Live, uncensored radio from The Gate City

The display

The big line is the channel you're hearing. Under it: the talkgroup number, the radio that's talking (with the unit's callsign when we know it) and the service. Then what was said, with 10-codes spelled out in parentheses, and at the bottom the incident the call belongs to. Tap the display to open that incident on the map.

Across the top, lit tags show what's switched on: PRI alerts, AIR audio, HOLD, lockouts (L/O), and NEAR when you're listening to one district. Delay is how long ago the call you're hearing went out on the air; Queued is how many calls are waiting their turn.

The keys

ALL, POLICE, FIRE, EMS pick what you hear; their lights show what's on. AIR ✈ mixes in the airport's tower and approach radio under the calls.

SCAN starts and stops listening (it reads STOP while playing). HOLD stays on the channel you're hearing until you press it again. L/O locks that channel out so it never plays. PRI ALERT flashes and chimes when something serious starts: a shooting, an armed subject, an officer emergency.

The small map beside the display follows the call that's playing, and the bars under it show how busy the radio has been across your "Incidents from" window. Your choices, holds and lockouts are remembered on this device.

The channel bank

Every channel we carry, grouped into police, fire and EMS, with how many calls it has had in the last hour and its talkgroup number. A lit dot means it's busy right now.

Tap a channel to HOLD on it; tap it again to let it go. Its L/O button locks it out, and UNL brings it back.

Active incidents and the call log

On the right, the incidents from your "Incidents from" window, newest first, each with its place, number of calls and units, and a summary. Tap one to open it on the map.

Below it, the latest calls as they come in. Press ▶ on any of them to hear it again.

Reading the map

Each dot is an incident. Bigger dots have more radio traffic, and a dot that pulses has had a call in the last two minutes. A dashed dot is a rough spot: only the street or the area was given, so it sits somewhere along it.

Patrol, Sheriff and medical aircraft over the county show with their altitude, speed and the path they've flown for the last 15 minutes. Congested roads show in orange and red (more below).

On a computer, the legend along the bottom of the map names each color and symbol: Priority, Police, Fire, EMS, Traffic, Rough spot, Aircraft, Congestion and Camera. Point at one for what it covers.

Zoom with the + and − buttons or a scroll wheel, or with two fingers on a phone. On a computer, the layers button under them switches between the dark map and a street map.

The list follows the map

The incident list shows only what's inside the part of the map you're looking at, newest first, 50 to a page. Zoom in on a neighborhood and the list narrows to it; zoom out and it fills back up. The number on the list (or on the Incidents tab on a phone) is how many are in view.

Click a dot, or an incident in the list, to open it.

Choose the time window

Incidents from, at the right end of the counts bar, sets how far back the map, the list and the heatmap go: from the last 30 minutes to the last 30 days.

Past a day, incidents are drawn as small dots, all one size, so a week or a month of them stays readable. They open just the same.

Show one service

The call counts in the bar just above the map (Calls, last hour) are buttons. Tap Police, Fire or EMS and the map, the list and the heatmap show only that service's incidents; the one you picked is outlined. Tap All to see everything again.

Each count is that service's calls in the last hour, and the arrow beside it how many more (▲) or fewer (▼) than the hour before. On the other pages the counts are just counts.

Filter by incident type

Incident type opens a checklist of the types in your time window, with how many of each. It follows the service you picked: under Police it lists police types. Check one type or several; type in Find a type to narrow a long list, and All types clears your picks. The button shows what you've picked.

It works with the service you picked, and both apply to the dots, the list and the heatmap together.

Heatmaps

Heatmap shows where incidents cluster over your time window: green where there are a few, yellow where there are more, red where they're densest. Pick All, Police, Fire or EMS; a service's heatmap also switches the dots and list to that service.

It's one picture of the county that stays the same as you zoom, and it uses your incident type picks too: a police heatmap of only burglaries, or of only traffic stops. Rough spots count half. The dots fade back while it's on and still open when you click them.

Traffic

Roads with heavy traffic show in orange, stop-and-go in red, live and updated every few minutes. Free-flowing roads stay as they are, so only the slow spots stand out. The interstates show once you zoom in a little, other highways and main roads one step further, and side streets and ramps closer in.

