0.4.0 Squelch setting? on P25 trunked system.

[Lee]

Listening to the Maine State Police, I cannot get the program to pick up the control channel solid. It keeps blinking [idle] and then back to [control], but more often it sits on [idle]. The same control frequency I listen to on Unitrunker which comes in crystal clear and flawlessly all day long is barely coming in on SDRtrunk. Ive searched high and low for a setting for squelch or something similar and cannot find one. When it does come in on SDRtrunk, it picks up clear, nice and loud and works real well. SDRtrunk just seems to lack in the control department, unless there is a program I am missing that I need to program SDRtrunk.

[DRL-XM43]

Can yu post a screen grab of the tuner section with the tuner being used for control selected and expanded showing gain detail - also can you confirm it is a P25 system, if it is - is it simulcast or "normal" if it is simulcast make sure that is selected in the decoder. If it is not P25 then what? Can you post a link from the Radio Reference database to the site in question. I expect there is a simple answer.(squelch does not come into play on a digital trunked system) the fact you mention it makes me think you may be monitoring a Motorola type 2 system with analog? If it is SDRTrunk will not work except if you monitor individual digital voice frequencies -no trunk following.

[Lee]

The system is a P25 phase 1 system. As you said, its probably a simple answer and I am thinking that also. I have the thing monitoring the control channel and when the thing hears the control channel, the trunk tracking works awesome and the audio is awesome. Sounds and works better than Unitrunker actually. Its just that part with the control channel going idle and then popping back up and showing its a control channel. I am suspecting its right on the fringe of the receive opening and it needs to just be set a bit lower so it hears the control channel. This is the RR link to the system - https://www.radioreference.com/apps/db/?sid=6703 .

[Dean Sauer]

On Friday, April 17, 2020 at 7:04:32 PM UTC-4, Lee wrote:

The system is a P25 phase 1 system. As you said, its probably a simple answer and I am thinking that also. I have the thing monitoring the control channel and when the thing hears the control channel, the trunk tracking works awesome and the audio is awesome. Sounds and works better than Unitrunker actually.

Are these ONE FOR ONE exchanges of SDRT v. the other program ie:

SAME PC
SAME SDR
SAME ANTENNA

Antenna system? Setup: Type, coax, inside? outside?


Post a screen shot(s) with your WATERFALL & SPECTRUM ACTIVE

Post your CHANNELS TAB

And the SOURCE AND DECODER  TABS for the channel

Distance from YOU to the nearest tower sites.

Terrain?

Building construction if mounted inside..

Antenna height, type if outside...
 

[Lee]

Well for starters, the comparison between UT2 and SDRtrunk is using the same computer, sdrs, coax and antenna. On UT2 my window is down to zero, health is between 97.5 and 100 but normally around 99, RSSI is usually around -35. UT2 does the digital trunking really well. For the past hour I have been monitoring the tower I listen to which is about 25 miles from me and I was able to copy most of the traffic but like I said, it does to me what UT2 does if I try to listen to a tower on the fringes, it blinks between hearing the control channel and not hearing it. SDRtrunk is doing the same thing but with a tower that normally comes in with a very good signal on everything else. 

[Lee]

On Friday, April 17, 2020 at 8:41:05 PM UTC-4, Dean Sauer wrote:

[Lee]

And this is the screen when it goes idle.

On Friday, April 17, 2020 at 8:41:05 PM UTC-4, Dean Sauer wrote:

[DRL-XM43]

Current site and network showing unknown?

Probably that is a big clue - 

[Douglas Welch]

which sdr are you using if dongles and  how many?

scheen shot shows the gains pretty high. what was used for gain settings in UT2

I used to use UT2 until i found sdtrunk, UT2 is not even close for monitoring. sdrtrunk is much better.

when i use rtl-sdr usb dongles i use the manual gain settings and have to test many settings before i get the best reception for a new type dongle.

also click on messages tab so you can see how good the quality is and how many errors you have when reception is ok. monitor that to know if signal is fading or or jumping to a new freq. we have one system in our metro area that the control channel changes  freq all the time,

UT2 might handle the gain differently

[DRL-XM43]

This is a screen shot of my gain settings - maybe give them a shot - the goal is a good signal with minimum background noise - low down in the spectrum window and as little orange as possible in the background. I suggest only playing with the LNA setting.

