Persistence with Slice Master

WK2Y

Slice Master works fine for me, but when I start it, it never has saved any of my previous settings.  It starts with the Slice C tab chosen and my Slice A should launch DM780 when active but it always has "Never" chosen.  Am I doing something wrong?
Thanks for your help.
73,
Bob
WK2Y 

DH2ID

If you use Windows 10 as your OS: Look at the permissions of your SliceMaster folder and your User/****/AppData/Local/K1DBO folder. If a program doesn't save the settings, it's mostly a permissions and/or read only problem. 

K1DBO

Bob,

Alex's suggestion to check permissions is a good one.  But if the K1DBO folder exists at all it's a pretty good indication that Slice Master has the needed permissions.  Slice Master doesnt run an installer to create it's config folders and does not need elevated privileges.

The "selected slice" in Slice Master tracks the selected slice in SmartSDR.  So if you start Slice Master with SSDR's yellow selection on slice C, C will also be the selected slice in Slice Master. But, the slice doesnt need to be selected for Slice Master to launch anything.

Slice Master needs to control the applications that it launches.  If you manually shut down DM780 after Slice Master has launched it, the launch setting will go back to Never.  This is actually a feature. Based on the launch settings, Slice Master will launch DM780 whenever it can and shut it down whenever things are not right.  Change the DAX channel on a slice where DM780 is running and Slice Master will shutdown DM780, reconfigure it for the new DAX channel, and then re-launch it.  Depending on the load on your computer... this is all pretty seamless.  If you manually close DM780, Slice Master assumes you Never want to see it again.

So, if you are manually closing DM780, it's you   If not, I've got some work to do.

You can test the settings persistence by changing something on the settings tab, like showing the AGC controls in the Mix tab.  Then stop and restart Slice Master.  If the change is still there on restart, it's proof that Slice Master can write to it's config file.  

...and finally, win10 or win7?

Thanks for your help in working through this.

--Don

WK2Y

Well you put me on the right track.  By looking around I see that I had several copies of the exe around.  I tried a different one and that one seems to be tied to the ini file in the user folder.  I guess you have to be careful when upgrading.  I guess I need to make a c:slice master directory so I always unzip it to the same location.
Thanks.
73,
Bob, WK2Y

WK2Y

Oh, now I get it!  This is a Pogo if you catch my drift.  I was always shutting down DM780 first! 

BTW, as long as you are here, Can Slice Master launch JTDX instead of WSJT?

K1DBO

My installation instructions could use some work.  And, yes, multiple copies can get you in trouble, especially if you are running more than one!

The config folder is same for all versions and I try to make sure that settings are preserved between versions.  Once we hit version 1.0 and beyond, this will be a promise.  For now, things are changing quickly and I'd like to keep my options open.

I usually just drop the .exe of the current Slice Master version right on my desktop.  But having a shortcut on the desktop to a folder like
 C:Users<your name here>slice-master
would work well as long as you always extract to that folder.

Thanks for pointing this out.

K1DBO

JTDX is on my list of applications to look at.  So the short answer is 'probably'.

The long answer...

As long as Slice Master can control the things needed for a proper configuration, any third party application could be added.  Then, it's just a matter of time/demand.

In keeping with the theme though, I wont consider an application unless it can run multiple instances from any slice.  Applications that use only OmniRig for CAT, for example, are a bit of a problem right now.

I also hope to integrate with more logging software.  I'm not too interested in being able to add entries to the log, rather, I'd like to get access to the "needed list" from different logger, like what Slice Master does now with N1MM Logger+.  ..but that's a whole different topic.

WK2Y

JTDX is pretty close to WSJT so hopefully it won't be a big deal.  

On the logging software, is there a way to have HRD logging started when ever DM780 starts or whenever Slice Master starts?  Let me know when I have reached my daily question limit ;-)

K1DBO

I just took a quick look at JTDX, and I agree, probably not a big deal at all.

At some point I'll consider adding an "launch at start up" mechanism for things like loggers or the RBN Aggregrator. 

Slice Master already has some features for using HRD Logbook with our radios. It would be nice, I think, for Slice Master to make the necessary configuration changes to HRD Logbook when it starts it up. But since the config changes only need to be made once, it's not a huge value add.  The same can be said about RBN Aggregrator.

Currently, there's no daily question limit    

Thanks for playing along!

--Don