ScanNow.Org (The Official) site for Freescan 396 and 996. No more Yahoo groups

Paco-Jerte · #1 (**permalink**) 01-27-2008, 09:48 PM

Attn: Mods, please make this a sticky for everyone to see and use just like the other softwares. Thank you.

The new home for future Freescan releases will be at http://scannow.org./

This will cover both version for BCD396T and BCD996T.

Here is a note from the author.

Why should you use FreeSCAN?
There are many reasons to use this great Freeware program. Here are some:

Its Free! No need to pay a software tax when you already bought the scanner.
The recognized most easy to use scanner software available, yet still powerful.
You have had bad experience with commercial-software and want an alternative.
You are a proud Canadian and thus will use the Canadian-made solution, and stubbornly so.
You are a proud North American and would thus use the North American-made solution rather than some other software written in some far away continent where they eat horses.

ka3jjz · #2 (**permalink**) 01-28-2008, 06:03 AM

Actually the website also states the software covers the 246 and BCT15 - Or are those 2 scanner's support being dropped? 73s Mike

cpuerror · #3 (**permalink**) 01-28-2008, 08:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ka3jjz

Actually the website also states the software covers the 246 and BCT15 - Or are those 2 scanner's support being dropped? 73s Mike

No - those scanners are going to be supported forever, espicially considering I have a 246.

While on the subject of FreeSCAN though, for those of you who didnt try it because you were too reluctent to join Yahoo's groups, you can now download it without signing up for anything. Hurray!

cpuerror · #4 (**permalink**) 01-30-2008, 08:34 PM

If anyone has a BR330 scanner, i've added 330 support to the 396 version of FreeSCAN. I dont have a 330 though, so its kind of in beta, but if anyone wants to be the first to try it out you want go to the website and download the latest version (0.3c) and give it a spin. I'd appeciate any feedback as to whether it worked or not. Thanks!!

wa8pyr · #5 (**permalink**) 02-03-2008, 03:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cpuerror

If anyone has a BR330 scanner, i've added 330 support to the 396 version of FreeSCAN. I dont have a 330 though, so its kind of in beta, but if anyone wants to be the first to try it out you want go to the website and download the latest version (0.3c) and give it a spin. I'd appeciate any feedback as to whether it worked or not. Thanks!!

Willing to try porting it to the Mac? I'd love to give it a try natively under Leopard, and I do have the developer tools and so forth...

Tom WA8PYR

cpuerror · #6 (**permalink**) 02-03-2008, 06:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wa8pyr

Willing to try porting it to the Mac? I'd love to give it a try natively under Leopard, and I do have the developer tools and so forth...

Tom WA8PYR

Thats an interesting idea, Tom. But I don't have a mac to test on, and the entire thing relies on proprietery Microsoft plugins and Windows APIs to function.

benjaminarthurt · #7 (**permalink**) 02-03-2008, 11:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cpuerror

If anyone has a BR330 scanner, i've added 330 support to the 396 version of FreeSCAN. I dont have a 330 though, so its kind of in beta, but if anyone wants to be the first to try it out you want go to the website and download the latest version (0.3c) and give it a spin. I'd appeciate any feedback as to whether it worked or not. Thanks!!

As far as programming my 330, its fantastic, a great utility. I haven't been able to get the software to remote control the radio though. If you would like any details feel free to PM or email. Would be nice to see a CSV file export.

Great software thanks!

cpuerror · #8 (**permalink**) 02-04-2008, 02:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by benjaminarthurt

As far as programming my 330, its fantastic, a great utility. I haven't been able to get the software to remote control the radio though. If you would like any details feel free to PM or email. Would be nice to see a CSV file export.

Great software thanks!

Hey Ben I'm glad to hear that you like it! I think I found the problem of why the 330 isn't being controlled - the next version (0.4) will fix it. It will also have UASD and RR import. I want to add CSV import/export and it will come eventually.

When FreeSCAN396 0.4 comes out it should be good enough software to put a nice cold ice pick through the heart of UASD. I have a lot of ideas that I want to do and its just a matter of time.

ka3jjz · #9 (**permalink**) 02-04-2008, 03:08 PM

Re putting 'a nice cold ice pick through the heart of UASD', so long as you have - or will develop - a way to import .usd files accurately, I don't see why not. Lots of people have started with the UASD - so much so that I think it's fair to say this was the 'entry point' for DMA programming.

73s Mike

cpuerror · #10 (**permalink**) 02-04-2008, 04:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ka3jjz

Re putting 'a nice cold ice pick through the heart of UASD', so long as you have - or will develop - a way to import .usd files accurately, I don't see why not. Lots of people have started with the UASD - so much so that I think it's fair to say this was the 'entry point' for DMA programming.

