New Feature Request - Configuration Profiles

Terry, W0VB

Recently I was exposed to a capability that allowed a user of a high end radio to plug a memory stick into another person's identical radio and instantly have the borrowed radio work as if it was their own radio back home. Upon departure, the memory stick is removed and the radio reverts back to its original setup. Since the complexity of our radio is increasing, this feature will allow new people to become immediately operational using one the preconfigured set-up profiles. For experienced people it provides a function to store and share different profiles that they use at their home station. In net: provide the option to load a pre-configured profile above and beyond the last stored profile (or the default factory standard configuration). (As a future benefit, when full remote operation is implemented, each user, or club member, would be able to load their own unique profile selection.) Terry, W0VB =============================== Additional discussion... With each release of the software.... we expand our knowledge and experience of what we know against "what could be possible". As new features and capabilities are added, the radio becomes incrementally more useful... and sometimes more complex. As additional people join the Flex Radio family of users.... and..... as more and more people hear about the quantum leap of "what is possible with this new radio".... the interest in this radio will continue to expand.... as will the perceived complexity. Facts (assertions): - within every group of this hobby... there are technology leaders and technology followers - people who are willing to invest their time and effort in pushing the envelope of progress - and people who want the "latest and greatest" but don't have the time, or desire, to experiment with the configuration selections to achieve their goal. I propose that a new function be added to store, and choose, configuration profiles. Hams are a social culture, we align ourselves within our own interest group(s): After all ... we communicate people. Imagine if each of the technical implementors of these groups would share their configured "best SmartSDR configuration" files with their fellow members.... I assert that this would simplify the setup for the new person and allow the "me too" people to join without investing a huge amount of their personal time. Interest areas - for example: Traffic handlers Contesters that set up their radio for specific contests - CW only - SSB only - RTTY - Digital modes - VHF contesters Rag chewers HF DXers VHF, and above operators and contesters SWLers those groups that meet daily, or weekly, at the same time and on same frequency the list goes on....... Imagine if we provided an easy way for the respected technology leaders, within these groups - to share and provide support to those interested in having the benefits of the Flex 6000 series, without the pain required to pick and choose what configuration options are needed to have it best fit their needs! This would allow anyone to purchase a 6000 series radio and instantly have it expertly configured for their area of interest. The only "tweaking" needed would be to replace the specific owners personal information..... much like installing any of the ham radio software applications used today. Let's be proactive and allow configurations to be shared among these radio interest groups.... thus allowing each respected technology leader to tailor it with what they know..... the immediate ability for: - chasing DX, spotting, and logging, working splits - working DXpeditions by having pan adapters and receivers on each of their published frequencies, spotting, and logging - Contesting - CW, spotting, and logging - Contesting - SSB, spotting, and logging - Contesting - RTTY, spotting, and logging - Contesting - Digital, spotting, and logging - Rag chewing, and logging - etc, etc, etc In effect - allow an expert to visit someone's shack (in person or via the many internet tools that share the others screen, mouse, and keyboard)..... plug a memory stick in (or load their configuration profile and allow another person's radio to duplicate the home station of the expert ..... and upon shut-down, the radio is back the way it was.... unaffected by the visit. The gigantic benefit is that we have hundreds, if not thousands, of "experts" providing sample setups for those wanting the best technology for their own specific interest need... without the perceived pain of learning, by trial and error. Two other benefits: 1.) This would allow the radio to ship with several simple "initial setups" for new users to choose at startup.... the radio could - for example - start with one panadapter AND one receiver for: (or two panadapters and two receive slices) SSB CW Digital mode SWL FM Repeater operation on HF and VHF etc. People would be able to see how each specific example performs right out of the box..... include these configurations with the installation CD. ** This might minimize the need for the "One Cent Tour". 2.) For trouble shooting, a complete environment could be captured for Flex support to "duplicate the error" and find a fix. ===========================

philip.theis

Hey Terry, did you just sit down and write that? Some good ideas, I've got to digest it all.

Steve - K5FR

Excellent thoughts Terry.

Mike W8MM

From the "Radio Persistence" thread: Mike - W8MM 1 day ago My company's product has a smartphone app that (among other things) can be used to program various settings and options of the hardware. The settings are persistently stored in the hardware (NVRAM). The app has a feature called "Profiles" that stores different setups under user-defined names. The "Profiles" are available in a drop-down box format that makes them easy to chose among. The user simply sets the features desired and saves it to a "Profile" and makes up a descriptive name for it, like: "Ohio highway driving", or "Commuting", etc. The app maintains the last used "Profile" in the smartphone, independent of the hardware. On power up or when launching the app, the app connects to the hardware and attempts to assert the last used "Profile", the app checks the feature/settings state of the hardware. If the app finds disagreement between the profile selected and the hardware state, it asks the user whether to change the hardware to the new profile or should it save the current hardware setup to a new "profile", or opt out and proceed with no changes to the hardware state. Another cool feature is the ability to "export" "Profiles" from the app to a friend by e-mail so they can try the settings by importing them to their hardware as a "Profile". http://a2.mzstatic.com/us/r1000/039/P... http://a3.mzstatic.com/us/r1000/005/P... For Flex-6K radios, favorite operating personalities stored for recall should be maintained in the SmartSDR files by local or remote users. The Flex-6000 hardware should maintain a local copy of last used settings in its persistence memory. Perhaps remote users should get a pop-up that says "You are about to change the settings of the remote radio. Please confirm this action.", whereas local users could assert their settings directly with one click. The exporting of radio setup files among users could be a very cool way to share knowledge in Flex-space.