Profile Auto Save Discussion

Eric-KE5DTO

@Tom The Max Power feature has been around for a while.  Take a look at Settings -> Radio Setup -> TX.  Near the bottom is the Max Power setting.

Eric-KE5DTO

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

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

Jon_KF2E

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

Duane N9DG

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

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

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

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

Tim K9WX

Duane N9DG

Doug

Rich McCabe

Logan KE7AZ

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

ctate243

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

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

John - K3MA

Eric-KE5DTO

I think v2.5 may surprise you then.

FRED W9TB

When is v2.5 going to happen ?

Eric-KE5DTO

@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

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

Rich McCabe

Eric-KE5DTO

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

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

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.

Rick WN2C

Ed Stallman

I'll simply vote for on / off  

Johan _ SE3X

Count me in, on/off sounds great. I as many others use profiles as a way to get back to a known set of settings. Any auto changes makes them useless.