FSP1

Once you have started FreeSCAN, you will be greeted with the following screen:

FSP2

Be sure and use the "Donate" button! Ok, you've just made it through our ONLY commercial, ready for the rest of the documentation? We'll be "walking" the menus (ie starting at the file menu and working our way across seeing what all we can find in this powerful program).

File

FSP3

First we have the New command but having just started FreeSCAN you have started with a new, blank database. If you have been working with FreeSCAN for a while and need to get a new start on life, this is the button to choose. It will also prompt if you want to save your work if you have something already entered into FreeSCAN.

The "open" command right below there is for loading existing databases that you may have already created. If you're new to FreeSCAN, you probably won't have any yet, but if you have been using it for a while, you might see:

FSP4

As you can see, there is a display of all the files you can choose from and all you need to is highlight one, then click open or you can just double click the name and it will load also - whichever you find easier.

Once you've been working with FreeSCAN for a while, the next option in figure FSP3 is going to be your friend and that is SAVE. It will prompt you with a window much like the above and ask for a name to save the file as. This is where some/all of the ones displayed in the "open" window came from.

Next in our line is the import menu:

FSP5

As you can see, we can import older version(s) of FreeSCAN databases, UASD files (scanner files that were made with the free program Uniden supplies) or from Radio Reference. What is Radio Reference you might ask...well, it's a web site on the internet (www.radioreference.com) that is a source for a lot of frequencies, well updated and maintained. They also offer a subscription service which is well worth the small amount they ask and will allow you to connect via some software (FreeSCAN being one of course) and download the information with ease.

Once you have clicked on Radioreference Conventional (or trunked depending on what the system is that you desire to download) you will be greeted with this screen:

FSP6

If this is your first time to use Radio Reference, you will need to sign up so click that button. If you have already signed up for this service, then fill in your username and password that they gave you. To keep from having to do this each time, you can check the box Remember my name & password and it will be waiting for you each time.

Once you filled that in, you will need to tell FreeSCAN which country you will be looking for information on by clicking the flag that is appropriate to that country. Then set you Province/State, County and agencies from the drop down list.

At the bottom of this window you have the preview button which will let you see if you got what you thought you were going to and also let you check the frequencies by clicking on the frequency tab.

The options tab has several options that you can set to your liking:

FSP7

Pretty much self explanatory and can be set to suit your preference. The last option is saying that a long channel name can be store in a comment field that exists only within FreeSCAN - it won't be loaded or read from your scanner.

The next in our line is Export CSV. Once we have chosen that option, we will see the following:

FSP8

You see that you have the choice of exporting the current system you have highlighted OR all systems in your database. Showing is the full Uniden load on a 996 and that will create quite a large file if you choose All Systems. Be warned. The CSV after export is a computer term meaning "comma separated values" which will give you something along the lines of:

Name,Freq/ID,Lockout,Tone,Modulation,Comment,Group,System
Albany FD,154.3850,Off,None,FM,,Alameda Conv,Alameda Conv
Albany PD,460.2000,Off,156.7Hz,FM,,Alameda Conv,Alameda Conv
E.Bay Park PD,44.7600,Off,114.8Hz,FM,,Alameda Conv,Alameda Conv
E. Bay Park FD,44.6400,Off,114.8Hz,FM,,Alameda Conv,Alameda Conv
Berkeley PD,460.1750,Off,162.2Hz,FM,,Alameda Conv,Alameda Conv
Berkeley FD,154.1900,Off,131.8Hz,FM,,Alameda Conv,Alameda Conv
Emeryville PD,453.4500,Off,173.8Hz,FM,,Alameda Conv,Alameda Conv
Hayward PD,483.1125,Off,114.8Hz,FM,,Alameda Conv,Alameda Conv
Hayward FD,460.6000,Off,156.7Hz,FM,,Alameda Conv,Alameda Conv

The first line is the Title line which contains the title or heading for each of the columns. The columns are "defined" by the commas in the lines. If you have another program that you want to manipulate your information in (Excel for example) you can use this file as in input file and read it into that program using the option for importing a CSV file. You'll need to see that program's documentation for further information.

