jeffg@tekcbi.UUCP (Jeff Glover) (10/30/85)
Bear with me as I pour my thoughts out to the terminal...
(I thought that this might be of interest to amateurs in general,
thus the posting to net.ham-radio.)
I have had a desire to do a user interface for a computer
controlled receiver for some time now, and now that I have both a
computer controlled receiver and a computer to control it I would
like to start planning how this thing will work. I have had a few
sessions with paper and pencil trying to brainstorm features, but
have run out of ideas. Anybody have any suggestions? Here are a
few of the better ones I have thought of...
1. extensive logging features, i.e. one key, printer, log book styles
2. external hardware support. While I cannot know what will be
installed, I can always allow for external compilation and
installation of device drivers. Allowing for extra displays and
functions will be a design requirement. For example, my
receiver has a relative signal level output, but is analog.
I plan to serialize this data and bring it in the serial port
continuously, ignoring data overruns, and average it for the
squelch and S-meter functions.
3. database-style memories. This means a relational database to store
and retrieve frequencies as well as to generate lists of frequencies
for scanning. An example of its use would be:
xtmp = select FREQ in AMATEURS
xtmp now contains a list of all the frequencies in the
AMATEURS database. Scanning could proceed by stating:
scan (xtmp)
or perhaps you would like to limit the search:
friends = select FREQ outof xtmp where (CITY=="local")
then
scan (select FREQ outof friends where (TYPE=="repeater"))
as you can see this could be powerful, especially augmented
with a hard-disk full of national frequency lists, and a
pointer-oriented user interface. These features may be done
using an existing package (RBASE & MS Windows).
4. script files for running the system in a "BATCH" mode.
5. duplex mode -- transmission ends on one frequency, and reply
is on another. Computer control could follow this very well
given a digitized signal level reading.
...
Please reply to me *directly* and I will summarize to the net and
to each individual that asks.
BTW, does anything similar exist?
--
Jeff C. Glover, Tektronix, Inc. PO Box 500, MS Y6-546, Beaverton, OR 97077
{ decvax, allegra, hplabs, ihnp4 } tektronix!tekcbi!jeffg (503) 627-8438