Batboard

Hi gang,

We are in the midst of buying 53 portable radios and 16 mobile radios from the big M. They are all Astro radios-- XTS 2500s for portables and XTL 5000s for mobiles, although we're told M is going to release both XTL 1500s and XTL 2500s by the time we would purchase these.

My question is this: The dealer is going to charge us $50 to program each radio. Is the Astro CPS for the XTS/XTL line available to anyone, like other software is?

I ask because we were told by the dealer that M's standard procedure for selling Astro radios is to deal with M directly. But, M has recently changed their protocol and the dealer now acts as an agent for M. I am just wondering if the same holds true for the CPS, and that M would not be willing to sell us the software. It's going to cost us 3 grand to program these radios ONE TIME; we could buy the hardware and software for everything for about half that, and be able to program on our own for as long as we have these radios.

Thanks for the input!

Best suggestion I can give is TRY! I know they have sold other FD's software in the past, but with Astro, who knows??? Call 800-422-4210 which is accessories division and see - Let us all know!

Chuck,

I see you are in Wisconsin as well. I am aware of other agencies who have gotten xts and astro cps with their radio purchases. They go directly through Motorola for the CPS though the MSS may assist them in how to go through the process.

Where in Wisconsin are you? I sent an email to you via batlabs but who knows if that is working. Email me at jmrasmussen@msn.com


Thanks

Jason

If not, tell them that you are going to purchase Kenwood radios...and do it.

Jim,

I don't have the ability to tell my dept which radios to buy. I do know I/we are hesitant to buy Kenwood, altough we have a couple of mobile radios and they work well. Motorola has stood the test of time. We have a couple of incredible stories about what some of our M radios have been through and still work. We are also requiring P25 radios as we are hoping to get grant money for this purchase. Kenwood only offers 1 P25 radio. Motorola has several. On top of that, M is on their third revision of P25, Kenwood just came out with their first.

I bought one of the first Maytag Neptune washing machines and learned my lesson. We will let someone else be the Kenwood P25 guinea pig.

bought one of the first Maytag Neptune washing machines and learned my lesson.

Ok, i know this is OT, but what happened with the Neptune? Just curious because i have a family member that owns one. Anything to look out for?

As for Moto, tell them you want a copy of the RSS/CPS included or your taking your money elsewhere. Try it, you might be surprised at the response. A local FD did that when they bought a dozen lowband mobiles, they said either include the software for free or forget it, they got a copy in the mail in 3 days before the radios even got there!

After all, 53 portables, and 16 mobiles!! If you ask me they should get on their friggin knees and kiss your feet. That's one heck of a large purchase.

I think the biggest problem with Moto is they just don't give a crap about customer relations anymore. I had a problem with a Kenwood mobile that i got used. One phone call to them and they sent me replacement parts, free of charge suprisingly, and they also sent me an email with a link to download the right software to program it.

Moto just starts spouting off part numbers and prices, and then telling you what you can't order without being a dealer.

Try putting it on the line with them or write it into the purchase contract that the software is provided to to your agenency as part of your purchase, unless the contracrt has been written already. Then you're kind of SOL with that barganing tool.

kb0nly wrote:

bought one of the first Maytag Neptune washing machines and learned my lesson.

Ok, i know this is OT, but what happened with the Neptune? Just curious because i have a family member that owns one. Anything to look out for?

LOTS of problems with the front load style washers, apparently. I don't own one, but read some reviews while thinking of buying a new washer/dryer set a few months ago. You can read reviews on sites like epinions.com & others. There are some very ticked off people out there!

http://www.epinions.com/hmgd-Large_Appl ... y_~reviews

Todd

Chuck,

I know for sure the communications division programs all of our radios for any agency operating on our P-25 system. $50 per radio can add up pretty fast... not to mention if you have to ever change anything. According to the APCO and FCC websites and the rebanning decision, we're gonna have to move anyway. I'm sure the reprogramming will be done in-house rather than at our local Motorola shop.

Give it a try and good luck!

Tim
Silver Spring Maryland

Let's just say in the few years we've had the washer, the original cost was 1000 and we have 600 into repairs.