Next we see Statistics as an option, this gives statistics on how much is loaded into FreeSCAN and how different scanners might handle the information.

FSP9

As you can see, in some of the scanners this would be way too much to load and would create an error condition if you tried to send all of this to a BCD396T for instance.

Next comes the Print menu. It is so full fledged that we have a document explaining just the printing options that are available and suggests how to get the most out of its use.

And this brings us to a command that you will probably NEVER use once you get to know FreeSCAN...Quit. We can exaggerate a little, right? If you do need to quit the program, this is the option to use. If you quit with changes pending you will be prompted to save the changes before leaving.

Edit

We're now ready for the next drop down, the Edit menu. On here you'll find the usual suspects (cut, copy paste etc). The notable exceptions are:

FSP10

The two that the arrow point to. These are Justify Channel Names and once you click that with the channel name(s) highlighted you'll see:

FSP11

Choose your desired options if you want left, right or center justified on just this group, system or ALL groups and systems. Makes it pretty easy to get everything all lined up like you want.

Next we have the sort option:

FSP12

As you can see, you can sort by name or frequency or talk group ID (depending upon conventional or trunked) and you can choose to sort ascending (A-Z) or descending (Z-A).

The last choice on this menu is Find which will bring up the following box to allow you to enter your search term:

FSP13

It will allow you to search on the name, frequency, talk group ID or something in the comment field among other things. When you stop at your first "hit", you can click on Find Next to move to the next "hit" and keep on going until you reach the end of the database or find what you were looking for.

Tools

Now we move along to the Tools menu. This is where you will find some very useful items that will make your life with the scanner much easier.

FSP14

First on the list is the System Quick Manager (you know, those wonderful keys that you can press while scanning to activate/deactivate systems):

FSP15

First note that there are some numbers in Normal print and some are in Bold. Those with Bold mean that there is at least one system assigned to that Quick Key (and maybe more). To find out what systems they are, hover your pointer over the bold number and it will show the system(s) in the blank (as of now) box to the right. It was blank because, as you can see, I was over key 0 when I took the picture and it was telling me no systems are assigned to that key (because it was normal print).

The buttons along the bottom let you quickly set all Quick Keys ON, OFF or the Auto Select option which will activate only the ones assigned to systems. Of course, if you get too carried away there is the cancel or if you have it just the way you want it, click ok and the database will be updated.

Next is frequency fill. What's that you might ask?An example are the CB channels, they are set up every 10 Khz (almost - we'll use 26 to 40 which DO follow this sequence). There are some exceptions, but using fill will help make things much easier.

FSP16

You can see that the first option is the starting frequency - in our case we'll enter 27.265. The step will be 10 and we'll stop at 27.405 which is channel 40. We'll the channel tag "CB Channel" and append a the channel number by checking the box and clear the append frequency to give us:

FSP17

Which is pretty close to what we need. A bit of editing on the channel numbers and we're done. This would have worked better IF the CB channels didn't have skips in the sequence due to some of the "history" involved, but this does show some of the power available with this feature.

Next up is a wonderful housekeeping tool...duplicate finder!

FSP18

As you can see, you can search for duplicates in just this system (in this small one, would be easy enough just to "eyeball" but some of these can run into the hundreds of entries) or globally - yes, that's right in ALL of the systems you might have entered. On the 996 that could be almost 6,000 entries!

FSP19

As you can see, we DID find some duplicates. This is the initial load from Uniden that we are using and it is set to span the whole country so this is not really that surprising, but in day to day, this will find those frequencies that you may have entered into your system two (or more) times. As you can see you have the Name, the frequency, system and group to help you locate the entry. Notice the alternating highlighting to help group the duplicates!

