Freescan: FreeSCAN Open Source Project - Developers Wanted!

[K7MFC]

FreeSCAN is a popular free application for programming the Uniden SC230, BC246T, UBC3500XLT, BR330T, BCD396T, BC346XT(C), BCD396XT, BCT15X, BCD996XT, BCT15 and BCD996T, and BCD996P2 scanners. The original author, Assaf Shool/Sixpot Software, has decided to open source the project, stating he "didn't have time to maintain it anymore and feel the community could do a better job." FreeSCAN was released under the GNU General Public License, which allows anyone the freedom to run, study, share and modify the software. I have forked the original source code, and hosted it here:

GitHub - mfcallahan/FreeSCAN: FreeSCAN is free and open source software for programming Uniden DMA scanners.

FreeSCAN is free and open source software for programming Uniden DMA scanners. - GitHub - mfcallahan/FreeSCAN: FreeSCAN is free and open source software for programming Uniden DMA scanners.

github.com

As a happy user of FreeSCAN and proponent of free and open source software, I would like to help keep this project alive so I'm hosting the source code in a new public repository on GitHub in order to properly track issues and progress. I would like to invite any fellow .NET developers to participate in this open source project along with myself. As of this time there are no plans to add any new features, fix any bugs, or add support for additional scanners/communication modes. The first steps are purely exploratory - learning the code base and determining the viability of continuing down this road. I have a full-time software development job that takes most of my coding time, so this would be something purely done in my free time. Feel free to leave any feedback here, or if you are a developer, clone the repo and poke around!

 

[Scan125]

My problem with getting more involved with Freescan is that it supports no scanners that I personally have.

People may not think that this is a problem but if you can't test code changes yourself before pushing them up the tree then it is ever so easy to really mess things up.

Also my Scan125, Scan75 and DriveR8 and other projects keep me pretty much fully engaged.

 

[Scan125]

The issue is not just converting the VB code to C#, the complexity lies in the need to refactor and re-architect the entire application.

Indeed. In lay man's terms we are talking about changing the foundations of a multi-rise building. On the outside it just looks like a bunch of floors apparently neatly stacked upon each other but when you get into the building internals you have firewalls, escape routes, lift shafts, high load (swimming pool, plant equipment, lift machinery, etc.). You will also find those "last thought, ooops", work arounds that are crudely grafted into/onto the best possible position on the current design.

This is why, as per my other post, it is incedibly important to any developer to have a test platform on which to validate your work.