Channels and radios¶
Everything about what a radio carries is set on one page: Channels. Zones and their channels run down the side, radios run across the top, and the real radio sits beside the table so you can see what each one comes up with before anybody goes on the air.
Radio programming, Departments and Dispatch desks are gone
They were separate screens until October 2026, and two of them had to agree or a channel silently vanished from somebody's radio. Everything they did is on Channels now, and their old addresses open it. Every community was moved across with its radios unchanged.
Starting from nothing? Use the setup wizard
On Set up your radio, a community with no channels yet gets the setup wizard straight away (the Build it for me button on the dispatch console's setup checklist takes you there too). Tick the dispatch centers and channel banks you actually run, rename them in place, and it builds the channels and the zones in one step. See The setup wizard.
Read this first if you are designing a channel plan
How a radio system is laid out is the reasoning behind everything the wizard builds: why every zone starts with your own main, why dispatch centers are counties rather than departments, and what the naming conventions are for.
The Channels page¶
| Rows | Zones, in the order the zone knob turns, and the channels in each zone in the order the channel knob turns. A channel can sit in more than one zone. |
| Columns | Radios. Each column is one radio layout, given to a group of people. |
| Cells | Whether that radio has that channel in that zone. |
| Starts on | One row per zone: the channel each radio lands on when it switches to that zone. |
Click a cell to change it. Each cell is one of:
| Off (a dash) | Not on that radio. It never comes up on the channel knob. |
| On | On the radio in this zone. Turn to it to talk and listen. |
| Scan | On, and also heard in the background while Scan is on. |
Scan belongs to the channel on that radio, not to one zone: set it in one zone and it applies everywhere that radio carries the channel, because a real radio sweeps one scan list.
Add zone creates a zone; rename it in place, move it with the arrows, or remove it. + Add a channel to a zone takes a channel you already have or a new one by name. Click a channel's name to open its settings underneath it.
Channels that are in no zone are listed under Not in any zone. They are on nobody's radio.
Nothing is written until you press Save changes on the bar at the bottom, and saving reprograms radios already in the world, so nobody has to rejoin to get their zones.
The radio beside the table¶
Their radio shows the real radio running one column: click a column's name in the table, or pick it from the list above the radio. Radio model chooses the faceplate. Turn its knobs and it steps through the zones and channels exactly as a member holding that radio would, including the channel it starts on in each zone. It is the radio itself, not a drawing of it.
Who gets which radio¶
The choice at the top of the page decides what the columns are.
| Everyone gets the same radio | One radio for everyone. For a private channel, pick the people or roles who can use it in its settings. |
| By PulseCAD department | Each department gets its own radio, and who is in a department comes from PulseCAD. People in no department get the everyone radio. Needs PulseCAD connected. |
| By Discord role | Each Discord role gets its own radio, and it follows their roles in your Discord server. People with none of these roles get the everyone radio. Needs your Discord server connected, with the PulseRadio bot added to it. |
In the two split modes, tick the departments or roles that get a radio of their own; the rest share the everyone radio. Somebody in more than one picks which one they are out as under Working as.
Discord roles need a linked Discord account
A member's roles are read from your Discord server, so PulseRadio has to know which Discord account is theirs. If they have not linked one, they hold no roles here and get the everyone radio. If Discord cannot be reached, the same happens until it can: an outage can narrow somebody's radio, never hand them a private channel.
Private channels¶
A channel marked Private in its settings is unhearable without permission. Only the radios set to On or Scan can use it, so in the split modes the cell is the permission: putting a private channel on the fire radio lets the fire department in.
In Everyone mode there is one radio, so the channel's settings name who may use it: everyone, a role, or a named person, each with Can listen and Can talk separately.
A private channel with nobody allowed is usable by nobody. A misconfiguration fails closed rather than handing out a secure talkgroup.
The encryption badge in a private channel's settings is display only: it changes what the padlock on the radio says and nothing else. Private is what actually keeps people out.
The dispatch console carries every channel except car-to-car¶
There is no console column and nothing to tick. Every channel except a car-to-car is on the dispatch console, under its zone. A channel in several zones shows in each of them, so every zone you build is on the board, and a channel in no zone shows under Unfiled.
Each dispatcher picks which zones their own board shows; see the console.
