Notices

Hey all.

I was wondering if there is any way to use the tablet as a police radio scanner.

Either by a current application, possible open source package that could be ported, or by modifying a radio station program that can catch the lower frequency channels.

Thanks ahead.

Yeah, I would aso want this. But I think the hardare just isn't there, it would go well with my speedcamalerter app.

haha

About 20 minutes ago, 6 patrol cars flew down the street about a half mile away from where I live.

I think there was a shooting from what others have been telling me.

I'm kind of building up the nerve right now to show up over there and say "Hey, what's going on fellas?"

But yeah, a scanner would be pretty cool to have when something like this happens.

There is an FM Radio App, but just for the N800. Most police radios are now FM also, so there would see to be some potential with the N800 anyway.

A lot of stations have switched to digital (+encryption) so yeah. But as far as the stations still using analog you need a dedicated scanner which is basically a CB radio. The devices don't pick up these frequencies. MAYBE there is some sort of usb scanner available but lot likely. I could be wrong, if anyone knows of anything....?

The only such thing I am aware of is the frequency "crystal" from a toaster + CB = fast-food com.

For some reason I was under the impression that one could break the tuning dial on an old stereo so that it could pick up lower channels that aren't available publicly such as police broadcasts.

So instead of the tuner stopping at 88 Mghz (sp?), if you broke that stopper plate or whatever it's called, you could continue to scan channels lower than this.

Also, I heard that by doing such a thing, that it was considered to be illegal.

Anyway, I do have a N800. So is there anything I can try to get such a result?

See bug 2249.

holy ####... if it's tunable in software (hmm, i think i've heard this phrase in a different heated thread somewhere..), does it make the tablet illegal in certain countries\states which may raise legal issues..?

"NEWS: Open source hacker converts smartphone to thwart police security system!"

For small values of "tunable" - you can select either the US/European (87.5-108MHz) or Japanese (76-90MHz) bands and that's it. IANAL, but I don't think being able to receive 76-87.5MHz would be illegal in most places (what about Japanese car, stereo etc imports for example?) I also don't know if the Japanese band enables one to receive police broadcasts or anything other than Japanese FM radio, but there is a way to go (a bit) lower than 87.5MHz at least.

Does your municipality provide web views and RSS feeds of incident status? They may not provide the level of detail a police scanner does, but they're helpful in answering those "Why all the sirens?" questions, and they work well with tablets.