[Dean Sauer]

On Friday, April 17, 2020 at 9:07:19 PM UTC-4, Lee wrote:

 

Look at those screen caps...

See the red and yellow in the waterfall.. NOT GOOD. NOT GOOD AT ALL.
 
You SHOULD SEE a SEA of BLUE with some red/yellow specs here and there, and where signals are...

So again, lets start with the basics

Antenna -
Inside?
Outside?

Type?

If outside - Height, mounting point, coax type, and length?

If inside - building construction of walls and roof? Yes every bit of that makes a difference in receiving any where from -7-20db+

Is this tower your CLOSEST TOWER?????? OR

Are you monitoring that tower because you want GROUPS that may not be broadcast on your local tower as there are no units affiliated with that group(s) and the system is not set to simul them on all|multiple towers/zones?????

My gut instinct based on the screen caps and the data at hand..

You are NOT MONITORING the LOCAL TOWER to you.  Coupled with possibly trying to do this inside with the antenna(s) that come with the various SDR's. For 99.999% of them those are NOT TUNED For a VHF-H environment a 1/4 wave antenna for VHF is ROUGHLY 19inches in height ROUGHLY! Give or take. Most of these SDR's have a about 4inch one great for 400-870MHz.. 1/4 for UHF is again ROUGHLY 6 inches.. for 850Mhz its about 3 inches...

IF IF you need to get that particular tower/zone for a group(s) of interest which are NOT on the local closest tower then.

OUTSIDE ANTENNA - I prefer the Tram/Browning 1181 dual band 3db/5db 150-174/450-512Mhz antennas with a ground plane kit

GOOD COAX - RG6 at the least, LMR400 if you can... length of run will determine changes to this.

Please review the questions I posted here and the original post. Please answer each line by line for completeness. Once this is completed I and/or others can offer assistance.

[Lee]

I am using 2 Nooelec rt820 dongles. For monitoring, I only really use one of them for the control channel. I have plugged all the frequencies in for the tower and used one for control and the other for voice and still got the same result - the control channel signal would fade away and come back. I actually like UT2 better but the audio is really pinched sounding but it works well for what I do. SDRtrunk has much better audio and I think if I could work the bugs out, it work better. On UT2 I set the gain all the way up because of being in the hole I am and I live in Maine, they dont have tower sites dotted every couple miles down the road like some states. They dont need to either because they are on VHF high band which works awesome up here.

[Lee]

Going from the antenna down - 
Laird dual band (vhf/uhf BUSINESS band, not ham) outside on the roof on a ground plane base
RG8x coax Maybe about 25 feet ( I cant do any thicker than that due to the place where the coax comes in and I cant make modifications to the building to make thicker coax fit).
2 Noolelec dongles 
Now as for the tower, it is the closest one that I receive the best signal on. Up here in Maine, they dont have towers within 10 miles of each other like some states do. They also run VHF high band across the whole state for the most part with most every department (except the few cities in Maine). 

In Maine, there are 4 zones. I monitor zone 2 (my area) and it has several towers for zone 2. The one I listen to is the one that comes in the clearest. SDRtrunk wont even pick up the other towers where UT2 will but not good enough to decode the P25.
I am thinking its an adjustment on the program that needs to be made. I just got the program on the computer, set it up and plugged the control frequency into it with P25 decoding and let her run with the gain all the way up. That is the only thing I set up. I am thinking there are settings I still need to change. I finally ironed all those setting out on UT2 to get the signal to come in better and it works fine. The antenna works perfectly fine on my two way radio and it works fine on UT2. Thats all I know.

[DRL-XM43]

You say you plugged all the tower frequencies in - in where? I hope the rotating CC feature and not as channels - that would be incorrect. Only the control channel should be plugged in. If you mean you tried each frequency as the CC then that is different. 

Your shots show no or little signal but lots of interfering background noise - you need to solve that first!. 

They show way too much gain which can prevent the s/w from hearing the signal clearly - much distortion evident and not much signal. Until you can show a well defined signal in the spectrum you are not going to decode satisfactorily. As a comparison I am hauling in a P25 p1 signal from over 60 km away with no issues,

From what you have described you should be able to show a booming signal in your spectrum? If it is not there it is not because of the s/w so rule that out and TS from the plug in the wall.

