I received my Home Patrol today from Jeff at the Hamstation. Jeff contacted me quite a while ago when the HP release date became available to him, and advised me that I was at the top of the list if I wanted to be. I gave it a little thought and decided to take the plunge. Here's a shameless plug for Jeff as well; as late as yesterday after my HP was already enroute, Jeff asked me if I was aware of the deal for database admin's that Lindsay had available. Being a data admin for MA I told him that I was, and he offered to take the one he was sending me back so I could take advantage of the deal. I find that an excellent and refreshing approach in this day and age, and while many of you will call me a dummy (some do anyway) because of that offer he made I advised him that I intended to complete my transaction with him. Way to go Jeff.
Yes...shut up Scott, and get to the good stuff.
Pros
----
Absolutely phenomenal concept backed up by what appears to be extremely quality hardware. This radio has a fantastic receiver. I was receiving stations at work, particularly on UHF, that I don't hear with my 396XT. I use a Diamond Discone that is vent pipe mounted and somewhat blocked by a roof peak to the west, but many stations in that direction were received.
Absolutely brilliant and well thought out display. Touch screen navigation is intuitive and very easy to grasp. Drilling down into and getting out of menus is a cinch.
Audio seems crisp, although it did not get through my truck's vehicle noise with the windows down. I tried to connect it to my RS amplified speaker, which has decided that it will work only when it feels like it. I expect it would have cranked through it; I have it passing through an Alesis mixer here at SNE HQ and it's very loud and very clear. Haven't tried the line out yet. I haven't tried recording any audio with it yet.
Plug and play GPS...I didn't have to set any baud rate, it just worked. I use a Garmin GPS-18 "hockey puck" that already had a Uniden serial cable attached to it via a null modem adapter. I was almost immediately up and running with it, no fuss at all.
Firmware upgrade via Sentinel software is easy and painless. I already had Sentinel on my laptop so I didn't have to install it from the folder stored on HP's SD card. Incidentally HP interfaces just like a thumb drive would...it just shows up in Windows Explorer as another hard drive. Neat!
Range control seems pretty cut and dried, and of course is dependent on the RR database...
Cons
-----
Uniden didn't provide a male SMA to female BNC adapter. I know, picky, but remember that some of us do use outside antennas.
Shutting down whilst using batteries was kinda funky. I'll keep trying it, but I received a message about it going into standby after a minute of inactivity, which it did not do. I'm sure someone will correct me on this one. I finally got it to give me the shutdown screen and off it went.
Speaking of batteries....the HP wants me to charge mine...badly! As soon as I plug an external power source in it begins to nag me to charge them. And nag me...and nag me! So if you plug it in and walk away...expect this to happen. Honestly, I haven't checked the menu to see if it's a defeatable message.
I wish Uniden had figured out a mobile mount that was available immediately, or part of the package. Mine dangled precariously as I drove home today so I could test the GPS, which as mentioned worked superbly when it had the correct data to use....which leads me to the biggie...the wonderful, wild and wacky RR database.
The concept of this radio is incredible, but it will ultimately only ever be as good as the data here at RR. Now that I have it in my hands I fully understand the concept of how the database should be set up, both conventional and trunked, and I worked at the Cape Cod MA data to a point where I think it'll be helpful to all. I know other MA admins are working at it, and I hope this will be the case with the rest of the country. I will say that it was not as easy as reported to be to get this scanner up and running out of the box, for my area anyway, and this was due to an older database (7/2/10) being shipped that had many shortcomings. As a matter of fact until this evening my area was guilty of not being HP-1 friendly. This is obviously and clearly a glaring "issue" that will probably always plague an otherwise brilliant product. The old "garbage in, garbage out" adage comes to mind.
In the Sentinel software the database update is not as cut and dried as the firmware upgrade. It downloads the database fine, but it does require you to upload the data to the HP-1. No problem with experienced users, but it would be nice to see this streamlined for newbies.
Also, I find the layout of Sentinel very confusing. It's hard to tell what's a site, what's a group, etc. It would be nice to see this sorted better, but thankfully it's immediately available out of the box.
I had a few bumps in the road at the outset, but as Paul (UPMan) said in a message to me this afternoon, "think about how much more quickly you got past these bumps vs. when we went to DMA scanning from banked. If this is as bad as it gets, we are in great shape."
