How to add larger LED to base radio so I know which radio is receiving the transmission ?

[JCase]

Greetings everyone,

I’m not sure if I am using the wrong wording or wrong order of wording but I have searched and searched and, you get the idea. I can’t find anything that would solve this issue so I am confident that quite a few of you can assist me with coming up with a solution. The outstanding members on this site have never let me down and I don’t expect today to be any different.

 

 I have a home built dispatch console that my team uses. It houses a total of eight mobile radios on separate channels. Most of the time we can distinguish which radio a transmission is coming through on by the unit I.D. and or the content of the transmission. However, on the rare (ok, not so rare) occasion that the stations I.D. Is cut off from short keying individuals, it is very difficult to see the tiny LED flashing on some of the Motorola radios and the Kenwood and remaining radios that use a tiny LCD symbol to signal a transmission is being received, all but disappear among everything else showing on the screens. My team is finding it very difficult to decipher which radio to reply on. Is there a simple (I know, nothing is ever simple) solution, like an accessory/after market add on that would offer a larger, easy to see light that would illuminate every time that radio is receiving incoming traffic ? If it involves me having to build something using resistors, diodes or anything along those lines, chances are I will fail miserably. I’m really hoping there’s a plug & play solution or at least something very close to plug & play. 

I’m attaching a pic of the radio console to give you a better idea of where I’m coming from but please excuse the clutter surrounding the console. The pic was taken in my garage just before I completed everything and moved it across the county to its permanent home. 

I’m looking forward to learning how to solve this issue and as always I greatly appreciate everyone taking the time to read and hopefully reply with your suggestions.

 

JC

[BoxCar]

First off, that's too many radios for one operator especially without computer control. You would be well served by talking to NENA, the National Emergency Number Association about picking up and configuring a used 9-1-1 console.

[pcradio]

If you had an SDR, running on a computer, then some custom software, or maybe even the provided software, could make things more obvious.

[gortex2]

As said way too much stuff for a control/dispatcher. First option as mentioned is a legacy console of some sort then local control or 4W to the radios. If your only looking for a "light" you could do on the MSI gear with the COR on the 16 pin. I have done this in the past on certain radios for other uses. You would need a relay, 16 pin accessory kit, power source and indicator but can be done. Personally I'd search for a console.

[JeepCrawler98]

Most commercial radios have pinouts for COT and/or COR (valid tone & carrier received) - you could wire these up through a transistor or relay to turn on a light  of any size when the radio receives a signal with either a correct CTCSS/DPL tone or any carrier for that matter.

[JCase]

Greetings all,

 

Thank you for your suggestions so far. As for the number of radios being handled by a single person, under normal circumstances I would definitely agree. However, one of those radios is our connection with the local, countywide 911 center and we’re the only one (outside of the center) on that talk group, one radio has only two field units, one has four, another has three and finally the main two have on average of ten and forty. In a perfect world I would have a separate operator for each, in a less than perfect world, I would have an operator for the forty unit radio and an operator for the rest. In reality, when staffing relies on volunteers and those volunteers need to have common sense along with the ability to multitask, I’m usually left with one operator handling everything. Believe it or not, it really is manageable most of the time. I do have a second position that is sometimes staffed and when it is, the workload is shared. The main reason for so many different channels is to reduce the chatter on certain channels. The more chatter on a given channel results in user’s turning the volume down and missing transmissions directed at them. This setup has in the past, and continues to work presently, quite well. But, you can clearly understand now the importance of knowing which radio needs to be used for each reply and why my team is finding this to be so challenging at times. Anyone with experience that would like to travel to Florida several times a year and help cover the two dispatch positions is more than welcome to contact me and sign up LOL. Until then, I need to figure out a solution that works for us with our current staffing . 

So far, it’s not looking to promising that any solution is going to be “simple” lol.

[JCase]

Howdy JeepCrawler98,

 

First, thanks for taking the time to reply and second, this is sounding like a genuine possible solution. Would you be willing to guide me through this process ? I’m willing to give it my best shot but I’m not so sure my skills (or lack there of) are adequate.

Tell me if I understand this correctly, this would be one wire connected to the correct pin out on the radio, running to a relay that would have an external power source and a light connected to the relay that would turn on anytime the radio received a transmission and turn off when the transmission ended ?

 

JC