If it is not there then the chances are USB issues, antenna issues and down the list as pointed out elsewhere. For me, SDRtrunk hauls in weak signals UT2 cannot even see, so we know the potential is there. Anyway my set up is very very basic so I am not describing proper antenna with proper location - just very basic stuff.

[Lee]

If you go to the Channel tab, I put everything in there. From what I have on my computer, there is only one place to enter frequencies. I only have control channel frequencies in their now. Unless I am missing something, SDRtrunk (at least what I have) only has certain functions to edit frequencies etc. Ive played with the gain, which is the only thing I can really adjust out of that list, and havent gotten it to work. 

[DRL-XM43]

"If you go to the Channel tab, I put everything in there." The only thing that should be in there is what you think the control channel is. If you are starting a bunch of voice channels as well you will busy up your dongles for no reason.

If you want to cycle through all the channels - used when a site rotates CC then go to source and select - tuner multiple frequencies. Enter the system frequencies there to create a CC scan list. This will have SDRTRunk rotate through those frequencies - it will stop and start decoding if one of them is the Control Channel. 

Do this first before we try to help further. 

[DRL-XM43]

you should have something like this

[Lee]

I used to put all the channels in. Now I only put the control channel. Even with just the control channel running, I watched the message part of it where it shows the data coming off of the tower and its full of errors. Go to UT2, no issue. Use SDRconsole, no issue. SDRtrunk.......... unlike the other two programs, I cannot find any way to control anything except for the gain. Im adding in screen shots of the same control channel on all three.

[DRL-XM43]

Can you do a screen shot of the spectrum set to the dongle in play, also with details tab open - then events then the tuners see 3 examples.

[Lee]

[Lee]

[DRL-XM43]

Thanks Lee, well this time it recognized the site - you events screen indicates little to no activity on that site. You had two dongles showing on your earlier posts so are you back to using 1 now.

If you want to change your gain settings and other things do while channel is stopped so the dongle is not locked and the greyed out settings become available. I still recommend adjusting gain the way I showed you and you apparently didn't. You turned off the spectrum in your screen shots for some reason which again makes it difficult to help you. Right now I would say that is a very quiet site.

On Saturday, April 18, 2020 at 8:07:42 PM UTC-4, Lee wrote:

[Lee]

At the moment I'm using one dongle. The settings on there I forgot to set back. I currently have them correct now, but it doesn't seem to make much of a change. Since the governor shut most of the state down and we have the covid 19 the state police haven't had much to do. Come the evening the radio will go quiet and the only thing you'll hear cops signing on and off for their shift so as far as it being quiet you are pretty correct on that. During the weekdays the emergency Management gets on there and does radio checks constantly throughout the day so it makes it a little busier.

[Dean Sauer]

On Saturday, April 18, 2020 at 10:30:48 AM UTC-4, Lee wrote:

Going from the antenna down - 
Laird dual band (vhf/uhf BUSINESS band, not ham) outside on the roof on a ground plane base
RG8x coax Maybe about 25 feet

Good choice for the antenna... The coax...While not my personal choice.. at this length that approx 1db loss from antenna to the SDR area..

Now you say you have 2 SDR;s..

How do you connect TWO SDR's to the antenna?? List all splitters, make model type... and any RF adaptors from x to SMA etc.. Jumpers from splitters? Type coax, adaptors, Connectors???? \\\\\\\\

You mention being in a "hole" are you in a valley for the area?? v. the other terrain???? Foilage??

Do you have a regular scanner that will take the 6.25Khz signals?? And program the 152.7425 into it? Is it strong? Can you FULLY SQUELCH IT and still receive it??? Connected to the antenna and with a standard whip?

How high above ground is the "roof?" Does this clear other buildings? Trees? scrub/ground clutter ie: other buildings, foliage, hills, mountains????

Two things come to mind...

surround terrain ie your "hole"

MSCOMMNet is a HARRIS P25 system... a HARRIS VHF P25 system and I am wondering if there are foibles in it like the 700MHZ Harris system in my area...

So... with ONE DONGLE....do you still get the SAME RSSI of -76dm on the other program??? If not what is it?

Then setup the channel under the RECORDING TAB   CHECK BOTH THE *.bits files options and let it record for a while.. a few hours... then zip up and send to the developer.

The SYNC LOSS BITS PROCESSED would be a good hint there are more foibles in the Harris protocol for VHF.. and I think this is an issue in PA as well from similar posts of stuff...

