[chirp_users] Displaying odd repeater splits

Wed Mar 2 17:53:53 PST 2016

Yes, good idea. 

Regards Dave S

Sent from my iPhone

> On 3 Mar 2016, at 12:29, Eric Vought <evought at pobox.com> wrote:
> 
> 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
>> >> _______________________________________________
>> >> chirp_users mailing list
>> >> chirp_users at intrepid.danplanet.com
>> >> http://intrepid.danplanet.com/mailman/listinfo/chirp_users
>> >> This message was sent to Dave VK2FDJS at vk2fdjs at gmail.com
>> >> To unsubscribe, send an email to chirp_users-unsubscribe at intrepid.danplanet.com
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > 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
>> >
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> chirp_users mailing list
>> chirp_users at intrepid.danplanet.com
>> http://intrepid.danplanet.com/mailman/listinfo/chirp_users
>> This message was sent to Eric Vought at evought at pobox.com
>> To unsubscribe, send an email to chirp_users-unsubscribe at intrepid.danplanet.com
> 
> _______________________________________________
> chirp_users mailing list
> chirp_users at intrepid.danplanet.com
> http://intrepid.danplanet.com/mailman/listinfo/chirp_users
> This message was sent to Dave VK2FDJS at vk2fdjs at gmail.com
> To unsubscribe, send an email to chirp_users-unsubscribe at intrepid.danplanet.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://intrepid.danplanet.com/pipermail/chirp_users/attachments/20160303/e0c8c77e/attachment.html 