Car-to-car channels never reach the dispatch board
A Direct / talkaround channel is two radios talking to each other. It does not go through the system, so there is no repeater and no console port for a dispatcher to sit on. Console operators do not carry direct channels, and a direct channel cannot be patched to anything.
This follows the channel's type, never its name. A trunked talkgroup called "CAR TO CAR" stays on the dispatch board and stays patchable. If your car-to-car channels are showing up on the console, check that they are typed Direct / talkaround.
Channel types name behavior, not names¶
The type is what a channel does on the air, not what it is called. A resource named "Car to Car" can be any of these, and nothing but this field tells them apart.
| Type | What it is |
|---|---|
| Trunked talkgroup | A talkgroup on a trunked system. The system assigns a channel from a pool at key-up, so the talkgroup is a logical identity rather than a frequency, which is why this is the only type with a decimal talkgroup ID. Most modern county and statewide systems. |
| Conventional repeater | One dedicated frequency pair through a repeater. Full coverage and console-reachable like a talkgroup, but it IS a frequency. Older agencies, fireground and most interop channels. |
| Direct / talkaround | Radio to radio, no infrastructure. Line of sight and range-limited. A genuine car-to-car. A console has no path to it at all; see below. |
| Monitor only | Listened to, never transmitted on by anybody. A neighbouring agency, a weather channel, a scanner position. Receive-only by construction, so no permission can turn it into a transmit channel. |
The example that makes this matter
A real county's "CAR TO CAR" can be a dispatched trunked talkgroup, while every other car-to-car on the same system is true simplex. Same name, opposite behavior. Never infer the type from the name.
A channel's own settings¶
Click a channel's name on the Channels page to open them.
- Channel name, Short name (what fits on the radio's screen, 8 characters at most) and Color.
- What kind of channel is it?: the type, above.
- Private: only the people you list below can reach it: see Private channels.
- Only dispatch and admins can talk on it.
- Only one person at a time can talk on this channel: strict one-at-a-time, whatever the community's arbitration setting.
- Keep this channel out of recordings.
- Beep every … seconds when the channel is quiet: the channel marker, below.
How a channel is said out loud¶
Radios announce the channel when you change channel or zone, the same way a real APX does, so you can change channel without looking at the radio.
The zone name is spoken on power-up only: switch the radio on and it says the zone and then the channel, because you have just picked it up and have no idea where it was left. After that, changing zone announces the channel you land on and nothing else.
PulseRadio works out the pronunciation from the channel name. It knows that EMS/FIRE is read
"E M S Fire", that TAC 1 is "Tack One", that SO CH. 3 is "S O Channel Three", and that SWAT is a
word while BCSO is spelled out.
It will not always get it right, so every channel and every zone has a Spoken as box. Leave it blank and PulseRadio decides; type something and that is exactly what the radio says. The editor shows you what it will say either way, so you can check without going in game.
Underneath the box is the state of the audio:
| Ready | Recorded and in use. Play lets you hear it. |
| Rendering… | Being recorded now. It usually takes a second or two. |
| Failed | Could not be recorded. |
While a channel is anything other than Ready, radios still announce it using the browser's own voice. It sounds less like a radio and it varies between machines, but nothing goes silent, and it switches to the real recording on its own once that is ready.
Changing a channel's name or its Spoken as re-records it. Nothing else has to be done.
Talkgroup IDs and encryption labels¶
A talkgroup ID is the decimal a radio displays, e.g. 1401. Trunked channels only; a conventional
channel is a frequency and a simplex channel is neither.
Encryption algorithm and key ID are display only: they change what the padlock on the card says and
nothing else. Restricted is what actually keeps people out, which is why the fields only appear once it is
on. Labelling an open channel as encrypted would be worse than leaving it blank.
Channel marker¶
A marker is a short tone on a quiet channel, proving it is still alive. Set the seconds of silence before it fires; leave it blank for none.
Worth setting on the quiet channels somebody is relying on, and worth leaving off everywhere else. A marker on a channel that talks all day is a beep nobody needed. Silence is measured from the last transmission, so a busy channel never marks.
