Iridium PTT Command Center

The PTT Command Center is accessed by the account holder/subscriber and gives your administrator the ability to assign PTT phones to Talkgroups and draw the service regions where the PTT phones will operate.

A quick overview of the tools the Command Center provides are:

1. Creation PTT service regions for each purchased Talkgroup on a global interactive map.
2. Name all PTT devices so the talker’s name appears on all receivers handset displays.
3. Name each Talkgroup, which also appears on the handset displays.
4. Drag-and-drop all PTT handsets onto 1 or more Talkgroup or remove them from Talkgroups.
5. Draw/Update PTT service regions for each Talkgroup at any time (there is no cost to make updates).
6. Create additional administrators for User (read only), Admin (can update), and Super Admin.

Below is a single “small” Talkgroup (100,000 square kilometers) by the name of “San Luis GRP” that has 3 service regions assigned to it. Note that the map itself is scalable to global size, and the drawn service regions may be placed anywhere on the globe.

Clicking on the above Talkgroup takes you to the editing screen where you can create, move, and resize your current service regions (explained next).

PTT – Create Service Regions For Talkgroups

The PTT Command Center lets you easily create service regions on a Google Map. Making a service region is as easy as clicking on the circle or square/rectangle and moving the service region to any location on the planet. There are no restrictions on where the service region can be located and you may have multiple service regions as long as you don’t go over the size limit of the Talkgroup (Here is a link to Talkgroups & pricing). All service regions created in one Talkgroup are NOT independent of each other, but allow communication with all PTT phones in all service regions in that Talkgroup no matter their location, even if one region is on the other side of the planet. Up to 10 service regions may be created per Talkgroup except small Talkgroups that are limited to 5 regions.

The above map shows that there are three service regions created. PTT Phones located in any of these regions may connect with PTT phones from other regions using the PTT button on the handset. Click on the circle or square to create a new region. In this example, a small Talkgroup that has a total size under 100,000 square kilometers is being created.

The PTT Command Center editing tools are intuitive and quite easy to use. Each Talkgroup has a maximum size, and you may use it with multiple service regions, or larger regions by resizing the square, rectangle or circle tools (resizing will show you the total current size, and the program will not allow editing to a size larger than the Talkgroup sized purchased. Make sure to click the save button to make the updates active.

All Command Center updates are instantly activated and available to all PTT phones once saved.

PTT – Devices and Talkgroups

Now that you have your defined Talkgroup regions, the next step is to drag and drop the handsets that are to be in a Talkgroup. By default all handsets are named by their IMEI number (or serial device serial number), so it is recommend to rename the handset to something reflecting its location, vehicle number, or person it is to be assigned to… as well as renaming the Talkgroups.

In this example only 10 handsets are shown and named along with 3 Talkgroups that are also named and show the number of handsets in each Talkgroup. Up to 15 Talkgroups may be purchased (small and medium Talkgroups are free with 5 or more active PTT handsets). PTT handsets may be assigned into 0 to 15 different Talkgroups. Talkgroups may contain any number of PTT handsets at no added cost. Talkgroup 1 (Alpha 1) is position 1 on the ICOM PTT quick-selector knob.. Bravo 2 Talkgroup the position 2 on the ICOM PTT handest… and so on.

This is just a brief listing of the Command Center features and we recommend spending some time with the interface to become familiar with its many features.

Command Center Login

The Iridium Command Center is accessed from any computer connected to the Internet at ptt.iridium.com. PTT Service Subscribers should have have received login information directly from Iridium or Ground Control in order to connect. If you are missing your login information, please contact support@groundcontrol.com.