Category: Motorola

TRBOnet is control room software for Motorola MOTOTRBO™ two-way radios. When used with iBeacons, it allows mapping of 2-way radio locations.

The location update rate depends on the degree of radio congestion. The more radios there are the greater the congestion. The use of iBeacons also increases radio congestion as they cause more location packets to be sent. This can become a problem in larger 2-way radio/beacon rollouts.

In cases where a 2-way radio can see more than one beacon, the TRBOnet server uses the relative signal strengths of the beacons to determine the nearest beacon. In the case of radio congestion, the location updates for the two or more beacons might be two far apart, in time, to allow an accurate location to be determined. In congested situations, location updates used for geofencing or man-down might also come in far too late, say 5 minutes late, to provide timely alerts that someone has entered/exited an area or has fallen.

Neocom Software, the authors of TRBOnet, have introduced an Option Board based solution (pdf), that fits in the 2-way radios, that solves these problems. It monitors beacons every 3-5 seconds instead of the standard 30 seconds. It does the comparing of beacon signal strength at the 2-way radio rather than at the server to reduce the number of sent location packets. It intelligently sends location packets as the user changes zone rather than continuously.

The configuration guide (pdf) explains how the option board can be set up to detect events such as man down, geofencing, lone worker (no activity), no movement, crash detection and speed limit.

Are you an established 2-way radio company?
Contact us for advice on which beacons we have supplied for use with TRBOnet.