Where NCDOT has a report on a congested road (a crash, a disabled vehicle, a lane closure, roadwork), a badge sits on it: click it for NCDOT's details, the lanes, how long it's planned to last, the detour, and a link to DriveNC. On a crash the radio is usually first, often by 15 minutes or more.

A 📷 is one of NCDOT's traffic cameras, where the camera stands, shown within half a mile of stop-and-go (red) traffic on its highway or of an active incident on a highway: click it for its picture, renewed about every minute. Each is labeled with its highway, mile marker and direction, like "I-40 mile 213 westbound."

While an incident on a highway is going on (until an hour after its last call), its card (here and on the Incident Board) shows the nearest camera on either side of it, under the summary; tap one to find it on the map.

Inside an incident

An open incident shows its type, place and summary, then every call in it with the time, the channel and what was said. ▶ Play all plays them in order (⏮ and ⏭ skip back and ahead), or press ▶ on one call. With the live stream off, Play all keeps going and plays new calls as they come in. Past 30 days the audio is gone: an incident opens the same, with its summary and every call's words, just nothing to play.

The ⓘ beside the call count lists the units, channels, codes and alerts in the incident; tap a unit to see everything it said. An underlined address shows every incident at that place.

A dot's pop-up also has ▶ Listen, 📍 Hear this district (listen to just that district) and 🔗 Link to share the incident.

On a phone

The list is a drawer: tap Incidents on the right edge to open it, and tap the map to tuck it away. The filters wrap onto their own lines above the map.

To hear just your area, tap the 📍 menu by Listen live and choose Drop a pin on the map, then tap the spot; you can drag the pin later.

The board

Each row is one incident: its number, when it was last heard, the type, the place, how many calls and which units. A ⚠ marks one with an alert. Click a column heading to sort by it.

Select an incident to see it on the side: a small map, the summary (with traffic camera pictures while an incident on a highway is going on), and every call with ▶ to play it. ▶ play all plays them in order, and open on map takes you to it on the Map. On a phone the incident opens in place of the list, with ← Incidents to go back.

Narrow it down

The first box sets the window, from the last hour to 30 days. Or pick a from and to date and time to look at any stretch in the past; live brings you back to now. chatter adds the radio talk that never became an incident.

ALL, PRIORITY (the serious ones), PD, FD and EMS filter by kind, and the district menu limits it to one police district.

Filter by incident type

Incident type works like the Map's: a checklist of the types on the board, with how many of each. It follows the kind you picked (under PD it lists police types), as well as the window, district and search. Check one type or several; Find a type narrows a long list, and All types clears your picks.

The board keeps its own picks, apart from the Map's.

Search and shortcuts

Search finds anything said or recognized: words, 10-codes like 10-16, streets, places, units like Engine 46, or an incident number like #4330. Put @ before a unit (@1143, @Medic 12) for only the calls that unit made or was called on.

On a keyboard: j and k move through the list, space plays the incident, l starts or stops the live stream, and / jumps to search.

Every call

Each row has a ▶ to hear it, the time, the channel, who was talking (a unit's callsign, or Dispatch) with the radio number and length, and what was said. Below the words: the place it named (📍) and the incident it belongs to; tap the incident to open it on the map.

New calls appear at the top while you're at the top of the list. Show older calls at the bottom goes further back. Very short transmissions say too short to transcribe.

Filter and search

All, Police, Fire and EMS filter by service, and the district menu by police district. Search works like the Incident Board's: words, 10-codes, places, @unit or #incident. The line on the left says how many calls matched and how far back they go.

The units

Each row is a unit: its callsign and department, the radio IDs it has used, when it was last heard, and the incident it's on, with when it was sent; blank when it isn't on one. 10-42 means it has signed off for the day. Fire and EMS crews are often known only by callsign until we've heard which radio is which.

Tap a unit for every call it made or was called on, in the Call Log. Tap its incident to open it on the map.

Filter it

All, Police, Fire and EMS filter by service. on a call now shows only units working an incident, and include units not heard today goes back 30 days. The find box looks up a callsign, a radio number or a department. The line at the top counts the units, how many are on a call and how many have signed off.