Pi-Star 4.1.3/20210125

[w2xq]

Vince WA3ADI told me a Pi-Star update appeared yesterday: 4.1.3/20210125

The obvious change I see is in the Dashboard. Tap on a call... it goes to the RadioID database rather than QRZ.com. The update must have been posted after the overnight poll. I used the sudo commands to grab the update this morning. I have not looked at Github to see what else may have changed. Giddyup.

 

[w2xq]

Some users want to keep a QRZ lookup.

Pi-Star update 4.1.3/20210127 today adds the switch to swap around RadioID and QRZ. See RadioID.net vs. QRZ.com - Page 7 - forum.pistar.uk for an explanation; Andy will be "revisiting" the update tomorrow.

 

[N5KOU]

Who is Andy? QRZ wasn't broke and didn't need to be fixed. There is overall support to reverse this change.

 

[KE5MC]

Without a deep dive into this I would say Andy is not fixing QRZ, but addressing something to make HIS application work between QRZ and RadioID. Without Andy's work my Zumspot is... well let's say less than it is today.

 

[RBMTS]

Who is Andy?

Andy is "Mr Pi-Star". MW0MWZ

 

[N5KOU]

Well, I think I know what's happened here. 2 Things need to happen. 1.) a prompt that gives you a choice between the two. 2.) The call sign on radioid that has a hyper link to QRZ. What we were doing in 3 keystrokes now takes 6 keystrokes and a new browser window. Is that progress?

 

[KE5MC]

Any chance for your "Things need to happen" need to be taken to the link included. This has been a Dashboard (20210204) and firmware (4.1.4), but I doubt it addresses your concerns. A hyper link on RadioID would be up to them too support, but it did have limited personal data related to the CallSign I single clicked on in the Dashboard. Single click on (GPS) did take me to a new aprs.if that allowed me to select which one of a few related Callsigns I wanted to show direct. Each click on the Dashboard did take me to a new page, easy enough to close them or just let them stack up and wack them later. For me the GPS link to aprs.if filled in any data differently than QRZ, but it did satisfy my interest.

I recall callsign clicks previously took me to QRZ, but I did have a paid subscription and unlimited access to data. When I first subscribed I think the freebie limit was 15 lookups. If and I don't have any background information, QRZ is limiting free access to data and RadioID is not I can see making the change at the PiStar level and not going back.

forum.pistar.uk - Index page

 

[2IR473]

Keep in mind that QRZ is not the issuing authority of amateur radio licenses, but RadioID is the issuing authority of the required CCS-7 ID numbers. I know some hams that have chosen to not have their callsign and information appear on QRZ, so if you click on their callsigns within Pi-Star, the QRZ data is either not found or erroneously directed to a previous holder of that callsign. However, linking to the RadioID database would display accurate information.

For some reason, many American hams think that if you are not in QRZ’s database, you are not licensed, and fail to check the FCC database for someone’s license, since the FCC is the issuing authority for the U.S.

As noted above, Andy Taylor MW0MWZ of Pi-Star has provided the option for the user to choose where the hyperlink directs you, since many hams were upset by the change. If one is not happy with the free product offered by the Pi-Star crew, MMDVM is available on Github and one can compile their own installation. It’s good to have choices.

 

[tbailey1712]

As noted above, Andy Taylor MW0MWZ of Pi-Star has provided the option for the user to choose where the hyperlink directs you, since many hams were upset by the change. If one is not happy with the free product offered by the Pi-Star crew, MMDVM is available on Github and one can compile their own installation. It’s good to have choices.

This is the beauty of the product. I have been using callook.info as a replacement (and donated to the cause) because it returns JSON that can be used directly in the dashboard. Within /var/www/dashboard/mmdvmhost/lh.php, one can edit the values of the table and change where the link goes. For example, I'm using https://allook.info/$listElem[2]/text to create a hyperlink for a different source and not using QRZ.

I also added in another column to put the name and location that's returned from callook directly on the page. No need to click out....it's all right there. This was just some sloppy PHP hacking on my part, haven't yet forked it, but this is the basic approach once you make a call requesting the callsign details as JSON

Also added in a lookup to convert TG #'s into names. That's just a switch() statement in PHP that replaces the text value that gets displayed.

$calldata = json_decode($string); $name = $calldata->name; $location = $calldata->address->line2;