POCSAG is a common numeric and alphanumeric radio-paging format. Monitoring requires PD20x software and the usual setup with your all-purpose voltage-translator inferface tapped into the discriminator output of your receiver.

Dec 10/97: Bonzo has written PC software to automatically strip out tone-only and numeric intercepts in your PD204-generated data files. He has also written LISTENER.EXE to send flagged-capcode intercepts to a specified list of pagers. Basically, the system can be set up to page you when an interesting intercept occurs. We have composed a tentative list of "intercept categories," so that you will know the nature of the intercept. For example, you may get paged with "0012345-205" where "0012345" is the capcode, and "205" is the code for "Yourtown Volunteer Fire Dept." You would then know to program your scanner with Yourtown VFD's frequencies, and be able to hear the call-out. When you get home, you can look up the capcode in your PD204 log and see the exact content of the page. I hope to have these packages available for downloading shortly. Note: this system requires two computers; one for PD20x to monitor and log from your rcvr, and one to dial out and send your pagers the flagged intercepts.

Dec 12/97: Bonzo has uploaded LISTENER, which will send a capcode and an intercept-category code to your pager(s). He has also uploaded PD-SPEC, which includes PD204 plus the necessary files to make it talk to LISTENER. You will need to register your PD204 to enable the logging feature.

Dec 14/97: Bonzo has uploaded PDLOG8, which lets you search your PD204 logs for specified keywords. For example, you can enter keywords such as rescue, fire, riot, hostage, etc. This utility is a great time-saver when you are composing a capcode list for LISTENER, although you should still perform a manual check of your logs when you have some extra time as there will be intercepts of interest that do not have the keywords in the text. PDLOG8 outputs a file in LISTENER format.

Jan 21/98: Bonzo has uploaded LISTENER 2.04a, which contains a minor revision allowing it to run with the Pageout feature disabled, by coding blanks in NOTIFY.INI or changing the notify pager number to nulls when the program is executing.

Jan 25/98: Bonzo has uploaded a new version of LISTENER 2.04a with a minor bug fixed.

Apr 20/98: For those interested in FLEX pager decoding, software is now available that will decode POCSAG, FLEX, and ReFLEX.

Aug 1/98: "Punki" has anonymously uploaded POP 1.0 (POCSAG On Pilot), a POCSAG decoder for the USRobotics Palm Pilot. The README includes a schematic for a Palm Pilot interface.

LISTENER.ZIP: Corrected source and executables for LISTENER V2.04a. Updated Jan 25/98.

PD-SPEC.ZIP: Complete original PD204.ZIP, plus executables and customized .ini files to make it work with LISTENER V2.04. Updated Dec 12/97.

PDLOG8.ZIP: Searches your PD204 logs for specified keywords. Updated Dec 14/97.

POP10.ZIP: POCSAG decoder for the USRobotics Palm Pilot. Posted Aug 1/98.