As long as the RR database is kept up to snuff nationwide....for what it's worth I wholeheartedly agree. I'd call this a very good start for a product with incredible potential...provided that the human intervention that it is so desperately dependent on, is maintained.
Enjoy!
Yes...shut up Scott, and get to the good stuff.
Pros
----
Absolutely phenomenal concept backed up by what appears to be extremely quality hardware. This radio has a fantastic receiver. I was receiving stations at work, particularly on UHF, that I don't hear with my 396XT. I use a Diamond Discone that is vent pipe mounted and somewhat blocked by a roof peak to the west, but many stations in that direction were received.
Absolutely brilliant and well thought out display. Touch screen navigation is intuitive and very easy to grasp. Drilling down into and getting out of menus is a cinch.
Audio seems crisp, although it did not get through my truck's vehicle noise with the windows down. I tried to connect it to my RS amplified speaker, which has decided that it will work only when it feels like it. I expect it would have cranked through it; I have it passing through an Alesis mixer here at SNE HQ and it's very loud and very clear. Haven't tried the line out yet. I haven't tried recording any audio with it yet.
Plug and play GPS...I didn't have to set any baud rate, it just worked. I use a Garmin GPS-18 "hockey puck" that already had a Uniden serial cable attached to it via a null modem adapter. I was almost immediately up and running with it, no fuss at all.
Firmware upgrade via Sentinel software is easy and painless. I already had Sentinel on my laptop so I didn't have to install it from the folder stored on HP's SD card. Incidentally HP interfaces just like a thumb drive would...it just shows up in Windows Explorer as another hard drive. Neat!
Range control seems pretty cut and dried, and of course is dependent on the RR database...
Cons
-----
Uniden didn't provide a male SMA to female BNC adapter. I know, picky, but remember that some of us do use outside antennas.
Shutting down whilst using batteries was kinda funky. I'll keep trying it, but I received a message about it going into standby after a minute of inactivity, which it did not do. I'm sure someone will correct me on this one. I finally got it to give me the shutdown screen and off it went.
Speaking of batteries....the HP wants me to charge mine...badly! As soon as I plug an external power source in it begins to nag me to charge them. And nag me...and nag me! So if you plug it in and walk away...expect this to happen. Honestly, I haven't checked the menu to see if it's a defeatable message.
I wish Uniden had figured out a mobile mount that was available immediately, or part of the package. Mine dangled precariously as I drove home today so I could test the GPS, which as mentioned worked superbly when it had the correct data to use....which leads me to the biggie...the wonderful, wild and wacky RR database.
The concept of this radio is incredible, but it will ultimately only ever be as good as the data here at RR. Now that I have it in my hands I fully understand the concept of how the database should be set up, both conventional and trunked, and I worked at the Cape Cod MA data to a point where I think it'll be helpful to all. I know other MA admins are working at it, and I hope this will be the case with the rest of the country. I will say that it was not as easy as reported to be to get this scanner up and running out of the box, for my area anyway, and this was due to an older database (7/2/10) being shipped that had many shortcomings. As a matter of fact until this evening my area was guilty of not being HP-1 friendly. This is obviously and clearly a glaring "issue" that will probably always plague an otherwise brilliant product. The old "garbage in, garbage out" adage comes to mind.
In the Sentinel software the database update is not as cut and dried as the firmware upgrade. It downloads the database fine, but it does require you to upload the data to the HP-1. No problem with experienced users, but it would be nice to see this streamlined for newbies.
Also, I find the layout of Sentinel very confusing. It's hard to tell what's a site, what's a group, etc. It would be nice to see this sorted better, but thankfully it's immediately available out of the box.
I had a few bumps in the road at the outset, but as Paul (UPMan) said in a message to me this afternoon, "think about how much more quickly you got past these bumps vs. when we went to DMA scanning from banked. If this is as bad as it gets, we are in great shape."
As long as the RR database is kept up to snuff nationwide....for what it's worth I wholeheartedly agree. I'd call this a very good start for a product with incredible potential...provided that the human intervention that it is so desperately dependent on, is maintained.
Enjoy!
