How to edit radio ID's using Excel for the BCDx36HP scanners

[jeremyzone]

The Sentinel software can be a pain to modify large chunks of data. The following steps can be used to easily modify the information using Microsoft Excel.

After using Unitrunker to monitor my local trunked radio system, I found that the radio ID's (RIDs) were allocated in blocks by agency or department. I was looking for a way to tag ranges of radio ID's but the Uniden Sentinel software requires you to plug in the RIDs one at a time. Similarly, if you wanted to change alert values on a big chunk of RID's, it might be faster to modify the information using Excel using the below steps. Some third-party software solutions like Butel Arcpatrol may offer a more user friendly interface but I don't believe they allow you to use formulas and other fancy stuff like the real Excel. Plus they cost money!

Here is a series of steps to manage RID's in Excel. Using Excel, you can perform a wide variety of modifications to your radio IDs. This morning, I used these steps to add tags for 5k RIDs.

1. Find the right Favorites List .hpd file and open using Notepad
Navigate to your \Documents\Uniden\BCDx36HP\ folder
Each Favorites List is saved as a separate file using the format f_0000xx.hpd. If you have a lot of Favorites Lists, it is easy to find the right one by opening the f_list.cfg file using Notepad to associate the name along with file name for the .hpd file you want to open.
Make a backup of this .hpd file in case you accidentally screw up the file in later steps!!

2. Find the section of the file dealing with RID's by looking for the lines starting with "UnitIds"
These lines started on line 5 of my file. Each RID has its own line.

(If you don't have any RIDs saved on this Favorites List, then it is probably a good idea to open Sentinel, add a RID using the Favorites List Editor, save the Favorites List, and reopen the .hpd file. That way, you will have the correct format and location of the UnitIds lines)
Select all the "UnitIds" lines and copy them.

3. Open a new Excel document and paste. Use Excel to add or modify your RIDs
The structure of the tab-delimited UnitIds lines will now be easier to see in the spreadsheet view of Excel.

Most of the fields are self-explanatory, but here goes an explanation anyway:
The first field (column A in Excel) should always be "UnitIds"
The second field (column B) is blank (will be interpreted as a tab later)
The third field (column C) is also blank
The fourth field (column D) is the tag you'd like to display on your scanner (called Unit ID Name in Sentinel)
The fifth field (column E) is the RID itself (called Unit ID in Sentinel)
The sixth field (column F) is Alert Tone (acceptable values are "Off" or numbers "1-9")
The seventh field (column G) is the Alert Tone Volume (acceptable values are "Auto" or numbers "1-15")
The eighth field (column H) is the Alert Light Color (acceptable values are "Off", "Blue", "Red", "Magenta", "Green", "Cyan", "Yellow", or "White")
The ninth field (column I) is the Alert Light Pattern (acceptable values are "On", "Slow Blink", or "Fast Blink")

You may now use Excel to modify these fields. Since the radio shop for my city assigns RIDs in blocks, I added all the RIDs for the block. I also wanted to still be able to uniquely ID each tag so I can go back and add more info to the tag later. Therefore, I added the last 5 digits of the RID to the name using the Excel RIGHT formula.

Here's an example:



I also had a few duplicates. I cleaned them up by highlighting the RID column, selecting "Conditional Formatting">"Highlight cell rules">"Duplicate Values", then manually scrolling through the list to eliminate duplicates.

4. When done in Excel, use "Save as..">"Other Formats">"Text (tab delimited)"
Save the RIDs using a file name you will remember
(These exact steps apply to Excel 2007 in Windows, but similar options can be found on other Excel versions)

5. Open the .txt file you just created in Excel using Notepad, copy and paste the UnitIds lines to replace the UnitIds lines in the f_0000xx.hpd file identified in Step 1, and save the .hpd file
If you were successful, you should see all your RIDs when you reopen Sentinel

 

[Jay911]

Can I make a few steps easier for you?

You can copy and paste directly from the grid view in Sentinel's Favorites List Editor. Just mark the area you want to copy, Ctrl+C, and Ctrl+V it into Excel. It doesn't come with headers, but you can manually add them if you so desire - just remember not to paste them back in to Sentinel when you're done manipulating data. And the data is presented in the format Sentinel expects, to boot (example: "Tone=4 / Volume=Auto" and "Red / Fast Blink" for the Alert Tone and Alert Light fields on a talkgroup).

When pasting data back into Sentinel, there are a couple of tricks to remember.

(1) You need at least one row to paste into if you don't have one already. Just hit the green plus sign to add a row.

(2) Sentinel will expand your favorites list as necessary to add the rows you have to paste. In some rare occasions, Sentinel will tell you that the "paste operation failed" because "the clipboard contents cannot be pasted here. Make sure the destination area is as large as the information you want to paste, or select only a single cell where you want to paste". Usually I find this happens when you select an entire row (line) in Sentinel instead of a single cell, when you want to paste. Just select the upper left most cell (box) you want to paste into, and Sentinel will expand the table as necessary.

(3) If you have data that is incompatible with the field it's being pasted into, Sentinel will tell you. Example: "You cannot paste "EMS-Talk" to Audio Type (row 4, column 4)". This probably means you've got a column offset in your Excel sheet - maybe you accidentally dropped a column while copying it over - or something is misspelled.

