Freeware for BC250D/785/296/796

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AZScanner

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Started an interesting project this week and I'm wondering if there's any interest:

Does anyone besides me HATE the way Arc250 imports data from the webservice? To me the workflow should go like this:

1. Navigate to the webservice data you want to load.
2. Select ONE record you want to load out of the results.
3. Navigate to the channel or talkgroup that you want that ONE record to be loaded to.
4. Load the record into the scanner
5. Repeat steps 2 thru 4 for each record you want to load out of the results.

Then, when you want to load another agencies' data, you pull them up in the webservice, navigate to the appropriate spot and then do steps 2 thru 4 again. You repeat that for each agency or system you want to load into your scanner.

Now, I realize I'm all old school with wanting to program 1 channel/talkgroup at a time like we did back in the old days with the latest Police Call, but to me that makes so much more sense and keeps me more in control than Arc's way of picking a whole system/group at a whack and then the program loading them willy nilly however they got dumped into the DB. Anyone else agree?

Let me know because if so then I'll be a bit more polished in how I write this thing (right now it's hard coded to my scanner's baud and com port settings and looks pretty darn ugly) and I'll release it as a freebie for folks like me who stubbornly refuse to declare their $500 scanner "obsolete". It won't offer control or logging or make coleslaw and crinkle fries, hell it won't even save the programmed records to a file (what for?) - it will only allow you to program a 796 or similar scanner from the RR webservice. That's it. Anyway let me know if there's demand for such a thing and if so I'll turn you folks loose on it when done.

-AZ
 

Steve

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AZ

I am interested. I still use my "used" 250s and 296 a good bit.
I like to have "options" when doing the radio programming.


Steve
KD4LCY
KAF9087
 

AZScanner

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Here, I uploaded a screen shot of what I've got so far - it's not talking to the scanner yet, but the webservice part is about 99% done (see attachment). It still needs some code to allow you to pick a comm port and baud setting plus a way to configure the banks and scanlists. Should have an early beta ready this weekend sometime if the wife doesn't run me too ragged. :)

-AZ
 

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ka3jjz

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Probably not; less channels, no digital capability - there are some protocol differences.

However, there is the freeware 780 Programmer package that I understand is floating around - if you have Excel, this is likely the way to go. If whoever wrote that included RR import capability, the chances are it would be lots more popular. There are a few more on the 780 wiki article

To bring this back to topic, the wiki lists only a few freeware packages for the 250/785/296 and 796:

BearTKat
BuTel's BC250 Clone
IDTracker
Control Freq v2
sprog

Each scanner's wiki article has the links...good luck with the new freeware. AZScanner. If you can get that working, particularly with the RR web service, I'm sure it will be popular.

73 Mike
 
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