IF you were to get CRC ERRORS that would be a bigger issue...

I do think you;ve got some source of RFI there with the waterfall full of red/yellow.. if you disconnect the antenna... is that noise still there??? At what point if you turn the gain down does it go away? And the CC decode fails before or after or continues to process??

[Lee]

I am running rg316 coax splitter running into an sma to so-239 then off into the coax to the antenna. Im not too big on coax that thin but it was the only thing I could find that was easy on the dongle connectors.

 The hole I live in is just in general a hole for the area. I literally sit at the base of a hill to the east of me. I have a huge area of valley to the north and west of me until you hit the Mountains in western Maine which is probably close to 50 miles from me.

When I plug 152.7425 in to my radio, I get the same signal with the squelch closed on there as I do on UT2, and its more than readable. No static coming in along with the signal. It stays steady. 

The antenna is out in open space. Not above the house but not so low it wont receive. It probably sits a good 50-60 feet high. 
Another issue that might cause interference to show up also is the North tower for my county. Sadly the state of Maine has nothing on that tower. What is on there is the sheriffs department for my county and the fire dispatch. Between the RCC and the fire fighters, its a combo of story tellers and people who ask, literally, 100 questions when responding to a call. Half the dispatchers tell such a drawn out story and then unkey their mic before they are done dispatching and then the fire fighters or EMT's get on and say they are responding and then ask 100 questions and then start needlessly talking back and forth with each other with another radio in the background causing feedback. All of this causes the noise floor on most any SDR program I have to go way up and cause signals to appear where they shouldnt. It doesnt happen all the time but when it does, a call that should be short and sweet will have them talking for a half hour to 45 minutes needlessly. Ive listened to many fire departments and what not and from different parts of Maine and the rest of them are short and sweet and get the job done. Mine? it would remind you of the show  Green Acres if you gave them guys radios to talk on responding to a fire. I am really thinking it is something with the signal not being compatible? or something. Like ive said before, UT2 decodes it as does DSD+ with SDRconsole. SDRtrunk is the only one giving me an issue.

[Dean Sauer]

On Monday, April 20, 2020 at 8:26:23 AM UTC-4, Lee wrote:

 The hole I live in is just in general a hole for the area. I literally sit at the base of a hill to the east of me. I have a huge area of valley to the north and west of me until you hit the Mountains in western Maine which is probably close to 50 miles from me.

What direction is this tower???
 

When I plug 152.7425 in to my radio, I get the same signal with the squelch closed on there as I do on UT2, and its more than readable. No static coming in along with the signal. It stays steady.

Not just squelched, FULLY SQUELCHED, as in the knob will not go any further... 100% squelch, not just set till it covers the noise floor...Can you receive the signal connected to that anntenna FULLY SQUELECHED no fading? On a whip FULLY SQUELCHED no fading???
 

The antenna is out in open space. Not above the house but not so low it wont receive. It probably sits a good 50-60 feet high. 

Ok.. Um confused now... umm...

 
"Laird dual band (vhf/uhf BUSINESS band, not ham) outside on the roof on a ground plane base

RG8x coax Maybe about 25 feet ( I cant do any thicker than that due to the place where the coax comes in and I cant make modifications to the building to make thicker coax fit)."

But you list its 50-60 up????? From the antenna connector to the SDR connector? length of coax? Type? is is 60 feet of rg8x = -3db loss at 155Mhz.. or 25 feet of rg8x??? and ~ 1db loss? Thats a BIG DIFFERENCE in signal loss.

If it is NOT above the house is the house in the direction of the tower?????

Another issue that might cause interference to show up also is the North tower for my county. Sadly the state of Maine has nothing on that tower.

This tower distance to from you to that tower?

What you describe is classic SOP out of the volunteer playbook... I see and hear it all the time in the very rural VFD's I deal with... I also hear the inquisitions on calls in many areas... I could go on for days on this stuff :) ;)

But on subject... this is why you want to keep the gain down as low as possible as the IMD3 IP of the SDR's is not that great and what you will see is spike show up all over the place and the noise floor jump up as well as the amps in the SDR's go non linear. 

Can you turn the gain down to remove or reduce  the noise, the red/yellow specks on the water fall, and still get decoding on the CC? Occasional sync loss bits processed but not full on and no CRC errors???

