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