Profile Auto Save Discussion

Dick / KC9YRA · May 2019

Eric

Thanks for responding to this Auto Save issue. We all have our reasons for like or dislike of the auto save feature. We each have our reasons for creating a profile, how we use it and when we want to save it. I fall on the dislike side. I have about 30 different Global and 30 Transmit profiles created. I mainly operate digital modes with low power (10w). The Transmit profiles are tailored for each Band and each Mode of operation. I have just few Microphone profiles. I use these profiles to switch between bands and modes rapidly. Knowing that The Radio will be ready to operate when the profile is loaded is a comforting. I do make changes to transmit profiles on the fly, but usually do not want to save them as they are temporary. Having to reload the original saved profile is time consuming with the auto save feature.

When exiting SSDR or changing to a different profile. Give us the flexibility to choose whether to save or not to save. Use the standard pop up window that’s used in many applications when changes are detected. “Do you want save Changes YES or NO”. It seems the Transmit and Microphone name adds a * in front of the name so it knows that a change has occurred. This would allow us as operators to decide if we want to save the changes or not. That would satisfy both likes and dislikes.

**** KC9YRA

Eric-KE5DTO · May 2019

We're too early in the process for me to be able to comment on this. In general, when we make any changes, we will need to design, implement/code, and test. This would all happen on the current version and like all other changes/fixes, we will make a determination about what gets rolled back once things are settled.

Eric-KE5DTO · May 2019

Would you really want to be prompted whether to save a change to each control? That sounds gruesome to me.

Jon_KF2E · May 2019

I'll take that as a no since I can't ever remember anything being "rolled back" after the end of version release. Fortunately, I'm pretty happy with 2.49. Still, I'm glad it is getting addressed.

Jon_KF2E · May 2019

I agree, a prompt every time you made a change would be horrible. Just give us an autosave on-off and default it to on for the new users. Then you can look at support down the road and see if the autosave helped new users.

Duane N9DG · May 2019

It will help the user decide quickly if they want that set to automatically save or never automatically save..

Like many others I will almost undoubtedly set it to Never save (automatically) I have a good understanding what is part of the profile vs what is not. And like several others I will frequently do experimental tweaking and experiments on a currently running profile that I will generally want to throw away when I'm done. But if I come up with something I do want to update the profile to, I resave the profile. I have not had an issue remembering to do so. Sort of second nature to me. But I can see how someone who may not have a good grasp of what is in the profile vs. what is not may get frustrated by things not persisting the way that they may think they should.

Thinking about it some more, the new autosave behavior sort of munges the persistence rules with the profiles. Not sure that is a good idea. The fact that persistence rules and the profiles are separate entities I think is a very good thing. There are aspects of the persistence rules I don't necessarily agree with, but I do understand the "why" for many of those persistence rule behavior choices. The persistence rules behavior thoughts are certainly topic for another thread perhaps. In my case the profiles being rigid and not changed until I explicitly do so helps mitigate the persistence rules behaviors that can be annoying to me.

Al_NN4ZZ · May 2019

Hi Eric, I have just a few profiles and rarely change them. They basically just manage my power settings by band and I have one for barefoot and one for “amp on” I occasionally tweak the power setting but rarely want to have that change to permanently affect the profile. But since my changes are rare I would use either the “Save Off” or the “Prompt Me” option. The prompting would be rare so not an issue. I could see that when setting up a new profile the “autosave” could be helpful and the prompting would be excessive but that is not something I do since my profiles are the way I like them now. Regards, Al / NN4ZZ

Tom W3FRG · May 2019

Yes, it has and since I have over 60 unique Profiles in place, therefore I very rarely ever go to the menu where its located. I actually forgot about it.
However, its not band dependent which would be another great asset to the On/Off on Auto Save to have it selectable by band.
My Pout requirements vary from 5 to 25 watts over the HF Ham Bands.

Tom W3FRG

Ryan - NC4RA · May 2019

Eric my thoughts are the same as Rogers. Thank you for taking the time to listen to our concerns. 73 Ryan NC4RA

Tim K9WX · May 2019

Eric: I may have been the customer you referenced in your original post regarding a Saturday conversation at Dayton. If so, you did an excellent job of summarizing how I have used profiles (a 40m CW HP global profile, for example) and the problem the auto save functionality has created for me. Or I have a doppelganger out there, at least when it comes to profile management.

I use 12 global profiles for various combinations of modes, power and number of panadapters (which for me means single radio vs. SO2R). They serve as “super memories” in that they allow me to quickly set all important operating parameters for a given operating scenario and I then only need to pick a specific frequency to begin operations. Having invested considerable time in creating these profiles, I want the decision to update one of them to be very intentional: the last time I did a profile export was in late February. I’m sure I have made minor, on-the-fly adjustments since then, but apparently I never made any adjustment where I thought the new setup was worth saving. My approach falls apart if profiles are auto saved. I have been a Flex owner for not quite one year so I can’t claim a particularly high level of expertise, but the legacy functionality works well for me and I don’t see how to make the new functionality work as well.

When I sat down at the radio today, I thought that perhaps memory channels (section 23.3 of the user guide for V2.4.9) might provide the functionality I was looking for. But I tested this just now and they are a no-go. Memory channels include power settings but do not include the rest of a TX profile; specifically, they do not include the enabled/disabled status for the RCA TX ports used to key my amplifier. I found I could easily get into a scenario where I thought I would be operating at low power but instead would be sending 100 watts into the amplifier with the amp in operate mode.

