I am not sorry to see Tri-square go away. A few years ago (ok several) I bought a pair of them to shake down in hope of being able to offer a better license free radios to businesses and consumers. They were so bad I bought another pair figuring the two I got were bad. Nope! They were **** and could only go a block or two before loosing sync. One they lost sync all users had to hold off of their PTT for about 30 seconds before everything would sync up again.
Chickenhawk- you are absolutely correct about them being license free. The FCC set up the parameter of operating in the 902-928Mhz band with up to 1 watt of output to promote advancement in FHSS technology. At the time cordless phones all operated on 49Mhz and this brought out many that worked on 900Mhz as a better option. The DTR radios are targeted at businesses who are probably using other radios not legally and werenāt intended for mom and pop but mom and pop can certainly use them at will as long as they are willing to cough up the $$ for them.
TowerTech is somewhat wrong about the concrete thing. Radio waves will go through concrete but itās the re-bar they put in it that causes the problems. The shorter the wavelength of the signal the better it goes through the re-bar. I too am a ham and early on found out that I couldnāt get a VHF signal out of a motel worth a darn but UHF worked ok. 900Mhz works even better in that environment. My friend has a warehouse that was built in the 30s or 40s (very thick concrete) and no radios we tried would cover the place. 900Mhz easily does and I can even talk to him from a mile or two away (there are no windows in the place).
Now I have to admit that I donāt have any of the DTR radios. I was about to buy some but stumbled on an option that gives the same performance and functions for a much cheaper price. Nextel Direct talk! The two radios (wellā¦ cell phones) I KNOW this works on are Motorola I275 and I355. In direct talk they work in the 902-928Mhz band and work radio to radio without the network. By the way the Nextel network is officially dead now. I configure the radios to āboot upā in direct talk mode and they have the ability to set up talk groups as well as individual ids for person to person talk as well as radio ids. They are great and can be picked up on e-bay for $25 or so bucks. The only thing that needs to be known is that you have to have a SIMM card or else the radio wonāt do anything.
I have read that the direct talk mode is pretty much the same as the DTR radios (different codes however) so I can say that the DTR radios are far and above anything else license free that you can get. I can easily get a couple miles in harsh urban environments and many more in the open (I do have the fixed extended antenna on them). Their performance has been nothing less that fantastic! My GMRS license comes up for renewal next January (I have a portable repeater) and I wonāt be renewing it and am getting rid of all of my GMRS radios (keeping a FRS for compatibility) and all other license free radios.
For fun I down loaded the manual for the DTR 550 and 650. I want to learn more about these radios. The Nextel Motorola I355s arenāt going to be available forever and I want to be able to direct folks to a good available radio and be able to support it (programming and such).
I just flipped through the manual (will dig in deeper later) and found that it uses the same battery as the I355 did (cool I can keep my radios going longer) and the accessory connector looks the same as well. I have to wonder what other similarities there are. Some folks have complained about the nextel like beeps on the DTRs and I too hate that on my 355s (hope Motorola can fix that on the DTRs). I suspect that Motorola pretty much ported the direct talk technology over to a stand alone radio. A good move on their part. The price is coming down (the lowest end radio was $350 when I first looked) and I hope it continues to do so and get more folks into them.
When I get some $$ Iām going to buy a pair of the DTRs to try out. I suspect they will be even better than my 355s as they are tuned to a specific band rather than trying to cover a wide swath for two different modes of operation. Nothing like removing **** that can cause de-sensing. As was mentioned the DTRs now offer a feature that I find very handy that my 355s do not have- the ability to set a remote radio to transmit. There are times when it would be nice to be able take a quick listen in on a remote location.
Yup, when I get the bucks (hopefully soon) Iām going to shake a pair down.
You have to press the headset connector into the radio harder than you think you should. You will hear, and feel, a snap when they are fully/correctly plugged in.
