Sentinel Data Lost When Trying To Program 436/SDS100/SDS100/200

[letarotor]

I am having a problem I've never run across after programming and edited profile I created for a friend's BCD436HP. I am legally blind and this has been a nightmare to try and solve.

I'll try to keep this brief since I have to get up at 5:00 a.m. and it's 1:30 right now. I hooked up a friend's 436 to program my favorites lists and settings into his radio. Before I did anything, I created a new profile just for his radio. Normally I program my own 436 and SDS100/200 radios with no trouble.

After connecting his 436, I changed the target model to that radio and I created a new profile for his programming. The new profile I created for his radio showed my last saved profile for my radios when it opened. I then went into the programming from my last profile I had saved (since that data is what is showing in the new profile for his radio) and I deleted some favorites lists that were irrelevant to what I needed to put into his radio. I also deleted and changed some various talkgroups, alpha tags, and departments. I changed the startup message and then loaded the programming into his radio and also clicked the two checkboxes before writing to his radio. Everything worked fine as far as programming his radio went.

After this, I wanted to hook my SDS 200 back up and I was going to read from it updates I had manually made on the radio. I opened my master profile for my 436 / 100 / 200. But it was showing the data from his programming that I had just edited still and what I had deleted/changed was not there in my last saved profile. I went ahead and closed the Sentinel program and did a restart on the PC. When I booted it back up, and then I opened up a few of my older saved profiles, the data I had deleted and the programming for his 436 was still showing. It was as if the changes I had made for his radio were showing up in my old profiles. And I had changed the target model back to my SDS200 prior to this. I thought that since I could not get any of my profiles to reflect my saved programming/ profiles in Sentinel I could just read from my 200 and go from there. No joy, no luck, it's still showing the changes I made for my friends radio and it will not pull up my missing data. Sentinel acted as if it was reading my radio the first time but yet when it was done it was showing the programming for my friends radio still. And in future reads from my radio it just immediately went to the pop-up window that said it had been read. It didn't go through the process of showing the progress bar acting as if it was reading. I then changed the target model to my SDS100 and tried reading from it but the same thing happened. When I read from my 200 and my 100 it does not change anything. What is going on?

Aren't profiles just like the Save or Save As feature on a Windows PC? If you click Save it will save the data to the current file/ profile. If you click Save As, it will save the change data and allow you to name the new file whatever you want on a regular windows program/PC. Why is Sentinel not acting in this fashion and why is it only showing, no matter what profile I open or what radio I read from, the data that I programmed into my friends radio? Is there some kind of Sentinel reset? Sentinel acts like it's reading my radio, at least the first time, but it is not reflecting any changes on the left side of Sentinel where the favorites lists are. The only difference it made to the new profile I created for myself before reading the 200 is that it did add back some of the deleted favorites lists I did not program into my friends radio. But everything else, names of favorites lists, data that was deleted like talkgroups, and whatever else I had changed in my friend's programming/profile is still looking as if I had read my friends radio instead of my own. It is not pulling the data from the radio to the PC so that I can save a profile of my SDS scanners. And I am changing the target model for each radio of my own that I'm trying to read.

If I can't read my own radios and get my programming back into Sentinel, what the heck am I supposed to do? I've never seen this problem but another friend in a group that I'm in said he had the same exact thing happen to him in the past. He didn't have a answer for a fix though.

I hope somebody knows how to fix this problem because it's already difficult enough for me to see what I'm doing. I don't want to lose years of programming or never be able to pull the data off of my SDS radios or my own 436HP. What is causing this? Why will Sentinel not show what is actually on my radio in the new profile when I'm reading it directly from my own programming in my radios?

What am I missing, how do I fix it, and how do I keep this from happening ever again? Sentinel has become useless to me since it won't read my radio and I do a lot of my editing via the radios themselves and then suck that information down into my programming/ profiles. I hope somebody can please help me clear this up.

I'm headed to bed because I'm going to a hamfest in the morning and I'm already down to 3 hours of sleep I will get if I go to bed right now. I may not be able to check back and see if there are any replies until sometime after noon tomorrow when I get back home.

Thank you to whoever might be able to help me get this issue solved and get my radios read so that I can use Sentinel to also show what's on my radio and make new/big programming changes on the PC. I need backups for what's on the radio and I can't even get my radios to read and show in Sentinel what is on them even though the program acts like it doing that (after programming my friends radio). It just keeps showing up would the profile information I edited for my friends radio and created a new profile for every time I try to read one of my radios or I open one of my previously saved profiles.

