Still lacking persistence in v1.7

G8ZPX

VOX and MON state still do no persist beyond a power cycle, regardless of profile.

Tim - W4TME

Steven, please take no offense, but a post that has only a blanket statement with no supporting detail is not constructive nor provides any possibility that we can address it effectatively.  It is like going to the doctor and saying "I'm sick" but not providing any information about your symptoms or allowing to be examined.

If there is a specific issue that you want to bring up, please do so by providing some context and detail.  Thank you.

David

Persistence in general is unchanged from my experience. Was this supposed to be addressed in the v1.7 since the focus was more for Maestro?

Hopefully with Maestro delivered we will see SmartSDR enhancements everyone can take advantage of. Looking forward to the WAN/secured Internet access and not having to setup a VPN as a solution.

Michael Coslo

Steven - am I correct tht you want MOX an VOX to  remain selected after a reboot? What you want, I would call a big problem.

dlwarnberg

He said "MON" not MOX... but I agree VOX could cause issues IMO.

Tim - W4TME

What in particular was supposed to be addressed? 

G8ZPX

Tim, I did edit the post about 30 seconds later. For some reason it vanished before I could add the detail to the subject.

To be clear neither the MON nor the VOX state will persist beyond a reboot.

Yes, I know that some might argue that VOX being persistent might cause QRM problems, but to be frank I want my software to stay configured the way I, the operator wants it configured. Just like it would in a non-SDR design.

If I had a knobs-&-dials that did this I'd send it back for repair if it kept losing settings every time I powered off.

Surely, the answer is to allow a set of global user preferences (accessed only via the radio setup menu). That way I am able to make my own decisions as to what I feel happy with instead of having no say in the matter.

Whilst talking about user preferences, I would like to see the power-state be persistent too, i.e. if I pull the plug on the PSU and then re-apply power some days later, I want the radio to be in the same state that I left it, instead of being powered-down until manual intervention.

Steve (N9SKM)

You can make the rado so it powers on whenever power is applied if that makes any difference. The guys were discussing it in a thread that deals with lan relays.

Tim - W4TME

@Steven - no problem on the vanishing post.  Thank you for clarifying.

I now better understand your request.  There are two ways to do persistence; by profile or by entire radio state at power off. The former is more flexible, but a little more inconvenient as you have to save the profiles before powering down.  The later is convenient but provides limited flexibility.  The two are not mutually exclusive but together can result in some interesting initial condition situations that have to be handled systematically.

Recalling radio state on a dirty shutdown is more of a challenge.  The 6000 is a multi-processor embedded system with a disk device that has a finite number of disk writes.  This means we cannot constantly write out the radio state to disk every time a parameter is saved.  Other than taxing the micro SD card, it will slow down the responsiveness of the radio because a disk write is a blocking action.

We do have a development task to look at the persistence /profile model as it is implemented to see if it can be improved.  Your concerns are included in the task detail.

For your specific concern, MON and VOX are stored in the Mic Profile.  So you need to save the mic profiles you use when these controls are enabled.  If the Mic profile is linked to the Global profile, when it loads, the VOX and MON on/off state should be retained.  And the Mic profiles are user accessible from the top level of the SmartSDR console, so you do not need to use the Profile Manager to recall the state of these controls.

G8ZPX

Tim,

I just tested your profile example. I set MOX and VOX to on. I then saved a mic profile. Shutdown the radio, shut down SSDR and restart both. The Same Mic profile is loaded upon restart but the MOX and VOX have not persisted.

Regarding the dirty shutdown. I could live with that, and understand the SD issues that make that a bad idea. I therefore suggest the global ability to determine if the radio comes-up by default, or not, i.e to determine the POST behavior without manual intervention.

I have spent over 30 years in IT tech support (MCSE) and can tell you that systems that don't revert to previous machine state are very bad news for both support staff and customer relations.

Tim - W4TME

just tested your profile example. I set MOX and VOX to on. I then saved a mic profile. Shutdown the radio, shut down SSDR and restart both. The Same Mic profile is loaded upon restart but the MOX and VOX have not persisted.

If you select the global profile that the mic profile is linked to, does that restore the VOX and MON on state?

G8ZPX

No!  and to be sure I just saved a Global, a Transmit and a Microphone profile all with the MOX and VOX on at the time. Reboot and made no difference. A Bug?

David

I had a case open previously that explained them. It was closed has being compiled in the upcoming release fixes.

I can try to make a video demonstrating. Most of it happens using the Band switcher the options in the RX (right panel) will get lost moving back and forth between the bands. If on 40 and the NB,NR, WNB and AGC are set one way and switch to another band with them set differently but don't have to be when I go back to the 40 those setting may be different then how they were left. The other odd occurrence is it will sometime have MOX enabled causing unexpected transmitting. Since the release notes don't indicate these types of issues were apart of the update I am not expecting them to be fixed, yet.

