Did you mean the communist witch hunts of the '50s? Unless Canada had a
communist witch hunt in the '70s of which I am unaware?

Ron Miller


-----Original Message-----
From: For blind ham radio operators [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of Colin McDonald
Sent: Wednesday, August 13, 2014 5:04 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: accessible scanners

perhaps it has something to do with Japans laws against distracted driving
which, I believe, have been in place for a number of years...though perhaps
not so long as speech chips have been in radios...
Also, don't forget the market in Japan...1 in 400 people in the country are
licensed amateurs which is a huge amount for a small country...so putting
these kinds of devices into radios probably helps sell them.
Why do the chinese designers add speech to their handhelds?  Another great
question.
I wonder if there is a cultural aspect to this where it doesn't occur to the
designers to not put accessibility because to not put it in, would mean
ignoring a piece of the market and what business would do such a thing?  Oh,
right, american businesses who are more worried about getting a product to
market for the cheapest cost and certain aspects of the consumer market be
damned hi hi.
I am more apt to believe there is a strong cultural mind set responsible for
this though.
Take smoking in public in Japan for instance.  Smoking is permitted indoors,
but not on the public street.  This insures that businesses don't lose
customers, and that no one is offended or injured from smokers on the very
very crowded and busy public streets.  However, businesses where smoking is
permitted are required to have very good ventelation and air circulation
systems in place...much like casino's in Los Vegas.  The mind set here is to
not punish a business that might lose customers and therefore revenue
because of a few people who dislike the smell of cigarettes, and also, to
insure that the vast majority of people are not burnt or otherwise
inconvenienced or offended while on the public street.  It's far more
logical to me than the north american, european and australian mind set of,
lets push all the smokers out on to the side walk where everyone has to walk
by them and come into contact with them even if they are not going to
frequent an establishment.
To me, public responsibility would be to allow people to make a choice about
going inside an establishment that allows smoking to go on in their
business, rather than forcing the general public to endure smokers on the
public street where you have no real choice but to encounter them regularly
and in groups.
Each business should have the right to determine weather they allow smoking,
and those who don't wish to allow it, can accomidate the portion of the
market that dislikes smoking or the smell etc.
But we westerners do tend to think about things backwards and not always in
the best interest of the public or the majority, but rather in the best
interest of a few who have the loudest voice or the most money to lobby. 
Nivadda doesn't have smoking laws because they know very well it doesn't
help anyone, but rather harms local business and the economy at large. 
Require proper ventelation and circulation like the japanese and it no
longer poses a health risk to workers and other patrons.
But, like many things in history, the powers that be get something in their
teeth and will not let go or approach it logically after a certain
point...the communist witch hunts of the 70's in US government spring to
mind as a good example.
Anyway, to tie this back to ham radio, I suspect the asian business mind
uses logic over impatients much of the time and thus tends to have rather
supperior products more often than not.  Kenwood, Icom, and Yaesu are prime
examples of high quality, logical and attentive engineering...to build
something right, and insure it's high quality before slamming it on to the
market to try and recoop as much as they can before the next newest thing. 
Probably why kenwood tends to be a bit slower on releasing new radio models
compared to some others.

sorry for the rant lol

73
Colin, V A6BKX
--------------------------------------------------
From: "Jim Gammon" <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, August 13, 2014 1:51 PM
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: accessible scanners

