Hello,
Check out the Whistler models available. I own and very successfully use the
GRE PSR-500, the original version of the current Whistler handheld. I use
the PSR500 Edit software and the scanner's included USB cable. I can program
the scanner and configure it exactly the way I want it to be. I can then use
it very well in the field. I find it very accessible, even though it does
not have speech output. Speech is not the only way to successfully use a
piece of comm. gear, so don't let the lack of speech detour you.

73


Ron Miller

-----Original Message-----
From: For blind ham radio operators [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of Matthew Chao
Sent: Wednesday, August 13, 2014 10:29 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: accessible scanners

Hi, Martin.  I'm looking for an accessible scanner; any current ideas?  And
what about using USB interfaces instead of serial ones, as many systems no
longer come with serial ports, and the USB-TO-serial adapters can be a
little sketcy.--Matt, N1IBB.

At 10:14 AM 8/13/2014, you wrote:
>         Another useful feature is when one can communicate with a 
>scanner or transceiver via serial interface. I have two Uniden 
>scanners. One is now eleven years old and has a rather turse command 
>set that one can access via a terminal program much the way you can 
>access one of the old telephone dial-up modems. All the characters must 
>be upper case and all the replies are also in upper case but you can 
>read the display, setup trunking systems, etc. The only problem is that 
>the Motorola SmartZone trunking is now unusable since the new rebanded 
>frequency plans can not be fed in to the scanner as a flash upgrade 
>since the
>bc780 does not have that capability.
>         It is, however, accessible since the command set and responses 
>are all plain ASCII text.
>         That sort of access is much appreciated. I also have another 
>Uniden which was made around 2008. It does P25 and the new rebanded 
>Motorola trunking just fine.
>         It also has an ASCII command set and is potentially totally 
>accessible but one needs to either be running one of the Windows 
>programs that talk to your scanner or you must be willing to write your 
>own communications program in C or perl. I am a Linux user so that is 
>kind of par for the course.
>         For the BCD996 and the BCD396, the commands and responses are 
>still ASCII but they use CSV or Comma-Separated Variable strings. These 
>are sometimes hugely long lines of text in which each field is 
>separated from it's neighbors by a , so a string for input or output 
>might look like 1,01453500,1,,,3,2,7,K5SRC Stillwater Repeater,14,0,9
>         That is not a valid entry anywhere, but it is an example of 
>what a CSV string looks like. You see them all the time in business 
>applications that may be used with spread sheets and tables.
>         One of my next home projects is to take the C program I wrote 
>for the BCD996 and try to re-do it in perl as I may get it to do more 
>than it presently does.
>         I would sure like to see more radios that have some sort of 
>electronic input and output like the Kenwoods and several others. To 
>me, that is almost as good as having speech boards in the radio which, 
>of course, is the holy grail but may not have as much mass appeal as 
>being able to interface with a serial port on a computer or maybe a web 
>interface.
>         Let's hope that this period of totally inaccessible technology 
>is ending and we just might be able to really use some of this stuff 
>again.
>         I remember the first truly inaccessible piece of amateur radio 
>gear I encountered. It was in the mid seventies and was a two-meter 
>transceiver that had an Up and Down button pair for frequency, no 
>direct entry and no way to get to a known state except for that stupid 
>little LED display. If you could even get it to start at 144.000 MHZ, 
>do you really want to count in 5 KHZ steps up to say, 147.925 and hope 
>there were no key bounces or missed presses?
>         The guy in the store said, I don't think there is any way you 
>can use that and he was absolutely right. Don't you just hate that?
>
>73 Martin McCormick WB5AGZ
>
>Jim Gammon writes:
> >     John, I have been corresponding with the Whistler group 
> > regarding there trunked scanners.  Thought you would like to read 
> > the latest.  Jim