The Siren Board

What is the Motorola Minitor, Some other brand of scanner?

SirenEnthusiast360 wrote:What is the Motorola Minitor, Some other brand of scanner?

Courtesy of me being bored one day:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_MINITOR_pager


BTW, I hated my MINITOR III.

Uniden Bearcat line is what we use at the Police Dept. Never has failed us yet.

I have a Radio Shack Pro-93 Handheld 300 channel Trunking model (@$150), and a Pro-2053 base model (Ebay, $50) which is basically the same thing. There is a free (Non-Radio Shack) download from Blackbag Software(Pro93.com) that lets you configure your radios and archive frequencies stored. You can also "clone" frequencies from one radio to the other. Oddly enough, the cable/cd rom PC interface that Radio Shack sells DOES NOT WORK with THESE models. The forementioned site sells one, but you can also find a schematic and build one yourself, which I did. It was a 9 pin(DB9) RS-232 (serial port) to 1/8" 2 conductor plug. It required a transistor due to current requirements, but the parts fit inside the DB9 connector hood nicely.

I love the alphanumeric text tag function; this allows you to label individual channels and/or Trunk ID's so you know exactly what you are listening to. However, a common glitch with the software in those models are that sometimes the trunk ID tag has an error. Instead of saying "TAC 1" for example, it may say trkid01234; havent figured that one out, but both my scanners do it at times.

If you view my Allertor Test on Youtube (under sirenzrok), you hear my Pro-93 off camera before activation. Being that most newer siren radios use FSK, frequency shift keying, rather than DTMF (touch-tones), it is much harder to hack and activate the sirens. Hence, knowing the frequencies isnt really that big of a deal, in my opinion.

Digital scanners can decode the newer voice radio systems that otherwise would probably sound like a fax machine or modem noise if monitored on a more basic analog scanner. Most that I have seen are in the $500 dollar range for now. I'm waiting for prices to drop.

How would one replicate the tones?

If you're looking to set off local sirens keep in mind that it's highly illegal and is considered a federal offence and you'd not be able to do so with a scanner alone. If you just looking to play around with a Siratrol (not hooked to a large siren) or making them for your own amusement any tone generating software like Audacity will work, but you'll need a 2 way radio to make a Siratrol work providing local sirens are not programmed to the activation frequency or you'll be in some serious hot water.

So then if I replicated the tones, hiw do I use them?

You better make sure that that Siratrol is from far, far, far away. If it's close and they still use the same DTMF tones, you will end up activating the whole system. If you do that you will be in for some major, major, major trouble.

it is from Florida, I'm in IL. How do I hook this up?

gman 1 wrote:it is from Florida, I'm in IL. How do I hook this up?

Feed tones you've generated in something like Audacity into a two-way radio's mic input, just as someone already said.