If you have an entry highlighted, you can use the jump to button to go to that entry in your database. The next is the button that you will probably use a lot on this screen and that is Delete selected - so you just delete the one you don't want (thanks to the info showing it will be pretty easy to choose).

There's the refresh key to update your list after working with this dialog box for a while and you need to see where you now stand.

Autonuke will do all the "dirty work" for you and very quickly but be warned that it will be deleting a lot of your work so make sure you have scrolled around and are sure you want it to delete ALL of the duplicates.

The check boxes are to set up if you want to be asked for confirmation for deletions. The other one is for the PL (Private Line or CTCSS/DCS tones). This can be an issue because some systems use the PL tone to let several users share the same frequency.

Refer to FSP14 and you will see that the next options are Lock all systems and sites and UNLock the same. This will do just exactly that! If you want to lock all the Uniden initial load and start entering your own systems, the first option would be the one to choose. No longer would you be bothered by hits on the Nationwide or from some other frequency that is in your area, you don't want to listen to it, but it's entered in the Boston system and you're in Nevada.

The last option is Check for updates which will have FreeSCAN go back to the "mothership" and check to see if your version of the program is up to date. If it's not, then you will be notified and you can proceed as needed. Note that NO personal information is exchanged here, just what version of the program you are on and what the current version is.

Scanner

We've seen a lot about databases and editing and all that stuff, but I thought this was a SCANNER program!? Well, it is and we have finally worked our way over to the scanner option on the menus.

FSP20

The first option is to upload information to the scanner. Once we click that, we'll see the following:

FSP21

Here you choose what you want to upload to the scanner by placing checkmarks in the boxes beside each system. Quickly Check All or Clear All the check boxes are buttons just below this window. You can use the clear to clear all the selections if you only want to upload a few systems (and keep your upload times down and not run the risk of changing systems that are known to be working well).

See the FIRST radio button listed in red at the top of the column? That guy will erase your whole scanner if you check it! Sometimes this is what you want, but probably not all the time so be SURE before you click it!

Then you have the "replace" option so that when FreeSCAN finds a system with the same name, it will "replace" it instead of adding another system with the same name.

If you want to add your systems to what's already in the scanner, the next option is your choice. This would come in handy if you have imported some systems and want to just add them to what you already have in the scanner.

The next check box is to allow you to upload the custom radio settings (we haven't talked about those yet, but they're list Christmas and coming along one of these days). An example of a custom radio setting would be the sign on screen.

The next is if you have a scanner that doesn't support digital and you may have gotten an import from someone that had digital channels in it (P25 usually). This will keep you from "wasting" your memory on those channels/systems.

The next two boxes allow you to choose whether or not to send your global lockouts and/or quick keys to the radio.

The next box, if checked, will make your scanner go into scanning mode when the upload is finished

Linux mode can be used if you're attempting to run FreeSCAN on some version of Linux. We've seen mixed reports on this and this option may help with compatibility issues. If you're having trouble with Vista up or downloads, this may also be something to try.

Once you have gotten every thing set to your satisifaction, click on the Load Programming button and sit back and wait for the computer to finish configuring your scanner for you!

Of course, when you're done with this window, you click on the close button.

Download is next on the list. This is the inverse of the upload in that it reads the information in your scanner and places it into FreeSCAN. Once you click on this option, you'll see:

FSP22

The first thing to do is make sure that your com: port and the speed are set correctly. If you need to change these settings, they can found in the next option of "control scanner" and we'll get to that in a bit. For now, just check these settings to make sure they are correct for your situation.

The check box at the top (in red again) is a dangerous command in that it will WIPE OUT everything you have in FreeSCAN! This *may* be what you want, but make sure it is set how you think it should be. If you are just wanting to add a few systems from the scanner hooked to the computer to what's already in FreeSCAN, clear this box otherwise everything read in from your scanner will be the ONLY information in FreeSCAN.

The next check box is our fried "resume scanning" so that once the reading of the scanner is complete, the scanner will go back to work scanning your systems.

We saw the system quick key status on the upload, here's where it is read in to FreeSCAN.