What all this gets at.. is IF you have a good signal coming in ... and we've removed the noise thats showing in the waterfall.. then we need to get BITS recordings to look at the protocol to see what Harris has meddled with here... or if the noise and signal are the issue.

[Douglas Welch]

Try using regular gain instead of manual and get it turned down to point you see almost nothing.

then raise it one notch and watch waterfall and messages tab for CRC errors.

stop when you get to point the errors are gone or least possible.

also check the ppm setting and match it in the settings except use the opposite value if tuner measured is (- negative use a positive number) 

Do same for both dongles.

this is what mine looks like at medium gain settings.

[Lee]

The height on my antenna is 50-60 off the ground, about 25 or so feet is just the part above the roof line. 

Correction on the tower distance. Its about 19.63 miles from my house according to google maps. 
I just did it on my radio again. 152.7425 with the squelch all the way up as far as it will go......crystal clear signal.
Checked it on SDRconsole and when I bring the squelch up, it begins to cut out as I climb to about 3/4 of the squelch.
I currently have SDRtrunk going and playing with the squelch, 124  is the lowest I can set it before I see it go IDLE. I still get the occasional sync bit loss crud but it seems to stay steady on CONTROL. I am not familiar with trunked systems like you and others so I dont know if, like you said, its something they are doing? I know the basics on how a trunked system works. Ive never really had to deal with trunked radio in the past aside from the one in CT but back then, I had a BC796D and I just wrote the program and uploaded it. Not much to understand. SDR, seems to get a bit more technical and prone to bugs due to many circumstances. All I know is that I only have this problem with SDRtrunk. The other two programs and my two way radio have no issues. DSD+ displays a beautiful stream of data with no errors at all. Could watch it for hours. 

[Douglas Welch]

sdrtrunk does the same if you get your settings all correct.

i use both. but prefer sdtrunk by far. since i changed to sdrtrunk 4 weeks ago i havent gone back. 

i use it with hackrf and sdr-rtl dongles v1 and v3

in the 850 Mhz band we really dont have problems with fading so its all about gain settings and antenna. if other software works you can get sdrtrunk set properly. It was easiest of all of them. No VB cables, no lists, etc... set one freq and gain youre good to go. Im about 18 miles from strongest system and 12 from weakest system. i have problems from the closer weak system. im on the edge of red circle showing its range on radioreference. I use a cheap $15 LTE antenna at 12' not even above roof yet.

[Lee]

Oh I dont doubt that it works better, im sure there is a setting somewhere that will get it to work well. I actually prefer SDRtrunk just because of the audio quality and I noticed it responds a bit faster picking up calls. As I was messing with it yesterday I noticed my computer running a bit slow and it showed up on the waterfall as straight lines like someone smeared them. I am wondering if that might be my issue. My good fast running computer is dead right now thanks to a windows 10 update and I havent gotten around time to getting it fixed. I am going to play with it a bit more this morning since the only time you hear a lot of activity is around shift change, then it goes quiet for the day. When I checked it was Java that was sucking on the CPU. Sadly I need that to decode p25.

[Dean Sauer]

On Monday, April 20, 2020 at 8:42:44 PM UTC-4, Lee wrote:

The height on my antenna is 50-60 off the ground, about 25 or so feet is just the part above the roof line. 

Correction on the tower distance. Its about 19.63 miles from my house according to google maps. 
I just did it on my radio again. 152.7425 with the squelch all the way up as far as it will go......crystal clear signal.

OK.. with a full strength signal like that then we need to look at

RFI aka nosie aka interference all the yellow and red specks on the waterfall..

 

Checked it on SDRconsole and when I bring the squelch up, it begins to cut out as I climb to about 3/4 of the squelch.

I don't know anything about the program.. as I don't use it...

 

I currently have SDRtrunk going and playing with the squelch, 124 

First SDRT does NOT , I repeat does NOT HAVE A SQUELCH SETTING.


On the tuner page the number you are changing is the GAIN SETTING of an amp on the chip.

This is NOT A SQUELCH.

 

is the lowest I can set it before I see it go IDLE.

PERFECT... Now move up a 2 settings on it.. probably 156 which is 15.6db gain for the amp...

You want to find the "sweet spot" which is ENOUGH to get good decodes and then a little more for fade margin.. for rain, snow, ice, tree growth, wind blowing leaves swaying trees etc..



