Option Board Software

Make Your Radio Smarter with TRBOnet Software for MOTOTRBO GOBs

Many MOTOTRBO radios have a slot for generic option boards (GOB). Unfortunately, most users are not aware of option boards, nor are there any noticeable number of applications for GOBs able to unearth the full potential of this 'extra brain' for DMR radios.

Every GOB comes with an embedded memory able to store user data. Software for option boards enhances radios' capabilities and enables extended safety and store-and-forward features.

Store-and-Forward Technique

GPS Store and Forward is a piece of software developed for Motorola generic option boards that allows you to get more frequent GPS updates (every 2-5 seconds). If you have a busy radio system and, therefore, cannot poll location information very frequently, you get a GPS report with just a few points that are far from each other, and you don’t really know which way the radio user went or drove. Using an option board and our software, you can have updates every few seconds. The historical route will show much more points or breadcrumbs, and the line will look much smoother. The software is smart enough not to drop a lot of breadcrumbs if your asset is moving straight ahead. If you go around a curve, it recognizes the direction change and starts dropping more breadcrumbs, so you know for sure where exactly the user has been. You can get the GPS information online, in this case the software helps you save your channel loading by compressing several GPS packets and sending them in one batch. Alternatively, you can just obtain this information at the end of the day, when your system is idle, or get it every Sunday, every two weeks, whenever you want. The option board can store up to half a million points, so you won’t miss any information.




One of the most exciting features of this software is that your radio does not need to be in the radio coverage area. It can store up to 500 000 GPS coordinates, so even with 5 seconds updates you can go out of the radio range for a week. And when you are back in, all your movements will be dumped back into your TRBOnet system. If your employee drives your company's car over a weekend, you can use this feature to nail down such situations by checking the historical route on the option board. This feature may be useful for customers operating vehicles transporting valuable assets, or police, convoys, public utilities etc. One more feature that you can take advantage of using the software is Mobile Geofencing: you don’t only get GPS updates every few second, you can also create a geofence rule specific to each particular radio. Using the traditional DMR technology, you can poll GPS data every 2 minutes or so, it can be too late, and the dispatcher just cannot react quickly if the user has entered a restricted area. The option board can generate an alarm immediately if a radio user happens to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.