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
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