I spent 25 years in the two-way radio business, the last 10 as a Motorola Agent/Dealer. I donāt remember exactly, but I think the DTR radios came out around 2005. We were told by Motorola factory personnel that that block of frequencies in the 900MHz range did not require a license for 1 watt radios. Remember cordless phones were in there at one time? That has been 8 years so I think if they were operating illegally something would have been done by now. The DTR radios worked great in multi-floor buildings. Concrete and brick is porous to radio signals within certain limitations. I had one customer using them all over a 16 floor building. The very short physical radio wave of 900 MHz bounces great and finds doorways and windows to go through. I did lots of demos (I kept a pair of DTR 550ās in my car at all times) and very seldom did they not perform to meet the users needs.
I bought a pair of DTR550 from Amazon.com, as well as the serial programming cable.
For some reason the CPS Software (R03.01) thinks they are DTR410 not DTR550, and does not allow me to program Private Groups, for example.
I even tried to start a new DTR550 profile from scratch, but when I try to write to the radio, it says it does not support some features in the profile.
I compared the DTR650ās with some HT1250 UHF radios. I was very impressed in the performance of the DTR650ās. In my test, they performed as well as the HT1250 for distance (me in a concrete/steel building, and my room mate taking a train towards downtown vancouver.
I really liked the feature that lets you know if the other radio is in range.
If you are in Georgia or Alabama Iden is alive and well. Georgia Power uses this for company communications and also sells service to the public .
In looking at it they have pay as you go for with unlimited PTT for $1.25 per day.
So why would someone pay more for the 550 or 650 if the 410 has all the same features now? For a tiny bit more range? Or are there other features that make the more expensive 550/650 worth it?
Actually, thatās a good question. The 410 has a fixed antenna, versus the replaceable antenna on the 550/650 which gives them slightly more range.
The 550/650 can also do private groups, and they have 100 unit ID numbers to choose from, versus the 50 of the 410. (To communicate with each other, radios must be set to the same channel number - from 1 to 10 - PLUS set to the same unit ID number.) On the 550 and 650, you have just under 1000 possible combinations. With the 410, you have under 500.
Pretty insignificant difference.
In addition to the same management functions as the 410, the 650 also has an extra capacity battery.
My six-radio system uses one 410 for its management functions such as remote time coordination, and the rest all 550s. I have about half of them with the longer antenna for the best possible range, and the rest with the shorter antenna for a more compact size. I have also replaced about half the batteries with the extra capacity Motorola battery. (The original Motorola batteries are years old but still hold just as good a charge as the day they were new.)
The REAL reason why I donāt use all 410 radios? Simple. The 550 just looks more professional than the 410. If I am spending that much money for a high-quality business-class mil-spec radio, I want it to look like a business-class radio and not a fancy FRS. Plus, I sometimes need all the range I can get, and that means the better antenna of the 550/650.
The last 550 I acquired was the third generation, with the longer antenna and the faster charger from the 650.
I havenāt heard anything from Motorola directly about the 550 being discontinued, and they still list it as an active model in their business product line, so I wouldnāt worry about it just yet.
The 410 is a good radio, but Iām with you on the DTR550. I also like the fact that the 550 has a removable antenna, which gives these radios a lot more latitude in terms of both range and versatility.
Yes, in my head-to-head range tests for this product review, there was a noticeable difference in range between the fixed antenna of the 410 versus the stubby antenna of the 550 and the longer replacement 7" antenna. It was only a matter of a block or two, but there was a difference.
In fact, thanks to me asking buytwowayradios to special order the 7" antenna, they now carry them as a regular stock item if anyone wants to replace the short stubby antenna on their 550 or 650.
But I notice in the buytwowayradios.com website that the 550 now already comes stock with the longer 7" antenna. This reinforces what I found with my recent 550 purchase, versus the ones I bought four years ago. This saves $35. Buyers of the newer 550s can also buy the short stubby antenna if they want to opt for a bit more of a compact package when the ultimate range is not quite as important. (I notice my local Apple store uses all 550 radios for their floor employees.)
So I found a few of these radios for a decent price on eBay, just to see what they were like. I donāt think I would have known about or even considered these radios if it werenāt for the great work done by Chickenhawk. There is almost NO information about these radios on the internet, and the way dealers work (protecting their information and only selling radios that they program and nobody having any stock of the DTR radio so I can see one) itās been very difficult to really get a feel for what these radios are all about.