Brian
COMMSCAN

Sent using Google Voice to Text. Please excuse any errors I did not see or correct before sending this message.

 

[n1chu]

Brian,

I’d like to hook up with you offline. You state you are legally blind and I have a friend who is also blind. He has the SDS100, a bear to program when you didn’t graduate from the x36HP’s, and worse when blind.

You state you are legally blind… meaning you have some sight? My friend is of retirement age, has been blind since birth, is totally blind, and while I admire his tenacity, he can’t do it all by himself. I and another friend program for him and we look for ways to maneuver through the menu where he can reasonably monitor by himself.

But he gets into trouble continually and I understand that. But he is getting pushback from his wife when he asks her what the display reads when he forgets what mode he has left the radio in. We are still looking at settings that will return the radio into a default mode, such as allowing a reboot. But I must admit having to run over to his house 3 towns away has become tiresome for myself.

I’m hoping after you get your current issue answered, you might allow for a conversation offline, possibly by email. I can be reached at n1chu@arrl.net.

thanks,
Bill

 

[tvengr]

You never delete a favorites list unless you are absolutely sure that you will never need it again. Once it is deleted, it is gone forever. The same favorites lists are shared by every profile you create. Each profile does NOT have its own set of favorites lists. In each profile, you select which favorites lists you wish to write to the scanner. Download sends the favorites list to the scanner. Monitor enables it to scan. You can save a favorites list before deleting it by first exporting a hpe file of the favorites list and saving it. If you have the favorites lists you deleted in another scanner, you can read the scanner to retrieve them.

 

[letarotor]

Brian,

I’d like to hook up with you offline. You state you are legally blind and I have a friend who is also blind. He has the SDS100, a bear to program when you didn’t graduate from the x36HP’s, and worse when blind.

You state you are legally blind… meaning you have some sight? My friend is of retirement age, has been blind since birth, is totally blind, and while I admire his tenacity, he can’t do it all by himself. I and another friend program for him and we look for ways to maneuver through the menu where he can reasonably monitor by himself.

But he gets into trouble continually and I understand that. But he is getting pushback from his wife when he asks her what the display reads when he forgets what mode he has left the radio in. We are still looking at settings that will return the radio into a default mode, such as allowing a reboot. But I must admit having to run over to his house 3 towns away has become tiresome for myself.

I’m hoping after you get your current issue answered, you might allow for a conversation offline, possibly by email. I can be reached at n1chu@arrl.net.

thanks,
Bill

Hello Bill,
I'd be happy to communicate with you offline from the group here. I'm a little busy today and tomorrow would probably be a good day after I do something I have to do in the morning. I will email you tomorrow probably either before I'll leave or maybe after lunch. And I will think too of some of the things I've had to do in order to accomplish tasks with radios and especially the SDS radios. Thank you for the email and I will reach out to you tomorrow Bill.

Brian
KI5FLE

 

[n1chu]

Thanks Brian.

 

[letarotor]

You never delete a favorites list unless you are absolutely sure that you will never need it again. Once it is deleted, it is gone forever. The same favorites lists are shared by every profile you create. Each profile does NOT have its own set of favorites lists. In each profile, you select which favorites lists you wish to write to the scanner. Download sends the favorites list to the scanner. Monitor enables it to scan. You can save a favorites list before deleting it by first exporting a hpe file of the favorites list and saving it. If you have the favorites lists you deleted in another scanner, you can read the scanner to retrieve them.

Thank you for the information. I never realized this was the case. I don't know why I cannot read my SDS200 and have it replace the favorites lists I had deleted but they are still in my radio. Well I take that back. Some of the complete favorites lists that I deleted but didn't edit at all what was in them, like the ones I created for a trip to Portland, Oregon a couple of years ago and I knew my friend wouldn't need them, replenished when I read my SDS200. But my primary favorites list and it seems like ones that I edited in the profile I was creating for the friend (and had deleted some stuff from) does not read from the radio with the name I originally had. None of those deleted talk groups and edits are showing up in Sentinel when I read my radio. It just shows the changed version that I edited for the friends profile and not what is actually in the radio.