We'll keep this thread on topic; if anyone's dying for more info on the Neptune you can e-mail me at chuckhable@sbcglobal.net

Contact Motorola and request the CPS license agreement, fill it out and return it. About 10 days later order the CPS, they will check to see if your license is on file and if it is you get charged for either 1 or 3 years worth of updates. I had absolutly no problem at all getting any Astro stuff including the XTS-3500 software. Also make sure your getting charged the public safety price!

I'm going to chime in here from the MSS prospective, because I am one. Motorola is putting their dealers in a tight spot. The new agent program you speak of is the MR (manufacture's rep). Motorola pays us a commission of 10%. That its. We have to do a lot of leg work and paper work for that 10%--usually far more than it is worth. Not to mention they already probably have a substantial time investment in the project getting it to this point---all of which has likely been uncompensated. So, most MRs make it up in the only place they can--programming.

Also, if you think programming your new radio is like programming your MT1000, it is not. It usually takes several passes and quite bit of time to enter every thing and then optimize the radio for the system. Depending on the complexity of your system, I wouldn't be surprised if they would have 4 to 8 hours in creating the template for each radio. So if you spread this time across all those units, it looks reasonable.

I don't like this MR program and I could see issues such as yours evolving out of it. I think it is very nieve of anyone if you think you can operate a business on a 10% margin.

What this boils down, do you value the service you receive from the MSS? In my opinion, and the Galvins' agreed, it was the backbone that got Motorola where they are today and it is how you, the radio user, typically receives a 20+ year life expectancy from your communications equipment. (I just removed a 1969 Motrac Upright that was one of my sheriff's primary repaters. It had been on a service agreement with us for the last 20 years without a single in service failure, attributable to attentive PM) Personally, some days I feel we are taken for granted, but I guess that is a good thing because it says we are doing our job.

If you do elect to program your own radios, I would expect your MSS will cease to support your project--if it is not paying his overhead they'll have to find something that does. So the support you have taken for granted may cease to be there. In the long term, if this trend continues, they'll cease to be there, as well. You may find yourself looking to Motorola's FTRs or depot for your service. Believe me, that will make the $3000 you're going to spend on programing the first months payment on that contract.

I don't know where you are in Wisconsin, I'm in Minnesota. I know the bulk of the Wisconsin dealers personally. I would give most high marks--very high marks, for the integrity in which they run their business and the technical competence in which they excel.

I appreciate your concern as a Motorola Rep. But in this day and age, it all comes down to money. And if we can save substantial amounts of money, why not do it?

We're looking at some challenging ideas when it comes to programming, some we're not even completely sure about. So if we go forward with this endeavor, and it doesn't work out exactly right the first time, we're out a lot of money to reprogram to where we want it! Furthermore, we've been told by our rep, "You don't want to program your radios that way." Yes we do! And if it turns out down the road we didn't want to do it that way, we save lots of money by reprogramming our radios ourselves, either tweaking our original setup or abandoning it altogether.

Lastly, from a personal prospective which ultimately pays nothing into how the decisions are made, I am a proud union worker. Time after time after time I hear how good paying union jobs are being outsourced because it's cheaper to produce products and pay for labor out of the country. Turnabout is fair play. If Motorola is only going to pay you 10% for your work, it's not really my problem. Not many corporations that I can see spend the extra money to keep those good paying jobs where they belong. Cut the overhead to maximize profits to the stockholders. If we cut these operating costs and program ourselves, something I think I would be able to do, we save the city considerable amounts of money. Again, my opinion along these lines plays nothing into our purchase of radios, but you know where I am coming from.

chuckhab wrote:I appreciate your concern as a Motorola Rep. But in this day and age, it all comes down to money. And if we can save substantial amounts of money, why not do it?

He answered your question.

Who maintains your system? Your repeaters? Who installs the mobiles? Is this all inhouse or contracted through an MSS? If you currently do all of this in house then you should already have a programming platform, and the person in charge should already know how to purchase the RSS/CPS.

Now if your system is currently maintained by an MSS I wouldn't want to shoot that guy in the foot to save a few bucks. On programming, I don't know many agencies that change their programming that often in a radio. Are you adding frequencies to your system with new radios? Or just putting the old ones into new radios? For operator ease shouldn't the new ones be setup as close as possible to the old ones? If you're adding more, or changing the setup plan it carefully and the only time you'd ever need to change the programming is for a frequency addition or deletion.