 

I still get the occasional sync bit loss crud but it seems to stay steady on CONTROL

Thats perfect.. Thats what we want.. and what we were getting on my Harris 700Mhz system.

Under the CHannels tab and then under the RECORDING TAB there..

there are 2 columns of settings.. the 2nd ROW of EACH  ....Bitstream is in the name for both.. CLICK the box to check those.. click save...

This is going to create a good bit of data... which so let it run for 3-4 hours, especially when you have some radio traffic to generate calls on voice channels ... then you will need to zip them and then send to the developer...

 

. I am not familiar with trunked systems like you and others so I dont know if, like you said, its something they are doing?

The sync loss would indicate that there may be bits on the VHF CC that differ from whats been tested in 700MHz and 850Mhz... OP25 which is another program that decodes P25 never had an issue with decoding the audio or CC of the Harris system in my area  SDRT had some glitches..

SDRT is a WORK IN PROGRESS.. and its come along way to now supporting PII audio...

Lots of glitches here and there.. taken in stride and dealt with

The other programs you mention have had longer support cycles one specifically started as a DOS program that was dumped to UseNet and has went through 2 developers before landing at its current home... I can tell you plenty about that development.

So with your help SDRT will find the issues with VHF P25 and what ever is causing the problems.

I think we worked out that you are inputting a good signal now, a fully squelched scanner indicates a good strong signal....

Now just need to figure out the issues the BITS files allow the developer to decode your data and compare to what it needs to be versus what the program may be doing to it.

I can tell plenty about all the history of various sites and programs out there in regards to things.. it was not all as glitzy as it looks now...

So keep working with this and the input from users will resolve the issues.

[Lee]

Ok, basically what youve said in here makes sense. I have toggled with a few settings back and forth and sort of found a sweet spot. It still gets sync loss messages here and there but not like it was. The issue I do notice is that when someone goes to talk, a lot of times the transmission gets clipped so out of a transmission that says, "10-4 ill start you a number" ill only hear "10-..............ill start yo..................ber". Most of the time it will be the dispatch I hear more clearly and the unit on the road is mostly clipped out but thats all at worst case. When I do hear them, its very bold loud and clear and the program will pick up much quicker than other programs. Ive been pretty busy with other things the past couple days but when I get a chance to sit back down here, Ill let her run for a bit. But like ive said in a previous post, the state of Maines system, at least on zone 2, has been pretty quiet besides officers signing on and off the air for their shifts. I think the most traffic you will hear on it now is in the morning when Maine EMA runs a million radio checks and officers are signing on for the day. Ill see what I can get out of it though.

[Dean Sauer]

On Tuesday, April 21, 2020 at 2:58:29 PM UTC-4, Lee wrote:

Ok, basically what youve said in here makes sense. I have toggled with a few settings back and forth and sort of found a sweet spot. It still gets sync loss messages here and there but not like it was. The issue I do notice is that when someone goes to talk, a lot of times the transmission gets clipped so out of a transmission that says, "10-4 ill start you a number" ill only hear "10-..............ill start yo..................ber".

Ok.. what we need to figure out now is if its

SDRT
RFI or other RF issues...

Getting this far is good..

Take note of the gain setting you have.. now when the sputtering starts switch to the tuner tab and UP the gain 2 levels at a time.. does the stuttering get better and abate or get worse

IF WORSE, LOWER THE GAIN does it get better?

Worse would mean that potentially the traffic channels are at a lower power level or could even be on a lower antenna which makes a difference.

Take your scanner and when you listen to the digital noise from a traffic call can you FULLY SQUELCH the signal and still get it with not cutting out/fading???

If you can wehn you get a call if you can click on the BLUE CALL area and look under the Now Playing tab in the EVENTS TAB to see are you getting:

CRC ERRORS
SYNC LOSS ERRORS

You have to be quick to see these on the GUI

AND/OR enable the LOGGING under the channels tab.. just enable it all... you can then check for these in those files.


 

besides officers signing on and off the air for their shifts. I think the most traffic you will hear on it now is in the morning when Maine EMA runs a million radio checks and officers are signing on for the day. Ill see what I can get out of it though.

Since you know when a good bit of traffic will occur this is when you want to test, and make sure you have the BITS files recording.

Activate those under the CHANNELS TAB then the RECORDING tab the 2nd row in BOTH COLUMNS make sure those are ticked, and then hit save..

Once you get some of these zip them up and forward to the dev to review.