73s Mike

The 996/15 version already imports UASD. I have the 396 version importing as well but need to test it more before releasing it.

alphabravo1 · #11 (**permalink**) 02-04-2008, 04:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cpuerror

No - those scanners are going to be supported forever, espicially considering I have a 246.

While on the subject of FreeSCAN though, for those of you who didnt try it because you were too reluctent to join Yahoo's groups, you can now download it without signing up for anything. Hurray!

Import or downloads of files for BCD396t does not save/import/use/recognize PL/DPL tones even if they were originally programmed. That killed it for me.

AL

cpuerror · #12 (**permalink**) 02-04-2008, 07:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by newsalan

Import or downloads of files for BCD396t does not save/import/use/recognize PL/DPL tones even if they were originally programmed. That killed it for me.

AL

Not sure which file types you mean, its supposed to always handle PL/DPL tones.

alphabravo1 · #13 (**permalink**) 02-04-2008, 08:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cpuerror

Not sure which file types you mean, its supposed to always handle PL/DPL tones.

Never mind, wrong software. I was thinking BCTool. My mistake, been looking at too many softwares programs lately. This is going to be an outstanding program when it comes out of beta.

Free scan is working fine, sometimes it doesn't close at the end of the day when i shut off the computer, but that's minor.

Still not sure about EzGrab, still trying to make it work with RR so that the Alpha tags remain and don't get confused with the description listing. That and copying a system so I can rename and add different frequncies but keep the same talkgroups.

N8DV · #14 (**permalink**) 02-27-2008, 10:20 AM

I tried Free Scan and it is now where near as good as the software from Uniden or even a commerical product such as ProScan. Yes, I know it's free, but it's not ready for primetime.

ka3jjz · #15 (**permalink**) 02-27-2008, 10:37 AM

I wouldn't judge the software too harshly. Developmentally speaking, the UASD has been out a good deal longer than either FreeScan or BCTool. Consequently it's had a longer time to get all the bugs out and to develop support for various functions. (I'm in the software business, so I have some familiarity with such judgements...). Be patient - I suspect that when these 2 are fully fleshed out, they will be serious pieces of software.

73s Mike

Pain · #16 (**permalink**) 02-27-2008, 02:28 PM

What is it that FreeSCAN is missing?

I don't have a digital scanner so I can't judge that part, but Trunking and everything else including EZ Grab from RR and other sites too seems to work great on both my 246T and 330T. It has different methods that you can choose to delineate the separate columns in EZ Grab depending on how the page you are grabbing the data from is set up.

I at least tried the demos of all the major software and FreeSCAN seems to be at least on par with all of them. The only exception is that if I had an older scanner that needed support then I would have probably gone with ScanControl so I can easily interchange programming between all my scanners like I do now with FreeSCAN.

ka3jjz · #17 (**permalink**) 02-27-2008, 03:21 PM

I'm pretty sure FreeScan doesn't have the GPS support for the 996 and 15 yet - I know Rob is working on that for the next release of BCTool

cpuerror · #18 (**permalink**) 02-27-2008, 09:30 PM

It does actually have GPS support.

JHVH-1 · #19 (**permalink**) 02-27-2008, 09:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cpuerror

Thats an interesting idea, Tom. But I don't have a mac to test on, and the entire thing relies on proprietery Microsoft plugins and Windows APIs to function.

That would make porting kinda tough then. It would be really sweet to have some kind of mac software to program my BC246T. I have been using your software on my mac in a vmware fusion virtual machine that runs WinXP.

I tried getting the software to run with Crossover Mac, which is a version of Wine for OSX, and the software and bctool ran fine but there is a bug where the serial port doesn't work so I couldn't program.

I wish I was a decent coder, I would try writing something myself.

cpuerror · #20 (**permalink**) 02-28-2008, 08:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JHVH-1

That would make porting kinda tough then. It would be really sweet to have some kind of mac software to program my BC246T. I have been using your software on my mac in a vmware fusion virtual machine that runs WinXP.

I tried getting the software to run with Crossover Mac, which is a version of Wine for OSX, and the software and bctool ran fine but there is a bug where the serial port doesn't work so I couldn't program.

I wish I was a decent coder, I would try writing something myself.

Well my friend you are a scanner user, so you're a minority. Plus a MAC user, which makes you a minority again, so you are a minority among a minority. There was a TCL/TK programmer that someone wrote awhile ago that would run on a MAC, but the guy stopped development of the project and never really finished.