(Bonus) You don't even need the whole row/line of data to paste into Sentinel. All the columns you don't paste will be set to the default. For example you could have just two columns, one of radio aliases and one of radio IDs, and paste it in, and the alert audio and alert light will default to "Off" for each. Furthermore, once you do have things in the favorites list editor, you can copy a cell and paste it down the entire list, just like in Excel. Let's say you wanted to change the delay value on a talkgroup from the default "2sec" to "5sec". Change the first one to "5sec", highlight it, Ctrl+C, then highlight all the delay values below it (Shift+cursor down, click & drag, whatever method suits your fancy). Ctrl+V sets them all to "5sec".

 

[ofd8001]

+1 on what Jay says. . .

Also if you Radio IDs in a spreadsheet form that you want to import, this method works too (as in Radio IDs not previously programmed in the scanner).

Should you have Radio IDs from another scanner format (such as a x96) having the "i" preceding the Radio ID number, you can do some Excel magic to drop that "i" and import into Sentinel.

 

[marksmith]

I use Unitrunker to identify the user ids, then I do a file export out of unitrunker and open that in excel.

I can copy/paste, concatenate, or otherwise manipulate the data, and then when I have the two columns (id, description) the way I want them, I copy from excel and paste to sentinal as Jay indicates.

For ezscan, I copy and then paste to a text file, then import the text file to ezscan in the trunked systems tab.

I can update 10,000 id's from a system in Unitrunker to Sentinel in about 5-6 minutes, presuming only a couple minutes of data massage in excel.

Also keep in mind that the 436/536 flavor of Sentinel limits a favorites list to 1mb. If you have a system with a lot of ids, best to put in separate favorites list or at least one with not much other stuff. You can max out.

Mark
WS1095/536/436/996P2/HP1e/HP2e/996XT/325P2/396XT/PRO668/PSR800/PRO652

 

[nosoup4u]

If you have a machine with linux on it, or install cygwin on your windows machine, you can easily extract all the ID's to a text file. Copy your Unitrunker.xml to a directory and run these commands below, or run it from a script.

This assumes you only have 1 system in your Unitrunker.xml and you have taken the time to tag all your radio ID's. The last line will discard anything that you have not tagged.

grep User Unitrunker.xml > id.out
paste <(cut -d "\"" -f 4 id.out) <(cut -d "\"" -f 2 id.out) > id1.out
grep -Ev '00FF00|#' id1.out > ids.txt

I also have a way of automatically importing the radio ID's into your Home Patrol or x36 favorite list, I can post an example of that as well if anyone is interested.

 

[Muffin]

Is there not an even easier way of doing this with the Sentinel software? I am used to the PRO668 software which seems to be so much more user-friendly! I don't have to export data to Excel to make any edits and then import the file back - with the PRO668 software, once the file is imported from the RRDB I can go into it and make any edits I choose, save it and dump it to the radio. I would like to change (rename) the TG IDs in Sentinel but am having a B*#@h of a time! It really shouldn't be so convoluded. I'd like to continue to use the Sentinel software as that is the software specifically designed for the radio, but after reading pretty much all the threads in the Uniden Forum I'm still struggling with this one :-s

Did I miss something obvious?

Muffin

 

[Jay911]

Is there not an even easier way of doing this with the Sentinel software? [ker-snip] I would like to change (rename) the TG IDs in Sentinel but am having a B*#@h of a time!

What are you having trouble with? Once you get into the Favorites List Editor (Ctrl+2 or the "star with pencil" icon), you can type right over the talkgroup aliases in your favorites lists.

 

[Muffin]

What are you having trouble with? Once you get into the Favorites List Editor (Ctrl+2 or the "star with pencil" icon), you can type right over the talkgroup aliases in your favorites lists.

I will try again. Just new to the software. Thanks Jay

Sent from Muffin via Tapatalk

 

[Jay911]

If you're trying to edit the main database directly, that won't work. The DB is intended to be read-only and a snapshot of the RRDB, updated once a week (Uniden downloads it from RR Sunday nights and makes it available Monday mornings - in fact in about an hour from now, plus or minus the daylight saving time difference).

When you do edit the favorite list of your choice, don't forget to say "yes" to the save question when you exit the editor, and then "send to scanner" after that so the radio is updated (or else your changes will only be in the favorite list stored on your computer).

 

[phask]

To add - there also is a seperate tab for Unit ID's if you are unaware.

 

[Muffin]

To add - there also is a seperate tab for Unit ID's if you are unaware.

Thanks guys. I will try again

Sent from Muffin via Tapatalk

 

[marksmith]

Is there not an even easier way of doing this with the Sentinel software? I am used to the PRO668 software which seems to be so much more user-friendly! I don't have to export data to Excel to make any edits and then import the file back - with the PRO668 software, once the file is imported from the RRDB I can go into it and make any edits I choose, save it and dump it to the radio. I would like to change (rename) the TG IDs in Sentinel but am having a B*#@h of a time! It really shouldn't be so convoluded. I'd like to continue to use the Sentinel software as that is the software specifically designed for the radio, but after reading pretty much all the threads in the Uniden Forum I'm still struggling with this one :-s

Did I miss something obvious?

Muffin

We were talking about radio ID'S which are NOT in the RR database. I handle the IScan stuff same as EZscan. Same program an certainly no easier than Sentinel.

Mark
WS1095/536/436/996P2/HP1e/HP2e/996XT/325P2/396XT/PRO668/PSR800/PRO652

 

[Muffin]

We were talking about radio ID'S which are NOT in the RR database. I handle the IScan stuff same as EZscan. Same program an certainly no easier than Sentinel.

Mark
WS1095/536/436/996P2/HP1e/HP2e/996XT/325P2/396XT/PRO668/PSR800/PRO652

Guess it's all what you're used to / familiar with

Sent from Muffin via Tapatalk