Text Messaging

Benefits of text messaging compared with voice transmission:

·         Information can be sent to radios even when the user is busy or absent

·         Information is stored

·         Information exchange can be in covert mode

·         Messages can be used for control or alerting purposes

·         Standard messages, replies or confirmations can be stored as predefined texts and efficiently recalled and sent by the users within seconds

Text Message Control (TMC) is the text messaging module of the program suite BIRCS. It can send and receive short text messages from the PC to other participants in the radio network. The messages can be addressed to private, group or PC contacts. TMC also incorporates a network interface for third party applications in order to send and receive short text messages.

TMC offers the following functions: 

·         Connect/disconnect to/from the radio

·         Reception of short text messages

·         Selectable message font size

·         Alarm handling based on the content of received text messages (definable keywords)

·         SMS gateway between radio net and cell phone network (bidirectional)

·         Acoustical signaling upon message reception (mutable)

·         Transmission of short text messages

·         Address selection/entry

·         Selection of the destination station type (private, group, PC)

·         Reception acknowledge request (not available for group destination addresses)

·         Retransmission of the last sent message

·         Automatic answer (AA) in cases where the control station temporarily is unattended

·         Recurring transmission of beacon/bulletin (BCN) text messages (with selectable time interval)

·         Logging of all sent and received text messages with timestamp (local time or UTC) 

Text Message Box (TMB) is a mailbox module able to work with TMC for short text message management. The program implements the Mailbox Radio Command Interface (MRCI) available to the field radio user who is enabled to control/query TMB over the air. Field radios can write text messages for other radios to the mailbox and the addressed radios will read out these messages at a later point in time whenever they are ready to do so.

Message reception and transmission is handled by TMC while the command messages are processed by TMB. The two programs (TMC and TMB) can be run on different PCs in the network although they usually will run on the same PC (control station) in standard configuration.

TMB offers the following functions: 

• Processing and answering of command text messages received by TMC over the air
• Storing message content for other radios persistently (mailbox)
• Message read-out triggered by field radios
• Handling of number-of-available-messages queries (per user)
• Deletion of stored messages on user request (per user)
• Manual message management (intended for use by the control station operator)
• Logging of operations

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