[chirp_users] Displaying odd repeater splits

[Eric Vought]

Or a tooltip with the calculated value.

On Wed, Mar 2, 2016 at 5:55 PM, gerard <gmkayaker at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 3/2/2016 4:03 PM, Dave VK2FDJS wrote:
> > I wonder if it would be feasible to include both the offset amount and
> the resultant frequency - perhaps greyed-out or in smaller font - when it's
> a +/-.
> It could just be another column whose value is derived from the
> combination of
> the Duplex and Offset columns. Or you could enter either the Offset or the
> 2nd
> frequency and calculate the other. I don't think it would affect what was
> stored
> in the file or radio, just how the data was entered. But I don't know how
> the UI
> code is structured.
> > Although my radios are programmed as +/- they actually display the TX
> frequency when I hit the PTT, so I find myself doing the same mental
> arithmetic.
> >
> > Gerard, perhaps you could look at making the change yourself, as you're
> a software person, and submitting the change to the developers.  Although
> the developers probably prefer to keep away from the UI, it's SOP for us
> software types.
> Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with Python and I doubt the developers
> would
> want a python newbie messing with the code. And I'm more of a software
> generalist than a programmer per se. Agile coaching, automated testing,
> usability, etc. are my main areas of expertise these days.
>
> Gerard
> >
> > Regards Dave VK2FDJS
> >
> > Sent from my iPad
> >
> >> On 3 Mar 2016, at 07:26, gerard <gmkayaker at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> Thanks for the background info. As a software professional myself, I
> appreciate
> >> the technical challenges as well as the natural tendencies of software
> >> developers.  Your idea of basing the default behaviour based on the
> frequency
> >> range makes sense to me. Another option would be to have a picklist or
> >> check-box/toggle above the Offset column to force the display in one
> format or
> >> another. Maybe only show it when the radio doesn't store the format.
> >>
> >> Unfortunately, the current behavior, of showing it always as +/- and
> providing
> >> no way to convert back (selecting "split" on an existing memory slot
> zero's out
> >> the rx offset by inserting the base frequency) really should be
> considered a bug
> >> as it is effectively "Write-only Memory".  At least fix it so that when
> you
> >> change + or - to split, it does the math and shows you the resulting
> frequency.
> >> That *should* be trivial to do.
> >>
> >> I finally figured out what the  "Properties" button does (it does
> nothing and
> >> provides no feedback if you have no memory item selected, so it really
> should be
> >> disabled/greyed-out.) If I change from + to split in the Memory
> Properties pane,
> >> it gives me a warning icon telling me the offset is out of range! Duhh!
> That's
> >> because it *is* an offset, not a frequency. And Chirp should change it
> to a
> >> frequency automatically when I change from +/- to split. That would at
> least
> >> give me a way to see the frequency without having to do math in my
> head. I would
> >> like to report this as a bug as this is just plain wrong!
> >>
> >> Thanks again,
> >>
> >> Gerard
> >>
> >>> On 3/2/2016 12:51 PM, Tom Hayward wrote:
> >>>> On Wed, Mar 2, 2016 at 11:09 AM, gerard <gmkayaker at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>> Hi,
> >>>>
> >>>> I'm am a long-time user of VHF radios starting with a VX-150 some 15
> years ago
> >>>> and switching to Baofeng UV-5R when they were relatively new. I have
> been using
> >>>> Chirp to program my UV-5R since I first got the radio. One thing that
> I find
> >>>> annoying about how Chirp works with repeater splits is that it shows
> it as a +
> >>>> or a -. Most people I deal with in Canada give me frequency pairs.
> And I haven't
> >>>> found an easy way to get Chirp to show me the actual frequency (as
> opposed to
> >>>> the +/-.)  When I enter a frequency as a "split", it immediately gets
> converted
> >>>> to "+/-" and there seems to be no way to get Chirp to show it as a
> "split". This
> >>>> makes it really hard to confirm that I have the correct frequency
> entered; I
> >>>> need to do frequency math in my head or paper which increases the
> likelihood of
> >>>> errors.
> >>> This is a shortcoming of the UV5R. It cannot differentiate from offset
> >>> and independent tx/rx records--the radio stores them identically.
> >>> Chirp assumes that most users are hams and prefer the +/- offset view,
> >>> so that's how Chirp displays offsets less than 70 MHz. (This is the
> >>> conversion you're talking about.)
> >>>
> >>>> It would be great if Chirp had a setting that allowed me to say
> "Always show
> >>>> splits using the format entered" or "Always show splits in: " and let
> me choose
> >>>> between +/- and "split".
> >>> Most ham radios (Yaesu, Icom, Kenwood) differentiate offset and
> >>> odd-split records. With these radios, Chirp displays the frequency or
> >>> offset as entered.
> >>>
> >>> For the UV5R, this would require storing the "format entered"
> >>> somewhere. The UV5R memory provides nowhere to store this, so that
> >>> means we would need some sort of proprietary Chirp file to store this
> >>> information. The .img files are just a simple dump of the radio
> >>> memory, not proprietary, and don't offer a place to store auxiliary
> >>> data like this. This would only be beneficial when editing said
> >>> proprietary file--after doing a "Download from Radio" you'd be back to
> >>> just what was stored in the UV5R. Not really an optimal solution.
> >>>
> >>> I've proposed an alternative scheme: on radios that don't know the
> >>> difference between an offset and an odd split, display as offsets in
> >>> the ham band and as tx/rx frequency outside the ham band. This would
> >>> work great for me as I program a number of Part 90 certified radios
> >>> for mixed Part 90 and ham use. In my area, ham repeater channels are
> >>> usually communicated by offset and commercial channels by their tx/rx
> >>> frequencies. However, this scheme presents some challenges too. The
> >>> hand bands differ by locale and not everyone has the same preference
> >>> as myself.
> >>>
> >>> Your other idea, '"Always show splits in: " and let me choose between
> >>> +/- and "split"' has its own challenges. Besides the UI work to add
> >>> this preference selection (which most Chirp developers tend to avoid
> >>> due to its complexity), I think it would require updating all radio
> >>> drivers to support the new scheme--a monumental task. Also, it would
> >>> defeat the feature of most ham radios that properly differentiate
> >>> between offsets and odd-split records.
> >>>
> >>> The way Chirp does it now was chosen intentionally to please the
> >>> largest number of users. Unfortunately we can't please everyone. We're
> >>> always open to discuss new ideas--that's what this mailing list is for
> >>> (or the chirp_devel list for the implementation details). Hopefully
> >>> this background on the treatment of offsets and radios that don't
> >>> support them is helpful fodder for discussion.
> >>>
> >>> Tom KD7LXL
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> chirp_users mailing list
> >>> chirp_users at intrepid.danplanet.com
> >>> http://intrepid.danplanet.com/mailman/listinfo/chirp_users
> >>> This message was sent to Gerard Meszaros at chirp at gerardm.com
> >>> To unsubscribe, send an email to
> chirp_users-unsubscribe at intrepid.danplanet.com
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >> This message was sent to Dave VK2FDJS at vk2fdjs at gmail.com
> >> To unsubscribe, send an email to
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> > _______________________________________________
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> > This message was sent to Gerard Meszaros at chirp at gerardm.com
> > To unsubscribe, send an email to
> chirp_users-unsubscribe at intrepid.danplanet.com
> >
>
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