The custom search ranges can be read in from the scanner by checking the next box.

The scanner settings check box will read information like the Welcome screen on the scanner and let you make changes for upload later.

The next two check boxes can be used as diagnostics if you are having trouble communicating with your scanner. Turn OFF Turbo mode and turn ON Linux mode to help get more reliable reads. Normally, you don't NEED to mess with either of these, but if you are experiencing any troubles with upload/download, they are there for your use.

Once you have your check boxes set to your needs, click on Queue System list and it will read in all the system names stored in your scanner. With the same idea as upload, you can check none or all easily using the supplied buttons and only those systems check marked will be downloaded into FreeSCAN. Once those are set to your liking, click on Start Download and watch the bits travel from the scanner to the computer. Click on the close button when done.

Next comes our Control Scanner (thank you for your patience) window:

FSP23

If you need to make changes in the com: port settings, here is the button to click to change the settings. And it will show you something like this:

FSP24

If you know your com: port setting you can dial it in right here...setting port and speed (if you need help with this see our document on getting FreeSCAN up and running, suffice it to say that you have to have the speeds matched on the com: port and the scanner). If you're not sure of what it might be, click on the Start Auto and FreeSCAN will try to find the information for you. Once you're done here, click close and we're back to our virtual control window.

In the Interface area, you have your choice of several different styles of interfaces (classic windows, new IPOD style and wild LCARS). You might want to they them each out and see which you prefer for controlling your scanner.

FSP25

The standard Windows style interface, duplicates most of the keys on your scanner and will show signal strength, P25 error rate and battery level (if these are applicable). Once done with remote control, click on the close button.

FSP26

Above you see the IPOD interface (as if you couldn't tell).

The LCARS interface screenshot will be added later but it goes here when done. <g>

FSP27

Notice at the very bottom you have a check box for logging all the hits. This will open an additional window for the hits logging and it looks something like this:

FSP28

As you can see, it will track hit number, the group that it was in, the channel name, tone and frequency. It will also show the start time and date for the hit. Notice the option to auto scroll this list as new hits are entered.

Now we're ready for setting the scanner options (last item on this list). Click on it and you'll see something like the following:

FSP29

Looks like we're going to be here a while.

If you haven't realized this as yet, Assaf (the author of the program) is from Canada so we have our first checkbox. Also notice that we have started on the Preferences tab of this window (far right tab if you need to get back here).

The next option it to warn about invalid frequencies - or frequencies that your scanner can't go to (below or above the limits etc).

Next FreeSCAN can check for an update each time it is started. If this bothers you, here is the place to turn it off or on if you decide you like it.

The "splash screen" is the first screen that comes up when you first start the program. Some people think this is a waste of compute time and effort so they are allowed to shut it off by unchecking this box.

FSP30

Notice that we are now on the left most tab and will work our way across to our Preferences tab.

As you can see, here is the place to set the configuration of the backlight with various options applicable to the different scanners.

There is also and easy access to the AGC controls set into the scanner - you don't have to do all the power on contortions that are usually required.

The startup message is the second screen that comes up on the 996T and you can customize it to your liking (Assaf Super Scanning etc). If you blank the message it will default to the message displayed in the screenshot - this is a "feature" of the scanner.

Also included here are Key beep level, Battery saver, flipping the display and display contrast among other things. This again is for the model that supports each of these items - not all options work for all scanners.

FSP31

Here is the Close Call tab. When you're searching for close by signals, you can control via this menu how your scanner responds. Most of the settings will be described in your scanner manual if you need help with what they mean. Most notably, you can set which bands to watch for close call and the mode of close call.

FSP32

Here are the custom search ranges that you have in your scanner. These are the defaults that the scanner comes set up with, but you can change them to suit your needs. Once you highlight a row in the display, you will see that the area at the bottom opens up so you can tailor the different settings. You have a reset button to change it back to factory default search bands. Click ok when you have this configured appropriately.

