Relive the 90s with a Ham Radio Pager! POCSAG! 

Have always said there are LOTS of old pagers out there and WE hams should be able to do something with them.

I remember when pagers got so small they are the size of a TicTac Box. I owned one of those micro pagers. Ahhhhhh, the 90's were the days. lol

So many joke opportunities. You're hanging out with you HAM buddies, you get a page, you read the pager and urgently ask, "Has anyone seen a payphone?!?!"

On a geek scale of 1 to 10 this is 11 +. I love it Josh. You did a really great job of explaining this and how it all works. Bravo! I remember wearing pages like that in the '90s for work.... Oh the good old days 😄

“Why?… Because I can.” The reasoning behind most of my projects.

Time to replace HRCC RU-vid notifications with a pager for new video alerts!

Fascinating... I’m doin’ it - excellent video as always Josh. Keep ‘em coming!

Hahaha 🤣 today I was listening on the repeater in my city, (Kampen, the Netherlands) and 2 guys were talking about this. I didn't know what they were talking about and now your video pops up in my feed!! Nice work.

I had two Pagers and both helped me to fulfil my Dreams

This is awesome man, thanks for sharing!

Here in the Netherlands they use pagers for emergency services. It's called p2000 and based on the FLEX protocol. It covers the whole country. Even with a simple sdr and multimon-ng you can decode those messages

Back to the pager!! You just gave me my next project!

I used to carry my dads Sky Pager, 800 number for it. I love the idea of being able to get things like the solar index without using my phone. Even if it is short range. I might be typing this on a iPhone XS Max but I do often miss the days of my youth of pagers and pay phones, a simpler time.

If you knew that we use these POCSAG pagers in the German fire department all the time for receiving our calls haha, welcome to the 90s

Awesome :) yust Yesterday I received my 602r and get it up an running ... I used rest API direct but good to know that there's a dedicated tool on Pistar to send messages. Thank you, 73!

Nice project. Will set it on my to-do check list. Nice to see that pocsag is not dead yet

Spent quite a few years in the commercial and paging industry in the late 80's and early 90's. there were some clubs that ordered pagers from Motorola within the ham bands and were using them to alert weather spotters. With the alpha pagers we could link in sports data services as well as using them for group paging as well as an individual private ID code. Some clubs used voice pagers as well to alert members as to various events. There were even DOS based and windows based software that would dial in via modem to a number (either local or toll free) and allow one with the program to send Alpha pages out to the network or local. You can find pagers out there that are already on set paging frequencies but don't get your hopes up at dropping a new crystal in and retuning down into the ham bands. IF however that frequency is not used in your area and the Zumspot will tune up to the commercial section, a very low power device like this will probably not be an issue in your own home, unless of corse you are a purist for frequencies and their use. O at your own discretion and risk. Many paging frequencies have gone dormant with the advent of cellular texting. Be wary of the RCC (radio common carrier frequencies, these are highly regulated by Public Utilities commissions in most states) frequencies since in many regions they are still in use. To transmit Pocsag or any other digital paging format you WILL NEED a true FM transmitter to get it right. ENJOY AND MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL!

Dial-up modem speed digital modes on HF, beepers for POCSAG... Ham Radio lets me relive my nerdy childhood in the 1980s, like Matthew Broderick in WarGames (but without the global thermonuclear war... hopefully).

I've never been particularly interested in ham-radio-pager, but I do recall, back in the 80s or 90s, there was a repeater-controller that was capable of sending pager-tones over the air. There were a number of members, of one of my local clubs, who purchased pagers that they converted for use on 2meters or .07meters. I don't rightly recall what they were using them for, other than sending each other messages; and I know the interest didn't last very long... Mainly, because the rest of the users revolted - having gotten weary of the seemingly incessant pager-tones coming over the repeater, and voted the pager-system out of existence.

Over my head but .... always interesting ... and invigorating ..

Can we get more scripting tutorials? This stuff is awesome! It’s one of the reasons I’m still into ham, beyond my emergency/SHTF or search and rescue needs.

