SENTINEL - True Custom Service Types

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Small gripe,. but been chewing at my gullet for some time..
And since SENTINEL is updating...

Service Types...

We gotta whole list to choose from, but some just dont apply.

For example..PUBLIC WORKS...can also cover the Highway/DOT..But in most places
they are 2 separate entities. RAILROAD...covers freight , commuter and passenger ..though
Subways,Buses and rapid transit are not really Railroad..nor is it Transportation..(taxi's ect.)

Just to point out...there area already differentiation's made for other Service types..
Hospitals and EMS are separate, to note one.

Resolution...Surely UNIDEN cannot for see every desired service type , However, Could they make
them open to use the CUSTOM tags, and truly give them custom , more fitting tags by making them editable..
 

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ur20v

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There's already a custom solution - custom favorite lists. I don't want to listen to Amtrak police or commuter train cops but they're listed under law enforcement and not railroads, so I have to make a custom list and leave them out. So what you're asking is more than just a Uniden thing, it's a RR database thing as well.
 

KE4ZNR

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As ur20v has pointed out Service Types are a RR creation and the same list of Service Types are used by both Uniden and Whistler. Your beef is how the Service Types are named here at RR.com.

Marshall KE4ZNR
 

Nortonterrier

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Would be nice to be able to change "custom" tags as needed thru sentinel or radio front panel.
 

ofd8001

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I think what the poster may be suggesting is the ability to create unique names for Service Types as in "State Police Dispatch". That would require a lot of minds coming together: RR database team (field character length), Uniden Software (sentinel) and Uniden Firmware folks.

Then the more flexibility you have, the more opportunities you have for data entry errors and things not working too good.
 

mfn002

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Here's my idea for this:

Keep the current service tags on the RRDB, but allow the "custom" service tags to be edited. That way, RR does not have to change anything on their end. It would be up to the person who downloads the data to edit/reassign the tags themselves, much like they would with the text tags.
 

ur20v

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And they would get to do it every time they downloaded a database update. Sounds like a fun time.
 

ofd8001

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Keep the current service tags on the RRDB, but allow the "custom" service tags to be edited. That way, RR does not have to change anything on their end. It would be up to the person who downloads the data to edit/reassign the tags themselves, much like they would with the text tags.

The other half of the Service Types is the scanner firmware. For your idea to work, the Service Type list would have to be "editable" and "addable". Otherwise if you used "Local Fire" as a Service Type in Sentinel, but did not have the corresponding Service Type in your scanner, the scanner would not recognize the newly created Service Type.

Also if you created a Favorites List you wanted to share with someone and it used Non Standard Service Types, those other folks would have to include such in their scanners.

So those would be considerations to overcome.
 

INDY72

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You want to reinvent the wheel? Why do you not just go into the FL, edit the alpha text descs so it shows what you want it to? Why create a nightmare that only ends in migraines?

To do what you want, this requires an completely redesigned firmware for the scanner, and sentinel, and ProSCAN, FreeSCAN, our database structure....
 

N9JIG

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Actually allowing the 8 "Custom x" Service Types names to be edited locally shouldn't affect anything other than the user himself. These are not used in the RadioReference database at all and only deal with user-created Favorites Lists.

If a future version of the radio firmware and Sentinel allowed it the user could edit these names for use on their radios. When the RRDB is updated it would not affect the renamed "Custom x" Favorites Lists as the radio does not diddle with the Favorites Lists.

This would however need to be dealt with by ProScan, Butel etc. so that they are able to edit Custom Favorites Lists names but that shouldn't be too hard for these guys, they are pretty smart.
 

mfn002

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Actually allowing the 8 "Custom x" Service Types names to be edited locally shouldn't affect anything other than the user himself. These are not used in the RadioReference database at all and only deal with user-created Favorites Lists.

If a future version of the radio firmware and Sentinel allowed it the user could edit these names for use on their radios. When the RRDB is updated it would not affect the renamed "Custom x" Favorites Lists as the radio does not diddle with the Favorites Lists.

This would however need to be dealt with by ProScan, Butel etc. so that they are able to edit Custom Favorites Lists names but that shouldn't be too hard for these guys, they are pretty smart.



Thanks. That’s what I was trying to say.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

Ubbe

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I think this is already discussed in another thread?

The service types are just numbers and the firmware converts them to text so only Uniden needs to make the custom x texts editable to make it usable. You can go into the arc536pro.exe file and edit the custom texts that starts at AC830 to sync them but it is a 5 minute job for Butelj to fix that anyhow. Proscan at 39EC60. The firmware file are encrypted and much more difficult to make any changes to by yourself.

