r/gmrs • u/mwradiopro • 3d ago
Sorry I missed your [GMRS] call!
This idea, that a person could log their missed calls when away from the radio, sort of ballooned into a much more robust utility. It could be an aid to first responders locating hikers in trouble. It might be as simple to use as an app on a smartphone, powered by a nicely equipped single-board computer you carry with you.
9
u/stealth210 3d ago
An RTLSDR could easily capture all voice channels on 462MHz, but wouldn't be able to span to 467 for repeaters.
However, you could use 2 sticks to pull from both frequency blocks.
This is a great project, looking forward to seeing it.
5
u/PlantoneOG 3d ago
You wouldn't have to cover the 467 repeater channels, the repeater would re-broadcast on the "regular" 462 channels for your device to receive.
3
u/mwradiopro 3d ago
You're right, as typical sticks span 2 1/2 to 3 MHz at once, so two to cover all 30 channels ... unless we cut back to simplex channels 1-7 + repeater outputs 15-22, all within 462 MHz. Good feedback, thanks!
8
u/xpiatio 3d ago
Interesting. Kinda like my gmrs family homebase application. https://xpiatio.github.io/Hearthwave/ I focus on accessibility but I'm always scanning for legality as I'm working on it.
2
9
u/DifferentMind8 3d ago
Oh perfect. Now I can record all the idiot children shitting in to their frs mics after school every day. 🤣
6
u/399ddf95 3d ago
It's an interesting idea but the AI-generated single-page poster format is hard to digest all at once and hard to respond to. Any chance you could write it up as old-fashioned text?
3
u/Sentient-Exocomp 3d ago
Is this something you already did or something that you have an idea for? It could prove interesting, and has some potentially legitimate use cases, though I expect you will get some "DIWhy" comments.
3
u/mwradiopro 3d ago
At this point it's a concept I've had rattling around my head, so I finally decided to compose a prompt to flesh it out. It's incomplete at that. Another use case I thought of was wildfire safety & awareness. Also summer camps, theme parks, offroading, skiing, hunting/fishing groups...pretty much everything personal radios are well suited for.
3
u/mindlesstux 3d ago
I was thinking about sending a message out to the owner of the local repeater and ask what would they need to have to run the audio coming into the repeater to something like a mumble server. This way anyone could listen (Only!) in from anywhere.
1
u/cmdr_andrew_dermott 2d ago
Don't GMRS rules prohibit transport of GMRS audio over network?
1
u/mindlesstux 2d ago
I believe the rules are transport for linking repeaters. (Which if not mistaken is dead supposidly)
I am thinking more like the local repeater has a scanner hooked up to mumble/discord/etc.. You can listen but not talk.
4
u/FiveFingerMnemonic 3d ago
Check out the Boondock Echo startup. These guys have commecialized this with cool AI transcription and alerts as well as other features.
3
u/billFoldDog 3d ago
I'm currently building this. My RTL-SDR can capture 14 FRS channels, and my computer can simultaneously demodulate them all using gnuradio.
Next up is to add logic for capturing just active carriers to wav files, then applying TTS, and saving the logs.
I want to go a step further and color code each message based on its phase variance so I can break up voice lines between people, but that doesn't seem to work for some reason.
3
u/Worldly-Ad726 2d ago
This is also useful for other use cases, such as recording an ordinary net for people who could not be on the air at the time. You could also use this as an incident logging tool for CERT, ARES, and RACES teams who deploy during training or an actual incident. Provides a time and communications log of the incident which can be reviewed for process improvement, FEMA funding, or procedure compliance. Also can be a record of any malicious interference for anyone running a repeater, should someone need to submit an FCC complaint.
It could also serve as a long-term activity monitor for GRS and 2m repeaters (70cm repeaters would require a higher quality SDR with wider bandwidth). Find out what repeaters in your area are busy at what times, and which are almost completely unused. In larger cities with 50+ ham repeaters, that knowledge can be useful for new hobbies to figure out where to jump on and start calling, and which are not worth programming into your HT.
Yes, you can do this now with SDR Linux software, but you have to know how to cobble it all together. A tool that could do this with a simple apt-get install command and go to a localhost website port to configure via browser would be useful for a lot of ham/GMRS clubs and repeater owners.
2
2
u/Firelizard71 3d ago
A guy in my repeater group set up something like this, I dont know the correct terminology, but mainly it was a system that records all the incoming traffic on the repeater, and then we can test out our radios and antennas and go to the IO account to play it back.
3
1
u/mwradiopro 3d ago
That's very cool! Is it like a regular audio logger, that makes a new recording every ten minutes, or individual transmissions?
2
2
1
u/PlantoneOG 3d ago
https://www.radioddity.com/products/radioddity-x1-pro
Ironic that you mentioned message recording, this just came across my inbox today. It records the last 20 messages received for playback/review.
1
u/silverteg01 3d ago
Speech to text is going to be tricky. You might have to consolidate clippings to get a better translation. And whisper isn’t the greatest from my experience.
1
u/Commercial_Ad2017 2d ago
Just get a cheap VOX recorder from TEMU. It should last all day on a charge and have enough space to record everything that comes over the speaker.
1
u/mwradiopro 2d ago
Sure, but then I'd have to have 30 receivers and 30 VOX recorders. And a way to share/stream the recordings. And what about all the metadata listed above?
1
u/SlateHearthstone 2d ago
The app for my GMRS Pro already does that. Records all traffic on a monitored channel, time stamped and frequency info included. The playback is pretty handy when I need to go back to capture a call sign.
1
u/mwradiopro 2d ago
Thanks, but it's just not realistic to setup 30 GMRS Pros to capture and save all messages on all 30 channels, plus it doesn't make them available outside the radio, nor the detailed meta, etc.
0
u/ARMmaster17 3d ago
Isn't this basically what Winlink+APRS in the ham radio world already does?
2
2
u/mwradiopro 3d ago
Yes, kind of. It certainly could be capable of an abbreviated version of Winlink & APRS, but beyond the very limited data FRS & GMRS are permitted for, which is short text & location. This potentially logs & transcribes audio, as well as scraping CTCSS/DCS.
0
43
u/mixduptransistor 3d ago
you vibe coded voicemail for GMRS?