Very informative, didn't know this existed. Most paging services are asking a minimum $13 per month. In the 90's I paid something like $3 per month and that was a plan that covered a certain number pages and if you wanted more pages per month on your plan, you paid more of course but not much.

I remember constantly picking up pager data on my parents’ scanner back in the ‘90s. I got an airline phone once, and lots of cordless phones...😁

Great video ☺️

It's kind of a ham radio based Rube Goldberg machine. :-) Nice vid. You had a LOT to pack in to this one. Long ago, when I started playing digital modes, I'd been decoding some commercial POCSAG transmissions and wondered if anyone's done pocsag on ham frequencies. Question answered.

Running in the 90s

Now I want a pager!

Could these be used to broadcast messages? It would be really cool to use as a sort of radio message board to announce meet ups and events.

Very cool, i got a bunch of vhf motorola advisor II pagers, which over 2m band, also have the programming dock and station for them to! i am sure i could use these for this type of system :)

For me, it's kind of amusing to see these things pop up again. Don't get me wrong, I truly hope that younger hams will have all sorts of fun with these things! On the other hand, before cell phones became practical/affordable (and I helped to set up the original Cellular One network!), we field service types had to carry these things.....and every time they 'went off,' it meant more work! After awhile, we regarded them as a technological curse!! LOL 73! KC1MGW

Thanks for doing this Josh. Maybe we will get more users here in the US!

This is rad

That would be way over my head, I'm still trying to figure out the SDR dongle

Very interesting..

This has interested me over the years as something to just play with as a ham, but I've finally come up with an actual use case. Over the last year I've built out a fairly robust smarthome system and as a network engineer by trade, I play with a lot of servers and network equipment. Thing is.. sometimes my internet stinks and goes out randomly, and there's still some things I'd like to receive alerts for. Eventually, if I can collect enough equipment, I've got a collection of Motorola 900mhz radios in the 35 watt range that I'd like to use as a pocsag transmitter. Current plan is to spin up a raspberry pi to do the heavy lifting, then can send out home automation or security alerts to the pager and it should, in theory, work anywhere in the city.

nice video 👍

We're talking about issuing pagers to the ARES Team members that are Skywarn Spotters also. Assuming the python scripts work on pi-star, and that it won't interfere with our DMR repeater, we might put it on there.

Hey. I'm leaving a comment because I like your videos and want the scary youtube algorithm to recommend to people

Josh with all the different ways you communicate ham, cell,, pager and so on , if people can't get ahold of you they ether aren't trying or your 6 feet under. LOL

Any updates on the rubrics that you discussed for US use?

surprised you didn't mention the Brandmeister DMR to DAPNET bridge, you can send a message with the callsign and text to a particular dmr contact and it will forward it to their pager, really cool!

ahh the memories. pagers were the gateway drug which ruined many IT technicians lives. 'oh, by the way, you need to carry this pager for the on-call rotation'. good video!

Would it be possible to setup a network like this on a local repeater to create a pager network for emergency comms?

Where can you get a pager? Ill be waiting for you to come up with more stuff for the US

I noticed a few days ago that the time on my pager was incorrect, replaced the battery (mainly because it was dead). And I haven't been able to get a page since. I updated PI-Star to the latest, with the modem, and if I tune a radio to the pager freq I can hear the pocsag, still no pages, and the time hasn't auto-set. I'm at a bit of a loss now, any ideas about what might be going on.

Well, I learned about an aspect of amateur radio I didn't know about. Thanks for that. I still shudder when I see that pager from when I had one in the Y2Ks. Just out of curiosity, what sort of range do you get on that pager?

Can you please do a review on normal pagers? What are the differences between Alphanumeric and Two-way Pagers ?

Are all pagers young Pocsag over UHF? Could I pick one up randomly from a yard sale and program it?

And this is without a subscription since you are running the pager software? or how does this work? do you still have to pay the activation and subscription fees to use the pager?

Thank you for the nice promotional video! 73 de Ronald pe2kmv

can you replícate the circuit of beeper??

So you can’t receive pages over the Android or iOS app?