Maybe I just need to completely delete everything from Sentinel and read my SDS200 or SDS100 again since they are almost identical in their programming? If I did that, do you think that Sentinel would be forced to read what is in my radio and enter it into a new profile exactly as it is in the radio? Because it's definitely not reading the radio as it is programmed right now, It's still showing in Sentinel the edited programming, and I can't understand what would keep it from doing that other than maybe something like the FL numbers are identical and it only picks what's already in Sentinel? I'm confusing myself the more I talk about this but I need to get it to actually read what's in my radio accurately so that I can be 95% back to the way I had Sentinel setup for the last few years. I definitely know now not to ever delete anything for any profile again unless I permanently don't want it in any of my programming. And I'm not going to be programming anybody else's radios from this point on.

I really appreciate your help and if you have any additional ideas on how to get it to read the data from my radio and put it into Sentinel correctly I'd be really greatful for that too.

I'm sorry if some of this is a little repetitive or messed up but I'm not where I can really see things real well and I did try to proofread this. It sounded a little jumbled to me as I made some changes

Brian
COMMSCAN

 

[tvengr]

I definitely know now not to ever delete anything for any profile again

If I did that, do you think that Sentinel would be forced to read what is in my radio and enter it into a new profile exactly as it is in the radio?

Favorites lists are not in any profile. When you read the scanner, the favorites lists are not entered into a profile. The favorites lists are an entity entirely unto themselves. If you delete all of the favorites lists and read the scanner, the favorites list pane of Sentinel will be repopulated with exactly what is in the scanner. The profiles only determine which favorites lists are written to the scanner, as well as scanner target model, service types, display options, and other parameters applicable to the particular scanner target model selected under the Tools tab. For example: You can edit the custom display and use site NAC's only if the SDS100 or SDS200 is selected as the Target Model. You can keep the current profiles when you read the scanner.

 

[hiegtx]

Thank you for the information. I never realized this was the case. I don't know why I cannot read my SDS200 and have it replace the favorites lists I had deleted but they are still in my radio. Well I take that back. Some of the complete favorites lists that I deleted but didn't edit at all what was in them, like the ones I created for a trip to Portland, Oregon a couple of years ago and I knew my friend wouldn't need them, replenished when I read my SDS200. But my primary favorites list and it seems like ones that I edited in the profile I was creating for the friend (and had deleted some stuff from) does not read from the radio with the name I originally had. None of those deleted talk groups and edits are showing up in Sentinel when I read my radio. It just shows the changed version that I edited for the friends profile and not what is actually in the radio.

Maybe I just need to completely delete everything from Sentinel and read my SDS200 or SDS100 again since they are almost identical in their programming? If I did that, do you think that Sentinel would be forced to read what is in my radio and enter it into a new profile exactly as it is in the radio? Because it's definitely not reading the radio as it is programmed right now, It's still showing in Sentinel the edited programming, and I can't understand what would keep it from doing that other than maybe something like the FL numbers are identical and it only picks what's already in Sentinel? I'm confusing myself the more I talk about this but I need to get it to actually read what's in my radio accurately so that I can be 95% back to the way I had Sentinel setup for the last few years. I definitely know now not to ever delete anything for any profile again unless I permanently don't want it in any of my programming. And I'm not going to be programming anybody else's radios from this point on.

I really appreciate your help and if you have any additional ideas on how to get it to read the data from my radio and put it into Sentinel correctly I'd be really greatful for that too.

I'm sorry if some of this is a little repetitive or messed up but I'm not where I can really see things real well and I did try to proofread this. It sounded a little jumbled to me as I made some changes

Brian
COMMSCAN

I would not completely delete all lists from Sentinel, then reconstitute them by reading from the scanners. There might be one or more that are not currently loaded in your scanner. When you try to read from the scanner, if a list with the same name as in the scanner also is currently in Sentinel, you will be prompted as to whether you want the list in Sentinel to be modified to match what is being read from the scanner, with the options to either skip the differing system, or copy it into a list with a new name.

For favorites lists I create to assist someone either with a starter Favorites list for a new scanner, or a list with certain errors corrected, I might, at some point, delete them from Sentinel, since they are for areas well out range for me, and possibly in areas I am unlikely to visit. For lists that I have created for my own use, I almost never fully delete them. Instead, I'll export the list into am *.hpe file, saved in an archive file on my PC. If I need to use one of them, or just want to review, I can easily import them back into Sentinel. Even the 'out of area' lists are not completely deleted, since after putting one together, I export it into an hpe file for emailing, or attaching to a post. So, I still have access to the,.