L0pht Heavy Industries POCSAG Decoder

Pager data stream monitoring unit



The POCSAG Decoder allows off-the-air decoding of all pager traffic (POCSAG paging signals) at 512, 1200, or 2400bps. Both numeric and alphanumeric messages will be decoded, as well as an optional hex dump of raw POCSAG codewords. The device requires a radio scanner or receiver for input and an IBM PC-compatible serial port. 80% of pagers today are based on the POCSAG protocol.

The unit is small enough to fit inside a DB25 hood (included), and is ideal for portable use (powered by the serial port). The actual PC Board is only 1" x 1" (shown above) and uses standard size components (no surface mount). All you need is a radio scanner or receiver. Input to the POCSAG Decoder is directly from the "speaker output" jack on your radio. Discriminator output modification is not necessary, but may enhance the decoding of POCSAG data.

The most common paging frequencies are located at the 931MHz band, but POCSAG transmissions can also be heard on the 35Mhz, 43Mhz, 152Mhz, and 454MHz bands. Specific frequencies depend on location and can be found in any scanner guide and on the back of pagers. With the included software, one can select which pager capcodes (pager IDs) will be rejected or logged to disk, making it easier to track only the necessary signals.


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  • Any questions can be directed to pocsag@l0pht.com



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    Last update occurred on 2/1/97 at 8:00pm