I'd talk to the MSS. Tell him to adjust his pricing. With the speed of cloning the template in to the new radios I'd ask him to write up how much it would cost to generate the template and then how much to clone it per unit. $3500 is some big money for a days work.

The infrastructure belongs to the county. We are an end user on the system. A couple of thousand bucks is gonna lose our support? I am sure they are making big bucks whenever they do maintenance or repairs on the system, and I can't believe one of the users on the system programming their own radios is going to break them. Up until this point, this company has not done anything for us, dept wise, from a radio support standpoint, including programming.

I am just looking at all of our options-- thanks for all of the input.

Do any of the other users of the system program their own radios?

I understand the dealers wanting to make money from these deals. However, there is more to consider than what a dealer makes.... like the fact they are taking the headaches out of programming for you!

One thing a dealer can do is sell you the programming cables and then give you the info needed to purchase the software directly from Motorola.

Now remember, you need to know what your doing when you program though! One mistake can bring alot of headaches.

If you sit down and look at it from a money perspective, it would be cheaper to buy the software than pay $50 per radio to program, especially at the quantities you purchased.

The downside of this is you have to have someone capable and knowledgable to do this. It takes plenty of time and effort. It also can cost you plenty if you were to mess up a radio by accidently loading in an invalid codeplug. You might be able to recover from the mistake, or you may end up having to send it back to the factory. Multiply the headache by 10 because these are Apco 25 capable digital and analog trunking radios. This could end up costing more than its worth in the long run. So there are pros and cons of paying a dealer vice doing it yourself by buying the software.

Honestly, in my opinion, unless you have someone who knows what they are doing with programming in trunking systems, the dealer is the smarter choice.

SmilnDon wrote: Honestly, in my opinion, unless you have someone who knows what they are doing with programming in trunking systems, the dealer is the smarter choice.

And what better dealer than the one that maintains it. He SHOULD have a decent of idea on what's going on.

Bottom line is important but on a purchase of this magnitude the 3K is really small change. The 3K would likely be an investment in procuring goodwill with the MSS. I also see in your last post that your dept. isn't the owner of the system. The County might object to having radios on their system programmed by a source other than theirs. Any trunking
formats being used ? If so, I think you can pretty much shut the door on this idea as the holder of the Key is unlikely to give it up. The County where I am controls all the radios on their system, they do the programming and all subsriber units to outside agencies must be purchased thru them.

Nope...wideband analog conventional, obviously soon going to narrowband, and conversion to digital in about 10 years, we think. That's why it's almost a crime that we have to go after P25 radios when a 16 channel portable, like an HT750 (or even better if we could still get our mitts on them-- an HT1000) would be perfect. But if we want the 'free' money, we need to meet these requirements.

Let me explain a little further as to why we want to be able to program our own radios:

First off, but a small reason I think, is money. I had not looked at it from a support standpoint, and the arguments made in that favor certainly make a ton of sense.

The channels we use will be similar to those in use now. So from an 'adding new freqs' standpoint, that will be minimal.

We do want to try something with MDC signalling that we have never done before. And we want to expiriment with it before deciding on the best format. That is our biggest reason for programming these ourselves--the ability to make timely changes on our own, tweaking our own system, as it were, to see what works best. And when it comes to the final product, it could take several revisions before we get what we like.

We want to use the MDC signalling to identify each radio as it transmits. This is not something anyone in our area has ever done before, and so it's brand new. We need to decide how we want to do it--at the start of the transmission, at the end, only with emergency button, etc. This is the expirimentation we would have to play with, and would be something we would actually need to use to figure out what works best for us.

The other depts in the area do not do their programming, as far as I know. But with the exception of a few law enforcement agencies, we are one of the bigger users on the system.

Lastly, we want to be able to re-program a spare radio if it will be used as a replacement for one that needs service (so we can have the MDC identifier of that radio). We could do this in house, cheaply, as timely as we want it to be, without calling for outside service and paying for it.

So these are our reasons. Again, all of the input has been extremely helpful, and I am thankful for that. We are several months away from this whole project coming to fruition, and I continue to look forward to any additional comments you may have!

Thanks again--this forum is awesome.