Emergency
Don't rely on the alarm and emergency calls for safety. The Radio reference says what has been checked on each radio.
When someone else declares an emergency
When the radio hears an emergency alarm, or plays a call marked as an emergency, to you or to a talkgroup you listen to, it opens the emergency screen and plays an alert tone (a warble of about 1 s). A radio with a vibration motor also vibrates four times, unless Settings > Sound > Vibrate is off. The screen shows EMERGENCY and the station's name or ID.
| Key | Does |
|---|---|
| OK | Acknowledge: closes the screen ("Emergency acknowledged") |
| # | Closes the screen and opens the actions for that station: talk to them, call them privately, radio check |
| Back | Hides the screen |
The same radio's emergency again within 30 s of its last activity (repeated alarms, the call that follows) doesn't raise a second alert.
Declaring an emergency
The radio core can send an emergency alarm and start an emergency call with a hot microphone. By default it sends the alarm 3 times. Then it keys the transmitter for 10 s, so the people listening hear you without you pressing PTT. Every call you make until you cancel carries the emergency flag and goes to the channel's talk target. Pressing PTT during the hot mic takes over the transmission.
Hold the Power level key for 1.5 s. The screen says "EMERGENCY sent: hold again to cancel". Hold it again for 1.5 s to cancel ("Emergency canceled"). A short press of the same key still changes the power level. Letting go before 1.5 s never starts an emergency. Where it can't start (see below) the radio says "Emergency needs a DMR channel and ID".
Only radios with a Power level key can declare an emergency from the keys. The Radio reference says which radios have one.
Developers can also start and cancel it over the debug link:
tools/rfoundry_debug.py data emergency start
tools/rfoundry_debug.py data emergency cancel
The mode (alarm only, alarm then call, call only), the target, the number of alarms and the hot mic time are set the
same way (tools/rfoundry_debug.py data em-settings). See docs/spec/dmr-emergency.md.
An emergency can't start on an FM channel, the VFO, a receive-only channel, in hotspot mode, or without a DMR ID.