Remember the days when we picked up a transceiver mic, pressed the PTT and gave a voice call and talked to the person who answered? Those were the days!

would be cool to set it up to receive noaa weather warnings

Funny, some of the digital modes remind me of chat rooms...now pagers!

Even more reason for me to get a ham license

If I order a pager should I have it programmed to the repeater freq. I want to use to send and receive pages for our CERT team?

I’ve got a new radio. It use a little metal chip with two prongs for any frequency I want. Just put a different “chip” in to change frequency’s. I’m sure you’ll love it!

I'm wondering if there's any way to do something like this here in the UK. 73 M7TUD

Hi Josh. Do you still use your pager?

Try magnum electronics they sell various pocsag pagers

Another big benefit of a pager is that now, if your wife can't reach you on your phone, mobile or handheld, she can page you! Oh wow, how lucky we are... 😁

So... The pager receive frequency can be set through the front panel or via software? Or... I need to be lucky and find / order a pager on my hotspot frequency? Or... I need to change my hotspot frequency? Please give us this tidbit of info. Thanks 😊

Do i need my own transmitter? does it give me a phone number for people to dial my pager?

How were you able to set up alerts to be automatically relayed such as band conditions and such. This is awesome!

You mentioned needing to be in range. If you were out of range when a message came in, would you receive it when you came back?

LoL, that takes me back.

I would like one of those pagers. I have the means to send the data it neads.

3:59 And the winner for the best callsign ever goes to KB0Oty

I still have a couple of the pagers in the UHF ham band, So this might be fun to try again.

Hi I also have a skyper pager 📟. Can I setup an acount if I am not a licensed HAM (not yet)?

Transmit through a repeater you will have it made lol

Has anyone had luck using DAPNET with Apollo a25 or Apollo AL924? These are available at Amazon and listed as programmable. I really don't want to buy a pager from an overseas company. Any US hams have any luck with these on 439.9875 or on 440 band?

ahh beepers Sir mix a lot aproves So does big bob from hey arnald

Still have 2 old pagers, can they be hacked to be used????

That is rather interesting. With cellphones they way they are now, why carry a pager too? Even if you can customize what you receive. I don't know.

Really great video! I would have never figured out that setting on the expert page. Managed to make it work, and I can receive messages on an sdr with audio rerouted to poc32, an ancient pocsag decoder (I still have some messages from 2002. decoded there) :) Also got the hackrf to decode it on the portapack, although it is not perfect. Now to hunt for an old uhf pager or figure out how to modify the vhf one. 73 yu4hak

Are you planning to share the python script? Maybe on a github gist?

Josh, these days with all of the push towards internet stuff and the need for cyber security, good passwords, and all around keeping personal information private, How do you feel about people so easily getting our names and addresses right off the internet by hearing and looking up our call sign?

Is it worth £150 ish though?

Rasberry Pi: I can has POCSAG yeet! Zetron has just entered the conversation... "Boi you're a TOY. go home before you get hurt and let the pros handle this.."

I have a 50 Watt pocsag system on 2 meters

NERD cred? Yes, you surely have it. Should label this video “Rainy Day Watch” and very interesting. Thank you. Dave K8WPE

For about the same money you can get a DMR radio that can receive text messages. Interesting video though.

Share the script OM

I can’t see an advantage using a pager vs using a text message on a smartphone. Other than pure nostalgia...

Hey old timer! Well, back in the day... (Kidding, I am older than you by a lot) One more... "Next week on HRCC, Josh sets up the Pony Express, where you can get any message from St. Louis to San Francisco in only 7 short days!*) (*subject to not having indian attacks, excess rain, snow, earthquakes, drought that kills the pony's & riders, dust storms, tornadoes, or disturbances in 'the force'...)

Wouldn't it be easier and more secure to have a script sending these messages as e-mail you can read in your phone?!

Ze Germans! 🇩🇪

Pretty slick. De Kb8ygc

Thank you for not calling it a beeper.

Why?

PEOPLE WHO BEG FOR A THUMBS UP OR A SUBSCRIBE DO NOT GET IT