bpsmicro
Member
While replacing my 996T with a spiffy new 996XT, I came across a bug in the firmware in the XT series. It's not a really high priority, but annoying nonetheless (especially to anybody who uses metric).
Scenario: Set up a file with your favorite software (I use FreeScan) such that some site is set up to use the GPS. Enter your lat/long as usual, and select a range, say, 20 miles. FreeScan will show the range as "20 miles/32 km".
In the Scanner Settings, leave GPS Settings to *not* show metric for now (so you're working in miles). Upload your programming.
On the scanner itself, go to the site settings, LocationInfo part and bring up Range. Note it should say "20 mi", which is what you'd expect. All is well.
Now go into Settings|Set GPS Format|Set Unit. Choose "km". Back out.
Now go back to the LocationInfo for the site.
Results: on the 996T, the Range will now correctly show "32 km". This is what you'd expect (32km = 20mi).
On the 996XT (also confirmed on other XT scanners), Range *incorrectly* shows "20 km". So instead of just changing the display format, it's actually gone and changed how it interprets the Range setting.
I noticed this when I tweaked & uploaded my working 996T file to my new 996XT and noticed all the GPS enabling/disabling was out of whack. The PC software presumably just uploads the range values as numbers (eg. "20") and expects the scanner to interpret. The software always shows "miles" because the 'T' series always took the data as miles, and merely displayed the metric equivalent.
If this isn't something expected to be fixed in a firmware update at some point, the various software authors will want to know that they need to somehow use the scanner's GPS settings to pre-interpret the Range units. Or the various metric users will have to know that the XT series will interpret the uploaded ranges differently depending on the display format chose.
Brad.
Scenario: Set up a file with your favorite software (I use FreeScan) such that some site is set up to use the GPS. Enter your lat/long as usual, and select a range, say, 20 miles. FreeScan will show the range as "20 miles/32 km".
In the Scanner Settings, leave GPS Settings to *not* show metric for now (so you're working in miles). Upload your programming.
On the scanner itself, go to the site settings, LocationInfo part and bring up Range. Note it should say "20 mi", which is what you'd expect. All is well.
Now go into Settings|Set GPS Format|Set Unit. Choose "km". Back out.
Now go back to the LocationInfo for the site.
Results: on the 996T, the Range will now correctly show "32 km". This is what you'd expect (32km = 20mi).
On the 996XT (also confirmed on other XT scanners), Range *incorrectly* shows "20 km". So instead of just changing the display format, it's actually gone and changed how it interprets the Range setting.
I noticed this when I tweaked & uploaded my working 996T file to my new 996XT and noticed all the GPS enabling/disabling was out of whack. The PC software presumably just uploads the range values as numbers (eg. "20") and expects the scanner to interpret. The software always shows "miles" because the 'T' series always took the data as miles, and merely displayed the metric equivalent.
If this isn't something expected to be fixed in a firmware update at some point, the various software authors will want to know that they need to somehow use the scanner's GPS settings to pre-interpret the Range units. Or the various metric users will have to know that the XT series will interpret the uploaded ranges differently depending on the display format chose.
Brad.