FSP33

On the Lockout tab, you can see any frequencies that you might have locked out on your global frequency lockout list. Remember we had the option to upload this information? As you can see, you can add and delete frequencies here as needed or clear the whole list.

FSP34

The next tab is the "service search" tab. In this case, services are TV, FM and the like. On the left hand side, you can set which search is associated with which search key. On the right hand side of this screen, you can set the different options for each service. Click on the drop down arrow and pick the service you need to configure and set as desired. You might want to consider setting the attenutation for TV and/or FM because these are usually local signals and can be quite strong - checking the Attenuation box will decrease the sensitivity of the scanner on those signals. As always, try it and see how it needs to be set in your area.

FSP35

Above we see the searching tab. Here is where you can configure how you want your searches to operate. Notice at the bottom you have the option to ignore various "always on" services. These would make your scanner stop and not continue until you told it to move along. Pagers are not on all the time but they do pack quite a "wallop" in that their signals are quite strong.

FSP36

This is the broadcast band screen as you can see above. Here is where you can list ranges of frequencies to be ignored on close call searching. This will help narrow your searches down to just where you want to look and keep that local FM radio from stopping your scanner on each pass.

FSP37

Next we have the configuration screen for the weather channels. Here you can set if priority is on (or clear it if your scanning is being interrupted every few seconds). We also see the check boxes for attenuation and record(ing) so that you can record from the output of your radio. A nice feature of this screen is the Codes buttons. This will take you to the internet page where you can find the SAME/FIPS information for your area. You will need an active internet connection to use this of course. Once you have the information for your area, you can fill in the rest of this screen and be ready for those springtime storms.

FSP38

Next we have the Fire Tone Out configuration. You will need to find the frequencies for the tones that are sent on some of the Fire frequencies and configure as needed here. You may need to do a Google search or contact the local agency to get this information.

FSP39

Here is the GPS configuration screen. This allows you to set what type of display you will see with your gps connected to the radio, if you want to use miles or kilometers, 24 or 12 hour time and what style of degree reporting to use (DMS - Degrees Minutes Seconds). You can also set your time zone (hint Central is -6).

Whew! Finally made it through that menu. Sure didn't look like it was going to have that much there, did it?

View

Next on our travels is the view menu.

FSP40

Now we'll look at highlighting. If you click on the option for trunk sites (or use the F2 shortcut key) any of the trunked sites will be highlighted in green so that they will stand out as you look at your system tree (to the left in our screenshot above). If you want talk groups highlighted, click on that option or push the F3 shortcut key (see these shortcut keys listed to the right of the option in the menu?).

Quick draw mode is the next option and has Off/On/Auto as options. Unless you have a LOT of systems in FreeSCAN, On or Auto will probably be what you want. When you get a large amount of systems and "redraw" time is getting long (takes a long time to show ALL the systems in the left hand box) you might want to try Auto or Off options.

The next option is Show system types with a shortcut key of F5. You can see that a lot of these are Motorola 2 type systems in our display.

You can also toggle Quick Keys to show or hide - in our display it's showing that Alameda has a quick key of 24.

Next comes everyone's favorite - SORT! This is another toggle type key (click it on, then click it off) and this is handy because it will sort the display in the tree to the left by system names. If you have Quick Keys or System Types showing it will take those into consideration as it sorts. Lots of capabilities here (quick key sorted list by number then alpha by name OR just an alpha sort of all systems OR sort of all like systems etc).

Favorites

Did someone just mention "Favorites"? That's what our next menu option is.

FSP41

You might recognize the format of this menu from your Internet Explorer. Same idea here, if you have on system that you keep going back to time and again, you can add it to your favorite list and then it is only a few clicks away. A LOT easier than continually scrolling to the bottom (or top, or middle) of the list.

We're finally done with our menus! Hooray! But wait a minute, what are these other buttons lurking just under the menus? And I don't remember talking (or reading) about ENTERING frequencies. How in the world do you do THAT?

