XTL/XTS5000 Limiting channel announcements to button press only?

[SCLead]

Hey folks,

I recently picked up an XTS5000 off ebay to play with. I used 2500s and 5000s for years at various jobs, but never really realized the versatility of these things! Obviously that means I was never exposed to programming them before..

Anyway, I’ve been able to work through the learning curve of getting it programmed to my liking, much thanks to information shared here. I was able to create and load one channel announcement, because I figured I’d demo the process on a trial before trying to load everything up. This leads me to my question:

Is it possible to have channel announcements in the radio, but NOT announce on a channel change? I have the top button programmed for channel announcement; ideally that button would trigger the only time you hear the announcement. I’ve read through what I believe to be the pertinent help files, and searched around online. I can find no suggestion that what I want to do IS possible, but I also can’t find anything saying it’s not. So I figured I’d bring the question to the experts here.

Thanks!

 

[ElroyJetson]

No. Never found a way to do that. And that would totally defeat the intent of channel announcement, which is so that you know what channel you have switched to, without having to look.

Keep the voice messages as short as possible. They really get annoying when they are three seconds long and you hear them every time you switch to that channel.

Most people quickly stop using CA after they have experimented with it. It's just an annoyance. It stops being cool in less than a day.

 

[SCLead]

I agree that it's horribly annoying. Which is why I would prefer to limit it to being an 'on demand' feature. I have, in the past, frequently switched between channels. 90%+ of the time, I can keep track by counting clicks, but once in a while you lose track for one reason or another. So I know I *don't* want announcements full time. But if there's an option to trigger them without having to look at the radio, I'll take that.

The 'intent' of Viagra was to treat high blood pressure. The 'intent' of bubble wrap was to be textured wallpaper. Not trying to be rude, but I'm not too worried if I'm defeating 'the intent' of channel announcements

 

[ElroyJetson]

There is no option to activate voice announcement by the press of a button other than to use a button assigned to channel, group, or system up/down. And then it works as you would anticipate, to announce the channel you are going to, with its appropriate assignment.

What you seek can not be done. It's just not there.

 

[SCLead]

I think we may be "communicating on different channels" here.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you wrote here:

There is no option to activate voice announcement by the press of a button other than to use a button assigned to channel, group, or system up/down.

I can say with absolute certainty that this statement is incorrect. I have a radio in my hand right now that I programmed the top button to provide only a channel announcement. This button performs no action except to play the channel announcement. So there most certainly is the option to activate voice announcement by the press of a button, without using buttons assigned to channels, groups, or system up/down.



So my question is not whether a channel announcement can be programmed to a button press. That much I have accomplished, and was quite easy, as you can see above.

The question is "can I disable announcements on channel changes, while leaving them loaded for use with this button press?"

I appreciate your replies, and I am fully confident you've probably forgotten more about these radios than I'll ever know. But if you don't actually know the answer, I'd appreciate the topic left open for other potential replies, rather than stating incorrect information as if it were fact.

 

[GTR8000]

No, it's not possible to have the Voice Announcements set to "on demand" only. As soon as you assign them to channels in the zones, the radio will always make the announcement.

Somewhat on-topic, in case you were curious...recent versions of APX firmware now features a "VA Tones" option under Enhanced Mute Tones Operation, which allows the Mute soft key press to suppress the voice announcements. Unfortunately this also suppresses the announcements even if you have a button specifically mapped to Channel Announcement. In other words, the button press does not override the mute condition, you simply get a low tone boop when you press it.

 

[SCLead]

Bummer. Thank you both for the input. Maybe I'll see if I can dig into hex editing anything to make it work the way I'd like, but that's punching far above my weight and highly unlikely to succeed prior to bricking the radio

Benefit is this radio is for fun, so if I do brick it, at least there's no comm guy to bring it back to

 

[ElroyJetson]

Yes, you can repeat the current announcement by an assigned button, that I knew but had never bothered to use that feature other than experimenting with it once. I didn't see that it'd do me any good so I reverted it immediately. I will admit that this possibility was far and away from being at the top of my memory stack.

But there's no way to have VA by that button press ONLY. It's in ADDITION to auto-announce on a channel selection, just as GTR8000 said.

As for a hex edit to make it do what you want, hex edits can generally work to extend the numerically definable range of a specific function written into the hardware of a radio, like to extend a bandsplit or the number of members in a list, but it can't change a function like THAT.

To do that you'd have to rewrite the firmware of the radio AND make a customized version of the CPS to support it. And good luck with that!!!

 

[SCLead]

As for a hex edit to make it do what you want, hex edits can generally work to extend the numerically definable range of a specific function written into the hardware of a radio, like to extend a bandsplit or the number of members in a list, but it can't change a function like THAT.

To do that you'd have to rewrite the firmware of the radio AND make a customized version of the CPS to support it. And good luck with that!!!

Dang, thanks for the info. Hacking firmware is something I've tried dabbling with in the past (other devices), but I'm not convinced my brain is wired right for it

Maybe I'll try to figure it out, but I wouldn't even know where to look for resources to begin to figure it out haha