Tim - W4TME

No!  and to be sure I just saved a Global, a Transmit and a Microphone profile all with the MOX and VOX on at the time. Reboot and made no difference. A Bug?

I think it just might be a defect, so I have entered this problem report into our bug tracker (defect #3614) for additional investigation. Thank you for the defect report.

Ken - NM9P

The state and level of VOX and MON are saved with a MIC profile, they should be restored the next time that MIC profile is accessed.  To test this, save a MIC profile, switch to a different MIC profile and then switch to the desired one that you just saved.  The status of VOX & MON should be returned to the saved state.  The last time I tested this, my 6500 correctly remembered VOX & MON in the MIC profiles.  I haven't tested this in the latest V.1.7.

There may be a case where his rig isn't storing things as they should.  
Tim, would a persistence reset help clear things up?

Ken - NM9P

Michael Coslo

As an excellent representation of exactly why having any radio start in VOX mode might make for embarassingg situations or even illegal transmissions,  I saved a mic profile, with VOX enabled, and it came up in VOX the next time I started it. 

As luck would have it, our local repeater took that moment to identify, and the VOX enabled Flex dutifully transmitted the repeater ID.

Do not want at all. I'm going to make certain I don't save profiles with that enabled, and deleted the test profiles. Clicking one button won't disadvantage me too much 8^)

- 73 Mike N3LI - 

Michael Coslo

Mine reboots into VOX mode. I've made certain all my profiles don't have that since.

Ken - NM9P

I had a similar experience, except that it was my son (then age 6) running past the ham shack door on the way to another room, hollering "I REALLY have to poop!"

Now ALL of my mike profiles are VOX-less!

Ken - NM9P

Tim - W4TME

That is very funny

AC9S

Another annoying inconsistent persistence item is the TX settings - ACC TX, RCA TX1, RCA TX1, etc.  These come up inconsistently and I have to reset them - typically when my amp doesn't key.  Feels like an uninitialized variable.

Keith - AC9S

W4KCN

I've noticed when I open SSDR, my profile is selected in the dropdown but is "unsaved".  The '*' is present.  Once I select the profile my RCA TX1 is then enabled.  However, if I don't explicitly reload the profile, the RCA TX1 will always be disabled on start.  Can we have a default profile load on start or at least last profile used be loaded on start.

I'm not sure if this ties back into the other persistence issues I incur, ie, volume levels within slice, display properties, etc but would be great if this is resolved.

Chance - W4KCN

DH2ID

I recommend FRStack for TX/MIC/global profile switching.
Works all the time. Great addition to SSDR. Alex - DH2ID

W4KCN

Nothing against FRStack, but I'd rather basic functions be contained within SSDR.

Update with RCA TX1:

I will note, I deleted all other global profiles within Profile Manager andonly my profile is listed. The RCA TX1 is now enabled on boot as expected.  Again, it seems as it doesn't load the listed profile on start or loads the first on in the list.  Normally, this is the Default profile.

Persistence between band changes however still exists, e.g., slice volume, display properties, dsp properties, etc

Chance - W4KCN

Ken - NM9P

Something that it took me a while to understand.... Persistence behaves differently depending upon how you change bands. If you change bands using the band buttons in SSDR, it remembers RX settings like agc-t mode and level, bandwidth, RX EQ status, etc. for each band. But if you change bands via your logging program or other program that sends frequency information via CAT, those parameters remain the same. This was implemented, I think, in software version 1.6 to keep important settings consistent for contest mode operators. It was confusing to me at first until I understood the pattern and the reasoning behind it. (And had someone explain it on the Community.)

Tim - W4TME

@Keith - AC9S: this is a different behavior that has been reported.  
I have entered this problem report into our bug tracker (defect #3618) for additional investigation. Thank you for the defect report.

DrTeeth

@Ken

Could you be kind enough to explain to me why band changes are not equal?  This really threw me after a factory reset and is actually down in the bug tracker.

Personally, I would prefer all band changes to be treated equally. Maybe this is an example of a parameter that should be user-configurable

k0eoo

Tim, you can add the "Black" level adjustment to the persistence list.  Prior to 1.7 the software would always remember the "black" level setting but now when I power up it always goes to some preset level not of my choosing.  Thanks, Dennis, k0eoo

DrTeeth

@k0eoo. I find it very difficult to get a handle on persistence. Things generally seem to work FB, then Flex seems to have a burp and several settings seem to revert to some long forgotten state.


W4KCN

One last update.

Items seem to be recalled ("persisted") much more reliably now that I only have one Global Profile listed.

Chance - W4KCN

Tim - W4TME

Dennis - is Auto Black on or off?