I’ve also wondered if a program like FRStack might provide me with the functionality I need to create recallable “super memories” for my various operational scenarios, but I have so far resisted the urge to investigate. I would prefer that basic operational functionality come from SSDR itself.

When we spoke on Saturday you mentioned the help desk problem that drove the auto-save change and I respect Flex’s need to respond to that. Hopefully you will find a way forward. I can’t say what would be involved on your end from a programming perspective, but having the auto-save option be user-selectable would work for me.

Tim K9WX

Duane N9DG · May 2019

This is very much the same way I use profiles too. I have various profiles that have various combinations of different multi (simultaneous) bands, modes, spectrum displays and slices within those spectrum displays, and DAX settings of various combinations.

"Super memories" really does capture essence of what profiles can be.

I have worked with FRStack in the past and it did not provide the configuration and overall radio configuration definition and capabilities that the profiles do. Having consistent and deliberately tailored profiles in SSDR really is the key.

Certainly the simplest solution is the option to totally disable the new auto save behavior if a user chooses to do so.

Doug · May 2019

Eric I think the amount of input on this thread is proof enough this is not a popular choice for many. (the auto save). IMHO a good compromise to this issue would be the option to toggle this auto save feature on/off. No one wins or looses this way and each gets it "their way". Just my 2-cents worth) and for the record I like the option to toggle on/off.

Rich McCabe · May 2019

For me if you were prompted before closing SSDR or switching profiles with a message that says "Transmit profile XYZ has changed, do you want to save settings YES or NO"

I would be thrilled with that. Because the auto save does work in your favor often.Just nice to chose when.

73,
Rich
kd0zv

Logan KE7AZ · May 2019

This is exactly how the Prompt option works in my original posting. I should have been more explicit to make this clear.

It also occurred to me that with MultiFlex, another benefit of selecting when Autosave is active or not is that you could turn it off when the radio has multiple users so that profiles aren't changed accidentally.

Logan, KZ6O

John - AF3K · May 2019

Eric,

I strongly prefer the original way - a saved profile should be sacrosanct. I've spent hours making profiles and really don't want them changed or overwritten automatically.

A compromise might be letting on-the-fly changes persist in some other fashion without overwriting the original profile.

Keep up the good work.

John, AF3K

ctate243 · May 2019

Generally my wish for this would be for the ability to make changes and have them be persistent, but not write that setting permanently to the profile. It should be easy to reload the profile and have it snap back to where it was. This is an argument for a persistence database or file that stays that way for the duration of the current profile load, but can easily be reverted to the dialed in settings quickly by reloading the original.

Gary L. Robinson · May 2019

I also concur with Paul and Cal - though I can also see why some users might not - so can this auto-save feature be easily disabled and make everyone happy?

Gary WB8ROL

IZ1OQT · May 2019

I share 100% Roger

John - K3MA · May 2019

If you are sharing your radio with other users and they need to sign in to SmartLink with your ID and password it becomes a problem to have each user change settings to what they prefer and have them saved automatically. Having profiles for each user plus the backup profiles creates a list of profiles that is to long to manage. If you have ever tried to switch profiles on a Maestro that has a list longer than the single panel then you know what I mean.

If each user had their own Smartlink id and password and their profiles only showed while operating then this would be better. However, I still prefer to keep the number of profiles to a small number to cover the common use scenerios.

Eric-KE5DTO · May 2019

I think v2.5 may surprise you then.

FRED W9TB · May 2019

When is v2.5 going to happen ?

Eric-KE5DTO · May 2019

@Tim -- yes, I wasn't going to call you out.

But thank you for helping me to understand what wasn't working well for you with the new Profile Auto Save feature. I'm certain that we can come up with something that lets us have our cake and eat it too. Lots of good suggestions already in this conversation. Thanks again.

Eric-KE5DTO · May 2019

Thanks for the input Doug. I appreciate all of the feedback given here. Very helpful.

Rich McCabe · May 2019

This is almost as good as when Icom asked opinions and assistance on design changes. Oh wait..

Thanks Eric!

73

Eric-KE5DTO · May 2019

In general, we avoid pop-ups as much as possible. Many find them annoying (including several of us on the development team). Reason being that typically you are doing something else (like closing SmartSDR) and you don't want to be prompted to make a decision at that point. It gets "in the way" of doing what you're trying to do. There are also scenarios that must be dealt with like when shutting down Windows with SmartSDR open. Do you prompt then? We will likely try to come up with a solution that doesn't require barraging you with pop up questions.

Eric-KE5DTO · May 2019

John -- great input. Thanks for the ideas. We did consider this when implementing the multiFLEX profile functionality. Ultimately, we decided that especially for transmit profiles, they are more oriented around the the radio than the operator typically. So how much power you can put out and whether the amp is inline feels like something that should probably be shared.

I can definitely see your argument for Mic profiles though as this is typically unique for each user and/or microphone input. We'll consider this. Thanks again for the input.

Roger_W6VZV · May 2019

You said that very well. A saved profile should be sacrosanct absent a conscious effort to change it by re-saving it under the same name with modified settings. I cannot imagine why anyone finds that confusing. If someone forgets to do that, it's on them. Having idle tweaks become part of the profile with no warning to the user defeats the entire value of profiles. I cannot imagine why Flex would make a change like this with no meaningful notice to the user base and no prior discussion.