WS1088 feature requests

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Machria

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The purpose of this thread is to gather any feature requests that people may be looking for on the Whistler WS1080 and WS1088 scanners. Feel free to add your wish list below. I've already sent mine request to Whistler tech support for consideration.

I started a thread over in the general area, mostly directed toward Uniden since that is what I currently own, but DON'T bother using very often because the interface is just too difficult for the most part. You can read the thread, just skip the folks "attacking me" for asking/searching for a new feature I need and require in order to use a scanner.

http://forums.radioreference.com/general-scanning-discussion/347118-easier-use-scanner-3.html

Or just read this summary of what I am looking for. It seems Uniden has no interest in adding it. Whistler had this feature (or something similar) in the WS140, but apparently didn't include it on the WS1088. Perhaps they can consider adding it to the next firmware release.

Synopsys:
I live on Long Island, NY which is a fairly congested place. There are 100's if not 1000's of towns and villages, each with it's own FD, PD, Public safety, marine police, village utilities, plows, road crews.... we are also surrounded by water so we have many marine PD, CG's, town marine units.... Suffice it to say I have between 5000 and 6000 frequencies and talkgroups that I utilize/maintain in my scanner. 90% of these I rarely listen to. Normally I have a scanlist of my local PD, local FD, ambulance co.... and a few special interest things I listen to and simply scan that. No problems there.

The problem comes in when something occurs on one of these other towns or villages. Lets say a small plane crashes in a small town 20 miles from me. The village is on the same system and repeaters as my local town, so receptions is perfect. But the problem is, I can't find this little towns freq's in the midst of the other 6000 objects. I of course can't remember them all, or remember shortcut keys to all of them. So the only way I can get to them now is fire up my computer, look them up in my db, figure out where I stored them and then try and remember the ridiculous keystrokes required to get to that particular memory location. So I usually miss the event by the time I get everything fired up and tuned in...

Solution, add a TEXT Search to the scanner. Allow us to simply search for text in our text tags of all objects in memory. Similar to how you find a contact on your smart phone. You type "mar" and you get a list of Maria, Mary, Mark.... to select from. You select the one you want, and then call them. In this case, we select the Frequency or talkgroup and then tune to it and listen. That's it, easy as pie!

Now when a plane crashes in some obscure town or village, I can just type in a few letters of the village and get a list of objects in that village and select the one or ones I want and listen to them. Man would this make life easy!!!

I actually find it hard to believe this isn't standard on ALL scanners today. The way the interfaces are designed, we are forced to use scanners as if it were 1980 again. There's very little difference between todays scanner interfaces, and the interfaces we had 30+ years ago. They added more memory, digital trunk services, and some automation to help with programming and that is it. Not much if any progress on the usability side of scanners. Compare this to a phone. The way we use scanners today is equivalent to having to store all your contacts on your iPhone in memory locations, and remember each ones memory location instead of being given the ability to search by name/text. Instead of finding "Marks" phone number by typing "MAR" in contacts, you would be asked to Press [Call], [.] then enter in the memory number such as [137] to bring up "Marks" contact info. Sounds ridiculous right? Well, that is what we are doing on scanners essentially.

It's time we start making some progress on the usability side of scanners!
 

Machria

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While I can appreciate what you want to do, I don't see Uniden / Whistler adding this.

I've asked this many times of Uniden goign back 10 years on my 200xlt, I never got anything back from them. Whistler tech support got right back to me, and gave me the impression they are either already working on it, or will likely try and add it sometime in the future. They also indicated I'm not the first to request this feature. ;)

So far, +1 for Whistler, -10 for Uniden. :cool:
 

KevinC

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The purpose of this thread is to gather any feature requests that people may be looking for on the Whistler WS1080 and WS1088 scanners. Feel free to add your wish list below. I've already sent mine request to Whistler tech support for consideration.

I started a thread over in the general area, mostly directed toward Uniden since that is what I currently own, but DON'T bother using very often because the interface is just too difficult for the most part. You can read the thread, just skip the folks "attacking me" for asking/searching for a new feature I need and require in order to use a scanner.

http://forums.radioreference.com/general-scanning-discussion/347118-easier-use-scanner-3.html

Or just read this summary of what I am looking for. It seems Uniden has no interest in adding it. Whistler had this feature (or something similar) in the WS140, but apparently didn't include it on the WS1088. Perhaps they can consider adding it to the next firmware release.

