Connecting to Radio GPS

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11-21-2013 04:33 AM
MarkYerington
Occasional Contributor III
Is it possible to connect geoevent processor to a radio systems GPS.  Also if this is possible what radio systems are compatible.  Also I know that there are mapping systems for radios, such as trbonet.  This is not compatible with esri so makes it a little hard to work with our data.  Just wondering if anyone has any experience with this and maybe a little insight on how this could be accomplished.

Do we need to extract files from a repeater or.....?

How do we stream the gps information to geoevent processor......?

Any help would be great we are looking into avl and would like to test Geoevent processor since we have it available with our EDN, but not sure of the capabilities with the radio systems.
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9 Replies
AdamRepsher
Occasional Contributor III
Hi Mark,

There are many answers to your question, actually.  It depends on how you can get the GPS information out of the radio and how it needs to be translated.  In our IP based radio systemsystem, we have a polling server (custom development) that actually requests locations from the radios.  The radio responds back to the polling server with its location - which then translates the hex packet into a text packet (CSV) and sends it to our GeoEvent Processor installation - which then sends the information to a log file, and a feature service to be displayed on the client's AVL mapping application.

If the radio in your situation has a computer attached to it and uses the radio network for connectivity, you could potentially program that computer to send you a location whenever you want, in the format that you want.

The important thing here is that GeoEvent Processor is just a receiver of information.  Someone correct me if I am wrong.  You can probably develop a GeoEvent Processor input that receives and converts a packet into something it can read, but it cannot reach out and request that a radio deliver its location.  Some other component is needed for that functionality.

Motorola's Astro P25 system has an optional server that handles AVL polling, but it needs another application controling it and again delivering information to GEP.  There are many solutions available that work with that system.

--Adam
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MarkYerington
Occasional Contributor III
Thanks Adam for giving me an example.  I guess we will have to work with our radio vendor to see if they can help us with this, because I don't know anything about the radio streaming getting information out.  I just wanted confirmation that this can be done and we will have to work out the details on our side. Thanks again.
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CamBarnard
New Contributor III
I've been looking into this as well for handheld radios. As I investigate what I'm finding the answer is ... yes, but.
Motorola for example has made great strides and now provides a single API interface called MNIS (MOTOTRBO Network Interface Service) that allows for TCP/IP UDP based requests for things like location services of radios with a standard mechanism regardless of the radio deployment topology. Technologically therefore you get a big YES as you can write a single input connector to GEP that can acquire this data in usable form with no special hardware required.
The BUT comes from the reality of the design of radio systems. RF resources are precious (think of how we developed software in the early 80s when you had to squeeze out every drop of memory efficiency). In practice this means that many radio networks are designed to a particular capacity expectation. A poorly written program (e.g. requesting things too often, or requesting updates from every radio at once rather than staggering requests) or even a well written program requesting location services data from a radio network that is in use near or at its design capacity can cause problems with voice quality and availability.
In summary, technologically it is quite possible but care must be taken to involve those who understand the radio network and its capacity and the added volume of your location requests to ensure the total capacity of the RF-transmitted digital bandwidth is not exceeded.

-Cam
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BrianLocke
Occasional Contributor II
Bob Bruninga
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RJSunderman
Esri Regular Contributor
Those interested in this topic might want to check out a recent offering from one of our partners, CompassCom, on the Partner" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.arcgis.com/home/group.html?owner=GeoEventTeam&tit... Gallery.

From their press" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.satnews.com/story.php?number=1591767694]press release:
"CompassLDE interfaces with GPS hardware from Trimble, Motorola, Sierra Wireless, CalAmp, and any GPS-enabled smartphone or tablet computer. CompassLDE may be purchased for on-premises operation or accessed as a service hosted by CompassCom, a provider of best-in-class mobile resource management solutions since 1994."

You can find a link to the Partner Gallery as well as the Product and Community Galleries on our Real-Time" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://pro.arcgis.com/en/share/geoevent-processor/]Real-Ti... Data Feeds and Sensors resource page.
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BrandonGilhooly
New Contributor

CompassCom provides a interface to Motorola Unified Services (UNS) to the Astro p25 radio network.  We are currently working on interface to MotoTurbo via the MNIS API. Out interface provides all of the heavy lifting inquired about in this blog as well as Emergency button functionality. 

Via our interface to these and other devices we can write to the GeoEvent Extension.

CompassCom in the only Motorola business partner to put Astro radio locations on a map.

Feel free to contact me for more information.

Brandon Gilhooly

Product Manager

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AdamRepsher
Occasional Contributor III

In summary, technologically it is quite possible but care must be taken to involve those who understand the radio network and its capacity and the added volume of your location requests to ensure the total capacity of the RF-transmitted digital bandwidth is not exceeded.

-Cam


This is a great point Cam.  Thank you for adding it to the discussion.  Right now, we are using a polling solution designed by Esri to work with our system.  We are currently tracking the agency with the largest active radio deployment on our state-wide system.  We are averaging between 600 and 800 radios at any given time, being polled at 20 second intervals. At this moment, GEP is handling about 44 messages per second for this feed.  So, there are 44 packets per second going over the radio network to the radios and 44 responses per second coming back to the server over the radio network.

We are going to be modifying that polling engine to make use of a "one time polling" feature of the radio that previously was unavailable.  Polling engine sends out a packet that tells the radio to respond with its location every x number of seconds.  This will effectively eliminate 1/2 of the AVL related traffic (minus one for the single request) over the system.

The system is not being stressed at all, but it is better to be prepared for higher usage!

--Adam
GISSupport3
Occasional Contributor III

Hi All

Any updates on how one could display data from the Motorola Unified Network Service API in ESRI mapping?

Thanks

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JeffSilberberg
Occasional Contributor III

I know I am a little late to this thread.  But I wanted to update the fact that my firm DAPage, LLC has recently joined the Esri Partner program as the Bronze Level and we are also a Motorola Application Development Partner.   We have interfaces to both GeoEvent and Velocity in service for MOTOTRBO and Wave PTX (Kodiak) and while not currently in production we are also licensed to support the IMW interfaces.  

If we can be of service please reach out. 

Jeff Silberberg 
Partner 

http://www.dapage.net/technology/

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