19/22
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On Thursday, May 19, 2022 at 1:02:57 AM UTC-4 bote...@gmail.com wrote:

The local speaker is mostly silent, with only random, sporadic speech when it feels like it; no flood of audio here on this VERY busy public safety trunked system. (The sound files recorded by SDRtrunk are uploaded to his server that works its magic to distribute them via a web page, but none of that relates to this discussion.)

It is not my setup to tinker with as I please, I was simply trying to take advantage of a feature in addition to the other stuff that the laptop is already doing. I didn’t think it was asking too much to hear the desired talkgroups out of the local speaker.


Something then is disabling the audio in that setup..... because my main zone, if you listen to local audio, would hop, hop hop hop.. the other 5 zones you might have to go over and look to make sure the thing was on....

So who setup the playlist??? Is this being managed remotely like via KRDC ????

I even applied your suggestion to mute (Listen=off) on the talkgroup range 0-65534, but as soon as I restarted SDRtrunk I heard an ambulance report to a hospital because it did not decode the talkgroup number at all, it was simply blank (from what little I could see as it flashed very rapidly in the grid).


So if YOU LISTEN via this "web interface" which I am guessing is trunking recorder or something similar since it needs "recordings" from SDRT to function... those are all fine and you can match the output on similar TG's to a scanner or P25 radio???

but local audio is not there at all now??? That screams to me that something is muting this stuff now.....

Take and create a NEW BLANK Playlist.. .add just a control channel.. start it up, do you get a flood of audio to match the activity in "Now Playing?" and vs. a scanner/P25 radio??? On my zone its like turning on the fire hose at full pressure... look out..

Then my scanner was pumping out audio on the fire talkgroup while SDRtrunk only let me hear one transmission, so I know there was more to hear. SDRtrunk very rarely misses transmissions on the recordings so I just listen via the web player, which is pretty silly since I’m a few feet away from the very device that’s receiving it over the air.

I don't find it it silly, If I want audio, then I get it via my IceCast feed(s) ... local audio is going no where, as there are not speakers on the box with the local audio... only time I hear local audio is when I am playing with setups to test things out on other boxes...
 

The 2 dongles are pressed against the glass window looking toward the transmit site, but I don’t see any spurs on the spectrum display. The signal spikes look clean and the noise floor looks normal. I doubt there could be much improvement to the RF environment. It’s likely that the CPU is just overloaded; Java has always appeared to be a resource hog in my experience.


Java is definitely a hog in resources... which is why I think ***** my *** expectations in re the SIMD stuff was wrong and over optimistic.. I fully admit that the boxes I have for "production" were intended mostly for OP25 to do other setups... SDRT lets me take and do on box on one zone and pump out 10+ feeds of stuff...which would have been 10 Pi's otherwise...  I am in the process of begrudgingly building a new Ryzen 9 box to be my SUPER SDR box... which will then take over to do all SDR stuff and feeds. I will move one of these boxes to be the IceCast Master, and do ADSB in a way that doesn't deal with the scammy feed sites like Flightaware and ADSBX......and feed it for viewing my servers to the public sans censoring etc..

The way the Java JITC works and the optimizations that are available in something like C are not similar, which the JITC seems to be fighting against using these SIMD from the way I read the other thread...maybe not... java is not my thing, and most this is above my pay grade in programming... SQL or pythong, BASH, let me know....
 

I understand that this is alpha software so if there’s no solution I’ll just live with it.

 

Personally I think there is something setup which is already muting groups for some reason...confirming this via a blank clean Playlist would tell the story.. as any version of SDRT put onto my zone, will generate a flood of local audio... that you would be hard pressed to keep up with...
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