Mellow Panda and the BC-780-XLT

The Uniden BC-780-XLT is a oldie but goodie as radios go. Perform a Google search and you will see there is a lot of love for the 780. Thanks to eBay, I have a several of these radios and they are a lot of fun w/a computer. My only complaint would be the poor image rejection, especially the 2nd harmonic above the FM broadcast band.

The 780 is too old for USB and uses a DB-9, which might be a problem since many new computers only have USB ports. I have had good luck w/the TRENDnet TU-S9 USB to RS-232 converter (also works w/my Icom PCR-1000). If you are connecting your 780 to Mellow Panda via USB, you can get the port assignment via dmesg (it will look something like "/dev/ttyUSB1"). This is the value you want for pandad.conf

On the 780 itself, jack up the serial speed to 19.2K (all the way up). This also needs to be reflected in pandad.conf

Bearcat commands follow a request/response cycle in that the computer issues a command/request and the radio responds. All commands/requests will generate a response from the radio like "OK" or "ERR" or a request specific response. If you issue a command using Mellow Panda and do not see a response, there is a connectivity problem.

Note: the 780 will not respond to remote commands if the menu tree is displayed. Press the "menu" key to back out. Of course the RMT flag should also be visible on the display.

There are several sources of information on the Bearcat Uniden command set. Most of the commands make sense, especially if you are familiar w/using the radio.

Mellow Panda tries hard to make your radio accessible: you can exercise the radio by running pandad in the foreground or you can use the panda client. For example, the "SI" command will return system information such as the radio model and version.

For pandad in foreground: ./pandad -x panda://device/raw/bc780.a/SI
For panda client: ./panda -r bc780.a -k raw/SI
Response looks like: SI BC780XLT,0000000000,103

The real fun starts when you need to string commands together to complete a task. Not everything you want to do has an explicit command. Happily, Mellow Panda makes it easy to experiment and I will provide examples of common 780 tasks.

Note:several of these examples are already available as bash scripts in the Mellow Panda demo directory.

Store a frequency and then assign a alphanumeric tag (visible in the radio display)
./panda -r radio_name -k "raw/PM005 01220000"
./panda -r radio_name -k "raw/TA C 005 Flight Watch"

Define channel 5 as the priority channel
./panda -r radio_name -k "raw/PC A004"

Monitor a Motorola Type-2/800 trunk system using only the control channel
./panda -r radio_name -k "raw/PM051 08541875"
./panda -r radio_name -k "raw/KEY13H"
./panda -r radio_name -k "raw/TCN B P1"
./panda -r radio_name -k "raw/KEY00"
./panda -r radio_name -k "raw/KEY13"

Monitor a Motorola Type-2/800 trunk system by defining all associated frequencies
./panda -r radio_name -k "raw/KEY11"
./panda -r radio_name -k "raw/KEY02 3"
./panda -r radio_name -k "raw/KEY02 2"
./panda -r radio_name -k "raw/KEY02 1"
./panda -r radio_name -k "raw/KEY02 1"
./panda -r radio_name -k "raw/KEY11"
./panda -r radio_name -k "raw/KEY11"
./panda -r radio_name -k "raw/KEY11"
./panda -r radio_name -k "raw/PM051 08541875"
./panda -r radio_name -k "raw/KEY13H"
--and more frequencies--
./panda -r radio_name -k "raw/SB B"
./panda -r radio_name -k "raw/KEY00"
./panda -r radio_name -k "raw/KEY13"