Need help in exporting from FreeScan to Sentinel

[CorwinScansNM]

I am having troubles with not knowing or figuring out how to easily export my own custom conventional frequency database from FreeScan to Sentinel. I see that with FreeScan I can only export to a CSV file format & then in Sentinel, I see that I can only import from a hpe file & no other type.

Can anybody here help me out in figuring out the easiest & best way to make this possible? Right now it is not seeming very possible at all even after looking over some other older threads on Radio Reference from a few years ago that were talking about this subject. It still did not help me out or make it work for me. Just plain confusing for me with the copy, paste & Microsoft Excel way of doing this.

 

[hiegtx]

I am having troubles with not knowing or figuring out how to easily export my own custom conventional frequency database from FreeScan to Sentinel. I see that with FreeScan I can only export to a CSV file format & then in Sentinel, I see that I can only import from a hpe file & no other type.

Can anybody here help me out in figuring out the easiest & best way to make this possible? Right now it is not seeming very possible at all even after looking over some other older threads on Radio Reference from a few years ago that were talking about this subject. It still did not help me out or make it work for me. Just plain confusing for me with the copy, paste & Microsoft Excel way of doing this.

If you export to a csv file, then you can copy & paste a column at a time into Sentinel. If you are dealing with the Sentinel version for the 436/536HP, you might look at ARC-XT. I believe you can copy and paste into its editor. (I don't use that program, but based on the description, it appears possible.)

I would also suggest that you look at the database for your frequencies of interest. Unless you are dealing with a batch that are not in the RRDB, you can append from the main database in Sentinel to a Favorites list, then quickly discard the items that do not interest you.

 

[marksmith]

I am having troubles with not knowing or figuring out how to easily export my own custom conventional frequency database from FreeScan to Sentinel. I see that with FreeScan I can only export to a CSV file format & then in Sentinel, I see that I can only import from a hpe file & no other type.

Can anybody here help me out in figuring out the easiest & best way to make this possible? Right now it is not seeming very possible at all even after looking over some other older threads on Radio Reference from a few years ago that were talking about this subject. It still did not help me out or make it work for me. Just plain confusing for me with the copy, paste & Microsoft Excel way of doing this.

By the time you go thru all the conversions, you will then have an incomplete mess.

The whole point of Sentinel is that it's easy.
Whatever you did in Freescan can be duplicated (in the Sentinel native file format) very quickly and easily by just creating a favorites list, and then going into the full database and right click appending to your list.

You will be done, in the proper Sentinel format, in short order. A hell of a lot quicker than exporting Freescan and then trying to reorder and fix that file.

Mark
536/436/ws1095/996p2/996xt/325p2/396xt/psr800/396t/HP-1/HP-2 & others

 

[ofd8001]

I'm pretty much in agreement with the above. The file structure format for scanners of the "Freescan scheme" are different than file structure format for the "Sentinel scheme". So trying to convert is way too time consuming and fraught with error possibilities.

If it was me, I'd go through the process of creating a Favorites List with Sentinel. If I wanted the layout of channels in Departments to match what I have in FreeScan, I would do the following:

Have both programs open at the same time (source scanner in FreeScan, target scanner in Sentinel). Then I'd use the highlight/copy function (just like a spreadsheet program) to copy the "stuff" from my source scanner, then in Sentinel add a new channel and paste the clipboard contents in it. Then I'd delete duplicate/unwanted entries that were there from the Favorites List creation process.

 

[ProScan]

Another way is with my ProScan that's has a fully functional 30 day trial. Assuming you are using a BCDx36HP scanner type.

1. Install, run, & set the serial comms.
2. Set the scanner type to your type of DMA scanner.
3. Download the scanner data into ProScan.
4. Start another instance of ProScan.
5. Set scanner type to BCD436HP or BCD536HP
6. Import the ProScan DMA database file

 

[marksmith]

If you have a new scanner thst uses Sentinel, it makes a lot of sense to use Sentinel to set it up. You should learn Sentinel. It's very quick and easy once you have some familiarity.

1. You will need to use Sentinel to do any firmware updates.

2. Database updates are done using Sentinel.

3. Whole you can look through the RR website for things, Sentinel gas the full database available to you, and you csn create favorites lists very quickly once you are familiar with how it works. And it's much quicker and easier than Freescan. I use both.

Mark
536/436/ws1095/996p2/996xt/325p2/396xt/psr800/396t/HP-1/HP-2 & others