So thank you so much for doing all the groundwork on these radios!
So now I have a 650 and 3 550s along with the keyboard which makes programming them a little better. Iāve ordered a programming cable and have the software, so hopefully that will make things even easier.
My concern is that all these radios have the short stubby antenna which doesnāt seem to be removable. I thought that antenna was only supposed to be on the 410. Is there a chance that these radios are really old and will not be programmable with the software? If so, then that will be a big problem.
Iāve heard that there are different versions of firmware for these radios, but I have not seen anything downloadable or any flash software to do updates. How does one find the firmware and are the DTRs flash update-able?
Those will be the first generation 550 and 650 radios. Firmware is not upgradeable on these radios and there is a good chance the programming software may not work. They are likely quite a few years old.
(EDIT: I, along with many others, always believed the firmware was not upgradeable on the version 1 DTR radios, but if you read further in this thread, you can read about how it CAN be accomplished, thanks to the diligence of Mr. X!)
On the other hand, the performance of the radios should still be good, even if the range is not quite as far as the newer generation versions. Also, if the batteries are original Motorola, they should be okay. If you find battery life is less than optimum, you can order new batteries easily. (The extended battery that comes with the 650 also fits the 550 and 410.)
Plus, with the keyboard, you can do everything you need to do without needing the software. The downside is that you need to program each radio individually, but that keyboard is great for what you need to do if the software doesnāt work.
I am guessing they were used radios?
If you have any specific questions on programming with the keyboard, give me a try and I will see if I can help. And, yes, there has not been a lot of attention paid to these great radios!
What Iāve been told elsewhere is that if I get a Gen2 radio that works with CPS, I can program it and then use my cloning cable to program the rest.
Yes, they were used, and they should have been a lot cheaper than I got them for. I wish Iād known about the antennas being the key to telling if they were Gen1 or Gen2.
I think that will work. On the other hand, I have six of them and never used the software or the cloning cable. I programmed all of them individually using the keyboard. Yeah, it took a while but I love to tinker. It seems silly not to use the cloning cable but after the first two radios, I got quite fast on that tiny keyboard. One afternoon in the backyard with six radios and a couple of beers, and they were done.
I read your blogs on these radios and I learned a bunch of stuff. Thanks!
I know exactly what you mean about the DTR radios seeming to be the orphan child of Motorola. But buytwowayradios and my Canadian dealer are both quite knowledgeable about the advantages of these great radios.
I also spend up to 12 hours a day with a radio earpiece in my ear and have a real good idea of what works and doesnāt work as far as accessories.
I usually use a two-wire surveillance mic and soundtube earpiece, or a speaker mic with an audio-out, and a listen-only soundtube earpiece. They work great, and the best thing I ever did was replace the standard earplug with a moulded earpiece. They fit comfortably all day long and they donāt block off ambient noise or āplugā your ear canal. I save the original earplugs for when I need to block off the sound of gunshots - which is a common occurrence in my profession, if you knew what I did for a living. (We canāt use open mics in my workplace, so headsets or in-ear speakers are mandatory ā¦ and I have gone through a TON of them over the years.)
Cool. I wanted to start a place that had as much information as possible about the radios, since thereās nothing on the internet.
This is certainly the first I have heard about firmware upgrades. Can you detail the improvements in rev. 3 firmware?
The manual and product training pdf that are in the DTR thread detail the improvements. Have a look through that documentation.
Hey ā¦ now that you are officially a ādealerā, and located in Canada, figure out what you would charge to upgrade firmware and Iāll ship you some radios! What part of the country are you in?
Send me a note (contact us at the bottom of any of my pages) and weāll talk.
It appears I cannot see the files unless I join that site.
About the only thing I would like to do is lower the volume of the confirmation beep. From what you have said on other forums, it appears this is a gen 3 firmware feature. But is it possible to also do this on a gen 2 firmware radio, with the latest version of the CPS?
I just canāt see buying those cables (not to mention a Windows computer with a serial port) just to upgrade one tiny feature.
Have you ever tried a USB-to-serial adapter, either on Windows or Mac in Bootcamp?