The setup wizard¶
Set up your radio shows the wizard while your community has no channels yet. It is a set of modules you pick from, because no two servers run the same agencies and a template that is 80% right leaves you renaming thirty channels by hand.
| Module | Contributes |
|---|---|
| Dispatch center: Blaine County, Los Santos Metro, State Patrol | A law main, a car-to-car, and a regional car-to-car where it has one. |
| Channel bank: SA Tacs, LTAC, Pools, Fire & EMS, statewide interop | A numbered family of channels, which becomes a zone. |
Each center's name and prefix are editable in the wizard, before anything is written, and the rename is
real: calling Blaine "Sandy Shores" with prefix SS regenerates SSLAW1, SSC2C and SSFIRE1 together.
It prints every zone, in the order the knobs turn, before it writes, and nothing is created until you press
Create all of this.
It builds the channels, the zones and a radio everyone gets. From there it is ordinary configuration on the Channels page: split it by department or role, rename, reorder, add and remove. Once a community has channels, new ones are added on the Channels page rather than through the wizard.
Why zone 1 holds everybody's dispatch channel
The instinct is a zone per agency: a POLICE zone, a FIRE zone. Real radios are not built that way, because a zone knob is turned with a thumb while driving and the channel you need in an emergency must not be two clicks away. So every zone starts with your own main and car-to-car, then the other centers' mains, then what the zone is for. The full reasoning is in How a radio system is laid out.
Which builds you see depends on your plan
The free plan offers the starter builds: the three dispatch centers, and a small version of each shared channel set: three tactical channels rather than ten, two law tactical rather than nine, a fire department with its main and one EMS channel. They are sized to fit inside the free channel limit, so a county with a fire service, law tactical and interop is a complete radio system on the free plan.
Each starter says what its full version adds, and a starter is a prefix of it: SATAC1 to SATAC3 are the same three channels the full set starts with. So moving to Pro and running the wizard again would add SATAC4 to SATAC10 beside them rather than a second set. The full-size sets and the optional agency packs are on Pro and are not listed on the free plan.
Your plan's channel limit applies here
The summary shows a running count, "17 of 10 channels", against the channel limit on your plan, and turns red once a selection would go over it. Over the limit the Create all of this button is disabled and the panel says by how much: nothing is created, and there is no half-built system to unpick. Deselect some of it, or change your plan on Plan & ownership.
Because a re-run skips what already exists, the count is what the selection would add, not what it contains. A community already at its limit can still re-run the wizard; it simply creates nothing.
Your plan's channel limit applies here
The summary shows a running count against the channel limit on your plan and turns red once a selection would go over it. Over the limit Create all of this is disabled: nothing is created, and there is no half-built system to unpick.
Encrypted channels come out private, and usable by every role that can use the radio, because a private channel nobody is allowed on is usable by nobody. Narrow them before you launch if you run scanner or civilian characters.
Tones¶
The tone board is set up on Alert tones, in the side menu under Build the system. It ships seeded: alert tones, two- and three-beep, a channel marker, SOS, evacuation, and nine fire/EMS station tones. Owners can rename, reorder, upload their own, or reset to the shipped set.
Recording¶
Recording and transcription are on by default for new communities, with 30-day retention, and can be turned off by an owner on History → Recordings.
The recorder writes one audio file per push-to-talk and transcribes it on our own servers; nothing is sent to a third party. A channel marked recording excluded is never captured, which is the escape hatch for a channel that should not be logged.
Car-to-car channels are never recorded
A direct / talkaround channel is radio to radio and never passes through the system, so there is nothing for the system to capture. This is not a setting: the exclusion is forced on for those channels and cannot be switched off. The comms log still records that a transmission happened.
Recording is separate from the comms log, which is always written for every community whether recording is on or not: one row per transmission with the channel, who, when and how long, but no audio. That is what makes a net auditable without keeping anybody's voice.
Finding and playing recordings¶
History has three tabs. On the air is the comms log: every key-up, recorded or not. Recordings is the same list narrowed to the transmissions that have audio, which is where to go when you want to hear something rather than to work out what happened. Changes made here is the audit log.
Both lists filter by channel and search transcripts, and page back through older traffic with Older and Newer. Each recording has a play button and a download button. You need the manage channels permission to open either, and playback separately re-checks that you are allowed on that channel; being able to read the log does not let you play back a channel you cannot hear.