Scanner Button Service Types

Scanner Button Service Types

The BearTracker 885's user interface is built around four toggleable buttons: POLICE, EMS, FIRE, and DOT. Plus a global SCAN on/off. There are no other user-selectable categories - no ham, no aviation button, no business-group button. Everything the scanner scans has to route through one of those four buttons.

That means when you're editing an HPD file, the Service Type on each entry determines which button enables it, and a Service Type that isn't mapped to a button will never play. Scanner Manager's button filter mirrors exactly what the scanner actually does.

Current mapping (as of firmware v1.xx)

Service Type 1 - Multi-Dispatch - is a wildcard. Uniden's updater rewrites RadioReference's "Law Dispatch" rows and similar generic dispatch rows to Service Type 14, then pre-maps 14 back to 1 so they come through on every button with a dispatch category. If you're importing RR content by hand, using Service Type 1 is the safest default for a generic dispatch channel.

Service Type	Shown on Button	Notes
1	Police / EMS / Fire / DOT	Multi-Dispatch. Plays on all four.
2	Police	Law Dispatch.
3	Police	Law Tactical.
4	Police	Law Talk.
14	Police / EMS / Fire / DOT	Uniden maps 14 → Multi-Dispatch.
5	EMS	EMS Dispatch.
6	EMS	EMS Tactical.
7	EMS	EMS Talk.
8	Fire	Fire Dispatch.
9	Fire	Fire Tactical.
10	Fire	Fire Talk.
11	DOT	Roads / Highway.
12	DOT	Transit.
13	DOT	Public Works.

Service types not listed above will not play on any of the four buttons. If you want, for example, a security-guard channel to scan, re-map it to a DOT service type.

Picking the right type during import

Scanner Manager prefills a sensible service type when importing from RadioReference:

• Law ... rows → 2, 3, or 4 depending on sub-category.
• Fire ... rows → 8, 9, or 10.
• EMS ... rows → 5, 6, or 7.
• Public Services ... → 11 / 12 / 13.
• Anything that looks like a generic multi-discipline dispatch → 1.

You can always override in the diff dialog before Apply.

Bulk remap

To re-map a whole group or system in one shot, right-click it and choose Bulk: update service type. The dialog offers a per-current-type replacement, so you can say "make every Service Type 12 into Service Type 13" across the selection without touching the individual entries.