Glad you asked because that's just where we're going next.

FSP42

First we'll click on System and then we are presented with the dialog about what kind of system you are setting up. To start, we'll just choose a conventional system and see what's there. Once we choose the type of system we want to create, we will click the create system button (covered in this picture by the drop down box - but it's just above the cancel button).

FSP43

In one action, we created the system and the group (see as System 136 and Group 1 above and below)

On the system page (above) you can set the system name, quick key, startup key, hold and delay times, lockout, data skip and recording. You also see that you can configure the GPS settings for this system here by enabling the use of GPS (if you scanner supports it) and then clicking on edit GPS settings button. Below that are the group quick keys that are to be enabled (checked).

FSP44

Here is the group screen which is where you will enter the frequencies for this conventional system. If it were a trunked system, this would be where you would enter your talk groups. On this screen you can edit the name of the group, the quick key associated with the group and whether this group will be locked out or not. Don't miss the Find Free button by the side of the quick key entry. Yes, that finds the new free number to use on your group quick key!

Want to add some frequencies? Click on the plus button (plus - add, get it? )

FSP45

Now we're starting to see what all the other scanner programs look like. Toward the bottom of the display, on the right side, you'll see the places to enter the name you want associated with this frequency, the frequency itself, modulation, tone if needed, alert tone, alert level and the audio type of that you are interested in. Then come the check boxes for locked out, tape out (do you want to record this one?), priority, tone lockout and attenuation.

Then you have the option to use a color that you pick and associate it with this entry as well as a picture. Get creative and help with visual clues!

The blue up and down arrow will move the highlighted entry in this list up or down in position in the list.

And that brings us to the EZ Grab key. We already have another document that goes into detail about EZ Grab so find it and read it. It will be WELL worth your time, believe me. The "short version" is that if you can see a list of frequencies on the internet (or other places your computer can get to) you can pretty much "grab" it and EZily (easily) get it in to FreeSCAN. This is truly an amazing feature of FreeSCAN. You will probably have better luck using EZ Grab with Firefox than with Internet Explorer. It will still work with IE, just not quite as easily or reliably.

That leaves us with the site and group buttons by the side of the system button. They do similar tasks when you have a system highlighted (click on site button and a site is added to that system) or click on group and a group is added to the highlighted system.

Then to the right of this group are quick access icons for create scanner profile, load scanner profile and save scanner profile. This gives you a brand new blank version of FreeSCAN to configure as needed. Once you save that out, you can then load it back in with the next button. Using this approach, you could configure your scanner with all custom settings for Air monitoring and easily/quickly change to PSB monitoring by loading in that profile and uploading to the scanner. The third button will save your current configuration to disk after prompting you to name your profile.

Print is the last quick access icon in this group and takes you to the print dialogue. This is a quick way to open the print dialogue that we talked about earlier.

The next three quick access icons are download, upload and remote control the scanner. These icons are all placed here to make your most used features easy to access and quick to get going with.

Wrap up

We've covered a lot of ground with FreeSCAN and I think you will find that it is a very capable and useful program. We try to make this as close to English as possible, but if your eyes are still glazed over and you're wondering where to start, here's the quick get started cheat sheet:

1. connect your scanner to your computer
2. download (read in) all the information in your scanner
3. change what ever needs to be changed to your liking or add new items to be monitored
4. upload (send to or write to) the new information to the scanner
5. if you didn't check the box to tell it to scan, hit the scan button

You should be listening to the new systems in no time!

As always, let us recommend reading your scanner's owner's manual. These are very powerful electronic devices and even though you can learn a lot by "just punching buttons" you're probably not going to learn it ALL and chances are you're going to become really confused. You just spent a lot of money on this radio, take some time (as you monitor of course) and read a little bit in the manual each night. Maybe even try out some of the things you're reading about in the manual and in no time, you'll be a "pro" with your scanner!

www.scannow.org (<- not REALLY a commercial because I promised, just a very helpful web site - maybe even where you got this!)

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