/Ubbe
 

BigLebowski

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Actually allowing the 8 "Custom x" Service Types names to be edited locally shouldn't affect anything other than the user himself. These are not used in the RadioReference database at all and only deal with user-created Favorites Lists.

If a future version of the radio firmware and Sentinel allowed it the user could edit these names for use on their radios. When the RRDB is updated it would not affect the renamed "Custom x" Favorites Lists as the radio does not diddle with the Favorites Lists.

This would however need to be dealt with by ProScan, Butel etc. so that they are able to edit Custom Favorites Lists names but that shouldn't be too hard for these guys, they are pretty smart.

^^^ THIS ^^^

I classify snowplows and building maintenance, grass cutters, animal control, etc as "Public Works". When it snows, I want to listen to snowplows but not everything else so I reclassified them as "Custom 1". Would be nice to be able to name these according to my needs.
 

Voyager

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There will never be a perfect system.

How do you classify airport security? As Security or as Airport? (or as Law Enforcement)
The more classes you have, the more things will be able to fall into multiple categories.

I agree custom type tags would be nice, and very do-able.
 

Ubbe

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You can at least name the custom tags in Sentinel to keep track of them and not mix them up.
Use a hexeditor and change the words beginning at hex 247780 in the file BCDx36HP_Sentinel.exe
Sentinel 2.00 rev 05

/Ubbe
 

budevans

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I vote for Editable Custom Service Types

I agree with fourthhorseman, N9JIG and the others requesting user editable and assignable Custom Service Types.

Please correct me if I'm wrong. It's my belief that Service Types are data downloaded from RR and mapped into Sentinel. The 10 Custom Service Types in Sentinel are the creation of Uniden. As such they have no connection to and no impact on the RR database. They are two separate groups of data.

One last comment. Even if the current Custom Service Types came from RR. There's nothing preventing Uniden or Whistler from creating their own set of Custom Editable Service Types for use in their software.
 

kh6sz

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I'm with you guys who want to have customizable service tags. I really don't care about which one the RRDB puts in each system, I would like to have the "Custom 1" through "Custom 8" service types be able to say whatever you wish. I have several systems here I'm trying to figure out, so don't know what type to set it at. Of course they aren't in the RRDB anyway. I would like to add a "Maritime", "Casino", and "Unknown" to just name 3.

I learned from a recent trip with my 436 with GPS that you want to turn off the "Other", "Aircraft", and "Railroad" as I was avoiding this continuously while driving, and the problem was is everytime you moved into range of more stuff, the database would reload and you would have to avoid all the same ones again. It was a real PITA. That was my first real trip with the scanner hooked to GPS and was definately a learning experience!

Edit: The "Business" service type is way to broad and seems to be a catch-all, as well as "Other".
 

ofd8001

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I agree this may serve a good purpose, but the "cost" (as in user effort) of doing so may be a pain.


Users cannot edit the master database, so User Defined Service Types can't be added there. Even if you could do so, every time you updated the master database, you'd have to re-do your work because a whole new DB is written.


You can sort of do this if you have Favorites Lists. You could set a practice that Custom 1 means something, and Custom 2 something else.
 

hiegtx

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I agree this may serve a good purpose, but the "cost" (as in user effort) of doing so may be a pain.


Users cannot edit the master database, so User Defined Service Types can't be added there. Even if you could do so, every time you updated the master database, you'd have to re-do your work because a whole new DB is written.


You can sort of do this if you have Favorites Lists. You could set a practice that Custom 1 means something, and Custom 2 something else.
While it would be handy in some cases, implementing it might require time and effort than it appears on the surface.

My 'universe' of additional service types may well be different than that used by one or more other users. The database scanners are set to either scan, or ignore, service types depending on whether that specific type is enabled. If the type is not enabled, it's not scanned even if on the active Favorites list. So, you would need to both edit the types on your lists, and also feed that same list of user defined tags to the scanner to use.

Do you update the scanner firmware to, say, also treat the additional tags as automatically enabled, or somehow add them, on a per user basis, to whatever list of types the scanner has as default, so that you can select them as desired. That, of course, would require an accommodation in the Sentinel profile to allow entry of additional type tags, and set their status to enabled or disabled.

An alternative might be to add a notes or comments field to the TGID or channel field, with an option to have that as one of the items displayed.

While the extra field does not show up on the actual scanners they program, FreeSCAN has a 'comments' field that you can use. WIN500 has a Notes field that you can add to the columns of information displayed for a conventional or TGID object.
 
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