I have been informed that a few months ago the Radio User magazine stated that there were cheap chinese MotoTrbo radios on the market.

Has anyone any idea who and where - I havnt found any that could be described as cheap so far ?

I'm thinking of getting one as a scanner/monitor.

They wont monitor anything,,its not just a case of owning a trbo,sticking it on the same freq and colour code and being able to monitor,you also need to have the same group id.i own several trbo radios

They were probably referring to Hytera, its all over the news that they are launching a range of cheap DMR radios but I've yet to see any prices.

Ian's point is interesting. As far as I know, the only reason you need the correct colour code and group ID is because that's how all current radios are set up. The analogue equivalent would be if all radios had CTCSS with no '0' or 'off' option and no CTCSS scan option (and a very large number of CTCSS tones so manual scan was impractical). I can't see any reason why someone, and it would most likely be a cheap Chinese manufacturer, couldn't release a radio that does have a '0' or 'off' option which could monitor all DMR transmissions.

I remember reading in that magazine, and the writer of that scanning column,(mr robertson) actually advised and encouraged a person who wrote in to the column, said " it may be worth buying a mototrbo handset of the shelf and programming it up if there are a lot of users of mototrbo in your area. It wont be too expensive"

Not letting on that you need to know the group ID number etc...........first!!!???

He also wrote earlier that you could tune in a scanner and then feed the audio from that into a digital pmr446 radio to demodulate the motrobro!!!!?????

I really think that he is struggling to fill up that column every month now........every few months there is a big screde on 'taking a scanner on holiday'
or that DECT phones is now cracked......and that GSM phones are cracked........or that hes been listening into TETRA......and cant tell us how, or that buying the equiptment is very hard........

MotoTRBO is actually an open standard, DMR Tier 2.
DMR Tier 1 is the digital PMR446 standard that uses the 8 wider channels in 446.1-446.2

If they are bit-for-bit compatible (only differing in as much that Tier 1 is for full power VHF/UHF PMR whereas Tier 2 is specifically designated for 0.5W at licence-free 446 megs)
... then it may just be possible to feed a discriminator output from the scanner into a cheap analogue PMR446 that doesn't do CTCSS (and thus doesn't filter the audio too much) and use a digital 446 to RX

If not, at least that technique should allow you to decode CTCSS/DCS if your scanner doesn't - I once found that I could feed the audio from a cheap mono FM receiver tuned into a stereo station into a simple FM bug and tranmitted to my hifi which then received it in stereo because it passed on the stereo multiplexing gubbins. Same sort of thing.

[quote="RogerD" NO..a digital 446 wont give you the full band and just by putting in the frequency will not let you listen to the audio.i could loan youy a trbo and see if you can listen into another trbo users its imposibble,and if they are also using privacy you have no chance.

Well I finally have a copy of the article from August 2009 Radio User and it states the following:

....currently about the eaisest and cheapest way to monitor such communications (Mototrbo) is to get hold of one of the handsets themselves and program it approprately. It wont be too expensive and if you have lots of users in your area it could be worth it..................Despite what many people think theres nothing secret or specialised about, despite the trade name its an open source standard and Motorola have simply indulged in a clever bit of marketing by giving it a name just as they have in the past with other open standards................i'm sure some enterprising scanner manufacturer will incorporate Trbo decoding ...... as Trbo is primarily a US mode and that is the scanner manufacturers main market.

All I can say is i'm glad I didnt splash out on a radio on the strength of the above artice!

Hence the reason i spent 1200 pounds on two brand new dp3600s when they hit the shelves,i thought it was going to be easy,its a little bit like trunking,if you dont have the id codes set into the radio you are going nowhere.

Ouch!

Think I will e-mail the columnist Mr Robertson and ask him to justify his comments.

- only a matter of time before a PC program will allow you to see those ID codes in use, even if it does little else it would open the door to the scanner+PMR446+dPMR446 route!

MotoTRBO is just motorola's implementation of an open standard, DMR. I think the quote from the article is misleading, but the author's got the principles right still. There appears to be no reason why a scanner manufacturer couldn't implement DMR decoding. I think it will happen eventually based on the increasing use of TRBO in the USA. Look at how many US scanners have P25 decoding suddenly, for example.

Privacy - from what I can tell TRBO has two types, "basic" and "enhanced", basic isn't encryption and could be decoded but enhanced is a real encryption solution. I really don't have a good knowledge but Enhanced privacy doesn't actually sound very secure at all to me, but anyway it's unlikely it will ever be listenable because decryption for it won't ever be in a commercial scanner and very unlikely on a PC either.

PCs can, supposedly, decode unencrypted DMR/TRBO already with this program.

theres another write up on this in the August 2010 edition saying much the same............ I think there is still a tinkle of misleading though, as he doesnt let on that theres more than just punching in the correct frequency.........

The US may make a DMR / TRBO compatable scanner, but in the US monitoring of anything encrypted is illegal........whether this may / may not hold back the production of any DMR / TRBO compatable scanner for monitoring unencrypted usage I dont know........

I wouldnt bet on them not making one though...although I think the Chinese are quite likely to produce a compatable reciever (encryped or unencrypted reception or not).............we shall see in time..................

APCO P25 can be encrypted though can't it? I know there are definitely US scanners that will monitor unencrypted P25, so hopefully that won't be an issue.

Fortunately for us in the UK, because Americans have P25-compatible scanners now, many users in the US are moving to other digital formats like TRBO/DMR. So that should speed up development of a compatible scanner. If it is going to happen. It did at least lead to the writing of the PC software I linked to.

I dont know much about that software.....I think its for LINUX only just now.....but a windows version is probably being written,


Thats correct.......Apco 25 can be encrypted, and it didnt hold back the advent to a compatable scanner..........just means if you try and tune into an encrypted signal you wont get anything............