Uniden SDS 100 Favorites Lists and Quick Keys

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Plantdoc

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-Mine I am sure is a very elementary issue for those creatures that live in the modern scanner product world, and I apologize in advance for bothering the forum. I have no complaint about reception or general operation of this Uniden SDS 100 unit. Of course, the original antenna that came with it will not pick up a child's walkie talkie across the street, but that seems to be the way of modern scanners, but I have a disc cone antenna in the attic with RG-8 coax and can get stations 50 miles and more from here with this scanner. Also, I am lucky to be only 6 miles from Raleigh Durham airport so I get all that aviation action and pretty much the same reception from another antenna in my attic that I made one afternoon out of two aluminum 16 inch pizza pans from the dollar store soldered together to a coax lead. Finally, I really do like the visibility of the screen on the SDS 100, it is really cool.The controls aren't too bad once you play with them a little bit. Not in the same universe as an IPAD, but not too bad.

But my real issue is that my new SDS 100 Scanner does not seem to accept ALL settings programmed in Sentenel and then subsequently written to the scanner using the latest (September 2018) Sentinel software; yes, I selected the SDS100 in Sentinel and in Tools as the target device in the software (though nothing I have seen anywhere says to do this).

-Specifically, the scanner doesn't recognize quick key programming programmed in Sentinel as well as certain other general scanner settings you are supposed to be able to set in Sentinel and presumably not have to manually reprogram manually using the scanner menu every time you update/try to add a favorites list, etc using Sentinel. But now, every time I write to scanner from Sentinel, all my manual settings like turning key beep off (really important when you have a wife), and the "infiinite" settling so that the screen is not constantly timing out after 15 seconds and stuff like that which I set manually from the scanner are wiped back to defaults when I write to scanner from Sentinel, even when I have previously programmed them in Sentinel to be the same settings that I desire to have.

-And even after programming quick keys to associate with Favorite lists manually (from Sentinel OR the scanner menu), when hitting the desired quick key while scanning, pressing the quick key just toggles on/off the quick keys and does not bring up the desired associated Favorites List for scanning.(Maybe it isn't supposed to but they tell me is it supposed to).

-BUT, Favorite List and their frequencies programmed in Sentinel DO however copy over from Sentinel and DO show up in the Scanner even though they have to be MANUALLY selected for scanning using the scanner menu settings, BUT the respective favorites lists are NOT brought up when the assigned Quick Keys on the scanner are pressed. Even the custom boot up screen message copies over just fine from Sentinel (which I could care less about).

In short, Sentinel and my SDS100 do not seem to be consistently talking to one another at ALL levels, just some of them and what they are I can only determine by trial and error.

Maybe one of you scanner freaks can show me what programming aspect of this product I have overlooked,misinterpreted, or simply not correctly figured out and make me yet be glad I bought this unit. It seems like quick key access to a Favorites List should not be this hard. It wasn't in the older scanners. The worst part with the older scanners was simply typing in the frequencies into your bank. While I am a plant doctor (truly), I don't claim to be a very good debugger of prematurely released beta software if that is what is going on here. Or maybe I am just too old to be trying to figure out how to use a device like this and should dump it on EBAY and work on other things I understand, and have been able to make work, like SDR, where I can receive every frequency in the radio spectrum on my Windows 10 laptop with my disc cone antenna, it's just that a nice little scanner radio is easier to carry around the house and in the car than a laptop. And the Radio Reference database concept is truly impressive. In the old days, while those old scanners worked perfectly, looking up and manually keying in all those frequencies was tedious!!

Thank you in advance for any advice or references or Wikis or forums containing useful documentation on how to drill into the every day operational details of the Uniden SDS100, especially the issue I've detailed. There don't seem to be many sources of useful information that I can find at this time anyway.

Best, Jim
 

ofd8001

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I have not seen this behavior with my SDS 100. Unfortunately it is difficult to post all of your program files so we can look at them. These would include your Favorites List and Profile files.


My gut feeling is something is amiss in your Profile. Whether you have made the changes, but not saved the file, or written this file to the scanner could be an issue. This is reinforced by when you manually make the changes in the scanner, but do a read/write process in Sentinel those changes vanish. Sentinel will take those settings from the profile and overwrite them.


I suggest, without the scanner connected, you use Sentinel and do a Save As and give the current profile a new name, such as Test. Then make one change, such as to the Opening Message, save the profile and connect/write to the scanner to see if this "takes".


Once you get that figured out, you should be able to proceed with everything else.
 
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