> Colin, I think you should definitely email your great thoughts to Sheri. 
> I
> do not have an I-Phone or android, but would possibly get one if more 
> devices could link to them that would react to commands from such devices.
> I have always wondered how and what inspired Kenwood to adopt the 
> policy of making speech output available in their radios when other 
> companies do not.
> I have tried to find out the answer to this but have not been successful.
> Jim WA6EKS
> ----Original Message-----
> From: Colin McDonald
> Sent: Wednesday, August 13, 2014 12:07 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: accessible scanners
>
> Hopefully this new whistler company implements IPhone/android  access 
> via an app into their newest scanners as well...this, in itself, is in 
> very large demand from the general consumer bass, and it also has the 
> added benefit of making the radio accessible to those using voiceover 
> or the android equivalent.
> You get IPhone app access with the cheapest 2 cent electronic gizmo 
> stuff out of china these days, why can't they put it into a 500 dollar 
> piece of modern technology as well?
> However, I know, not all of us are going to have a smart phone, or be 
> able to afford one, so building in intigrated accessibility is still 
> the best answer...except that intigrated technology like a speech chip 
> only really applies to a very small percentage of the general consumer 
> market, and even if you add in those very few sited people who might 
> use speech feedback, your still looking at a tiny market...whereas, 
> IPhone access would appeal and apply to a massive portion of the over 
> all consumer market and make the radios competetive with everything 
> else out there that uses some kind of interconnectivity with our 
> mobile devices.
> In my experience, about 8 out of ten people have either an IPhone or 
> android...adding bluetooth to a scanner has already been done, and 
> it's just one more step to develop the apps to communicate to and from 
> the scanner so one can monitor and program the unit from the smart 
> phone...along with audio of course.
> And it must be intigrated, not some expensive optional add on...having 
> bluetooth connectivity for audio and data from the scanner would make 
> them far more apealing to drivers as well who can use a bluetooth 
> device to listen to their scanner and possibly display channel or 
> group information where it can be seen instead of having to look down 
> at the unit while driving.
> Anyway, perhaps I should email my thoughts to this sherry person too.
>
> 73
> Colin, V A6BKX
> --------------------------------------------------
> From: "Jim Gammon" <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Wednesday, August 13, 2014 11:23 AM
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: accessible scanners
>
>> Martin and all interested.  I posted some emails to the list about 
>> Whistler Group making their new trunked scanners accessible.  This is 
>> important because Whistler bought the GRE America PSR scanners when 
>> GRE went out of business.  Currently, Whistler has introduced a 
>> scanner very similar to the PSR500 handheld scanner but the speaker 
>> is below the keypad rather then above it.  In any case, Whistler has 
>> plans to introduce new scanners which is why I approached them about 
>> adding a series of beeps at the very least, or at best, adding a plug 
>> like Kenwood has in their rigs so people can buy speech boards to 
>> make their scanners way more accessible.  I talked to a lady named 
>> Sheri Nolan in customer service who told me to write up my ideas and 
>> send them to her then she in turn, would forward them to the company 
>> engineers in Ma.  They are responsible for designing the new 
>> scanners.  That's obviously where the universal design, or access 
>> needs to be introduced, from the ground up.  In my first email to 
>> her, I had put some questions that I originally had posed to GRE 
>> America about their PSR500.  I didn't expect answers, just thought 
>> they might like to see some of the problems I was facing with that 
>> scanner.  What did they do? They wrote me back with information from 
>> the manual that was supposed to answer my questions.  This included 
>> remarks like, just go to the menus and scroll through them until you 
>> get to the one you need.  Of course I'm para-phrasing, but clearly, 
>> the engineers did not get what I was trying to explain.  After 
>> getting that email from Sheri, I wrote back suggesting that the 
>> engineers take their handheld scanner and just put some tape over the 
>> display and see if they can figure out some work-arounds so they can 
>> use it without seeing the display.  She thought that was a good idea 
>> and sent it on to them.  So far, I  haven't heard back.  I hope that 
>> those of you who are interested would also give input to the Whistler 
>> Group by writing email to Sheri Nolan who's email 
>> [log in to unmask] I recommend trying to keep focused 
>> particularly on accessibility issues for their scanners and emphasize 
>> that there are many people with low or no vision who would really 
>> appreciate it if they would incorporate speech output or at least a 
>> series of different beeps in their up-coming scanners.  I for one, 
>> would like a handheld scanner with onboard accessibility where you 
>> don't have to drag a laptop around in order to achieve  some degree 
>> of access.  73, Jim WA6EKS
>>
>>>----- Original Message -----
>>>From: "Martin G.  McCormick" <[log in to unmask]
>>>To: [log in to unmask]
>>>Date sent: Wed, 13 Aug 2014 09:14:28 -0500
>>>Subject: Re: accessible scanners
>>
>>> Another useful feature is when one can communicate with a scanner or 
>>>transceiver via serial interface.  I have two Uniden scanners.  One 
>>>is now eleven years old and has a rather turse command set that one 
>>>can access via a terminal program much the way you can access one of 
>>>the old telephone dial-up modems.  All the characters must be upper 
>>>case and all the replies are also in upper case but you can read the 
>>>display, setup trunking systems, etc.  The only problem is that the 
>>>Motorola SmartZone trunking is now unusable since the new rebanded 
>>>frequency plans can not be fed in to the scanner as a flash upgrade 
>>>since the
>>>bc780 does not have that capability.
>>> It is, however, accessible since the command set and responses are 
>>>all plain ASCII text.
>>> That sort of access is much appreciated.  I also have another Uniden 
>>>which was made around 2008.  It does P25 and the new rebanded 
>>>Motorola trunking just fine.
>>> It also has an ASCII command set and is potentially totally 
>>>accessible but one needs to either be running one of the Windows 
>>>programs that talk to your scanner or you must be willing to write 
>>>your own communications program in C or perl.  I am a Linux user so 
>>>that is kind of par for the course.
>>> For the BCD996 and the BCD396, the commands and responses are still 
>>>ASCII but they use CSV or Comma-Separated Variable strings.  These 
>>>are sometimes hugely long lines of text in which each field is 
>>>separated from it's neighbors by a , so a string for input or output 
>>>might look like 1,01453500,1,,,3,2,7,K5SRC Stillwater Repeater,14,0,9  
>>>That is not a valid entry anywhere, but it is an example of what a 
>>>CSV string looks like.  You see them all the time in business 
>>>applications that may be used with spread sheets and tables.
>>> One of my next home projects is to take the C program I wrote for 
>>>the BCD996 and try to re-do it in perl as I may get it to do more 
>>>than it presently does.
>>> I would sure like to see more radios that have some sort of 
>>>electronic input and output like the Kenwoods and several others.  To 
>>>me, that is almost as good as having speech boards in the radio 
>>>which, of course, is the holy grail but may not have as much mass 
>>>appeal as being able to interface with a serial port on a computer or 
>>>maybe a web interface.
>>> Let's hope that this period of totally inaccessible technology is 
>>>ending and we just might be able to really use some of this stuff 
>>>again.
>>> I remember the first truly inaccessible piece of amateur radio gear 
>>>I encountered.  It was in the mid seventies and was a two-meter 
>>>transceiver that had an Up and Down button pair for frequency, no 
>>>direct entry and no way to get to a known state except for that 
>>>stupid little LED display.  If you could even get it to start at 
>>>144.000 MHZ, do you really want to count in 5 KHZ steps up to say, 
>>>147.925 and hope there were no key bounces or missed presses?
>>> The guy in the store said, I don't think there is any way you can 
>>>use that and he was absolutely right.  Don't you just hate that?
>>
>>>73 Martin McCormick WB5AGZ
>>
>>>Jim Gammon writes:
>>>>     John, I have been corresponding with the Whistler group
>> regarding
>>>> there
>>>> trunked scanners.  Thought you would like to read the latest.
>> Jim