NET.LIVE — KI4GIP — EL29
HOUSTON, TX

Houston Area Public Safety Audio

Live trunked P25 monitoring · Harris · Fort Bend · Houston
Listening…
Receivers 11/11
P25 Sites 5/5 locked
Streams 3/3 live
Last call 12s ago
Calls/hr
Uptime
24h
Updated just now Auto-refresh every 60s

Listen now

Three live audio feeds stream 24/7 to Broadcastify. Click any feed to start listening — no app required.

Full archive

Beyond the three curated feeds

Search the past 7 days of every monitored talkgroup across all five P25 sites — about 75,000 calls captured per day. Filter by talkgroup, agency, system, or tag. Replay any call.

  • Browse all talkgroups — filter by agency, district, or system
  • Replay past calls — scrub back through hours of recorded transmissions
  • Search by keyword — find calls by talkgroup, unit ID, or text label
  • Live + history — listen as it happens or catch up on what you missed
Open Scanner Archive →
Quick start

How to use the scanner archive

If you've never used rdio-scanner before, here's how to get the most out of it.

01
Pick a talkgroup
Browse the talkgroup list on the left. Click any agency or unit to start streaming live calls from that channel.
02
Listen live or replay
New calls play automatically as they come in. Click any past call in the call history list to replay it.
03
Search the archive
Use the search bar to find calls by talkgroup name, unit ID, or text label. Results show across the full history window.
04
Filter and group
Narrow by system (TXWARN, Fort Bend), by agency category, or by talkgroup tag. Combine filters to monitor exactly what matters.
Try it now →

A hobby, not a service

This is a personal amateur radio project run by KI4GIP from Houston, Texas. An array of RTL-SDR and AirSpy receivers — collectively called "the Beast" — demodulate P25 Phase II trunked traffic from five sites across the Digital TXWARN trunking system covering Harris County and the City of Houston.

The Broadcastify feeds above are the public-facing curated streams. The full archive viewer is provided for personal use and research — talkgroup browsing, search, and replay of past calls.

Coverage
TXWARN (Harris County · City of Houston) · Fort Bend County
Mode
P25 Phase II TDMA · 700/800 MHz
Receivers
An array of RTL-SDR and AirSpy receivers
Software
trunk-recorder · rdio-scanner v6 · ezstream · sox · DragonOS Linux
Hardware
Intel Xeon E5-2699 v4 (22c / 44t) · 64 GB RAM · 11× RTL-SDR + 1× AirSpy
Watchdog
v9 · whitelist-aware · auto-recovery · Pushover alerting
Status
Operational — see scanner archive for live activity
Operator
KI4GIP · Grid EL29 · Houston, Texas · online since September 2025

How the audio gets clean

Most scanner streams sound rough because they pipe trunk-recorder output straight to the listener. This one runs a multi-stage pipeline — recording, DSP, talkgroup filtering, metadata enrichment, and a watchdog process that catches silent failure modes most feeds miss.

01 · Capture
P25 control-channel decode
Eleven RTL-SDR receivers and one AirSpy decode the TXWARN P25 Phase II control channel in real time. trunk-recorder writes each captured transmission to disk as soon as it ends.
02 · Clean
Voice-band DSP chain
An inotify watcher fires sox on every new file: high-pass at 300 Hz, low-pass at 3 kHz, peak normalize to −3 dB, silence trim on both ends. Loud and quiet calls land at consistent levels.
03 · Filter
Per-feed talkgroup whitelists
Each Broadcastify feed pulls only the talkgroups curated for it. HPD on the HPD feed, Fort Bend on the Fort Bend feed — no spillover. Encrypted traffic is filtered out at the recorder layer.
04 · Label
Metadata enrichment
A RadioReference cross-reference resolves each talkgroup ID to a human-readable name before streaming, so listeners on the Broadcastify app see HPD-3 NORTH PATROL scroll on their phone instead of a numeric ID.
05 · Stream
Continuous Broadcastify uplink
ezstream serves newest-first from the whitelisted pool. sox-generated silence fills brief gaps so the live stream stays continuously connected to the Broadcastify mount and never times out.
06 · Watch
Whitelist-aware wedge detection
A watchdog cross-references whitelist activity against feed output. If a feed goes quiet while its source is actively recording other talkgroups, it restarts the affected service automatically.
ONLINE SINCE SEPTEMBER 2025 MONITORING 24 / 7 RECEIVERS 12 CALLS / 24H 75k+ FEEDS 3

Things people ask

Is this legal?
Yes. Listening to public safety radio is fully legal in Texas and across most of the United States. Recording and rebroadcasting are also permitted for unencrypted channels.
Why is some traffic missing?
Some agencies encrypt sensitive talkgroups (tactical, investigative, executive protection). Encrypted traffic appears as silent or unintelligible audio and is not decrypted here.
Why does the audio cut out?
P25 Phase II uses TDMA — short transmissions are normal. Brief silences between transmissions are the system idling, not a fault.
Affiliated with HPD or any agency?
No. This is an independent hobbyist project. No affiliation with any law enforcement, fire, or government agency.
Why does this audio sound cleaner than typical scanner feeds?
Each captured transmission runs through a sox DSP chain before it streams: a 300 Hz high-pass to cut hum and rumble, a 3 kHz low-pass to cut hiss, peak normalization so loud and quiet units land at the same level, and silence trimming so back-to-back calls don't feel mashed together. Most scanner streams skip this step.
What happens if a receiver fails?
A watchdog process checks every two minutes. One missing receiver is acceptable — built-in redundancy covers it and the system runs in a "degraded but OK" state. Two or more missing receivers triggers an automatic recovery. Audio staleness, control-channel loss, and stream wedge conditions also have automatic recovery paths.
Feed problems?
Report issues directly through Broadcastify's feed pages, or use the contact form below for site-specific questions.

Questions or feedback?

Use the form below for site questions, feed coverage feedback, or general inquiries about the project. For Broadcastify feed issues, please report directly through Broadcastify.