Synopsys:
I live on Long Island, NY which is a fairly congested place. There are 100's if not 1000's of towns and villages, each with it's own FD, PD, Public safety, marine police, village utilities, plows, road crews.... we are also surrounded by water so we have many marine PD, CG's, town marine units.... Suffice it to say I have between 5000 and 6000 frequencies and talkgroups that I utilize/maintain in my scanner. 90% of these I rarely listen to. Normally I have a scanlist of my local PD, local FD, ambulance co.... and a few special interest things I listen to and simply scan that. No problems there.

The problem comes in when something occurs on one of these other towns or villages. Lets say a small plane crashes in a small town 20 miles from me. The village is on the same system and repeaters as my local town, so receptions is perfect. But the problem is, I can't find this little towns freq's in the midst of the other 6000 objects. I of course can't remember them all, or remember shortcut keys to all of them. So the only way I can get to them now is fire up my computer, look them up in my db, figure out where I stored them and then try and remember the ridiculous keystrokes required to get to that particular memory location. So I usually miss the event by the time I get everything fired up and tuned in...

Solution, add a TEXT Search to the scanner. Allow us to simply search for text in our text tags of all objects in memory. Similar to how you find a contact on your smart phone. You type "mar" and you get a list of Maria, Mary, Mark.... to select from. You select the one you want, and then call them. In this case, we select the Frequency or talkgroup and then tune to it and listen. That's it, easy as pie!

Now when a plane crashes in some obscure town or village, I can just type in a few letters of the village and get a list of objects in that village and select the one or ones I want and listen to them. Man would this make life easy!!!

I actually find it hard to believe this isn't standard on ALL scanners today. The way the interfaces are designed, we are forced to use scanners as if it were 1980 again. There's very little difference between todays scanner interfaces, and the interfaces we had 30+ years ago. They added more memory, digital trunk services, and some automation to help with programming and that is it. Not much if any progress on the usability side of scanners. Compare this to a phone. The way we use scanners today is equivalent to having to store all your contacts on your iPhone in memory locations, and remember each ones memory location instead of being given the ability to search by name/text. Instead of finding "Marks" phone number by typing "MAR" in contacts, you would be asked to Press [Call], [.] then enter in the memory number such as [137] to bring up "Marks" contact info. Sounds ridiculous right? Well, that is what we are doing on scanners essentially.

It's time we start making some progress on the usability side of scanners!

I'd suggest sending an email to the address in this thread...

http://forums.radioreference.com/wh...ture-requests-suggestions-see-email-link.html
 

KevinC

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Already did, after calling them this morning. Thanks! ;)

It was refreshing to see they cared, and were interested.

Good deal. Just wanted to be sure you knew about this so you could get your suggestions to them.
 

Machria

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Anymore feature requests for the WS1088? Anyone out there own this scanner currently? What are some things that bother you on it, or are anyoing, or just need tweeked to make it easier to use....?

I was hoping to get a few more good suggestions from current owners to send to Whistler. If we have a few really good improvements sent to the developers, that could be incentive to do a firmeware update if there not already working on one. ;)
 

Forts

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My biggest pet peeve? No automatic search & store while in Signal Stalker mode. Severely limits it's usefulness if you can't use it unattended.
 

QDP2012

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Well, we should rename this thread TRX-1 Feature Requests.

I ordered the TRX-1 instead of the 1088.

I "reported" your post above to the moderators asking them to change the thread-title accordingly.

Hope this helps,
 

sibbley

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I made a request to Whistler regarding the possibility of adding a mode selection under Limit Search. It would be nice to be able to search only for DMR or NXDN.
 

Machria

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I "reported" your post above to the moderators asking them to change the thread-title accordingly.

Hope this helps,

Thanks...


Speaking of the TRX, I don't see an "Easier to read" manual on that site for it? They haven't done one for it yet?
 

nawem

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On my Whistler WS1088, the display is almost impossible to read even at maximum contrast without using the back light. With the light, it is crystal clear.
 
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