OpenGD77

Guys

I was watching a video by @VQ Tech on Youtube, and I noticed that he downloaded the DMR ID database but also downloaded virtually the same information into the Digital Contacts

The download function into the Digital Contacts is a legacy from using the official firmware, because the official DMR ID can only hold 8 characters, and hence can't hold the Callsign + Name.

However because the OpenGD77 DMR ID can hold up to 16 characters (or more), there is now no need to download the callsigns into the Digital Contacts.

So perhaps I should remove this function, or at the very least, add a warning message to say this is not necessary and operators should use the DMR ID database instead.

FWIW - I agree. A note might be better?

Yes. Perhaps a warning

The could still just download and import manually via a CSV even if I remove this feature.

I suppose there may be a use case for importing all the contacts for a specific country or region, but I can't think of one.

Not sure I understand - as far as I can see both downloads download ID, Callsign Name fields.
What's the difference?

vk2fmet wrote: ↑

Sun Sep 13, 2020 3:13 am

Not sure I understand - as far as I can see both downloads download ID, Callsign Name fields.
What's the difference?

There is no difference in the data.

The point is that downloading of Digital Contacts was originally added by me, to overcome a shortcoming with the official firmware, where the DMR ID system won't display names.

Now that the DMR ID system can display Callsign and Name, there is no need to download the Digital Contacts unless you actually want to make private calls to everyone in the list - which seems a bit unlikely

If you want to add individual Digital Contacts, to make Private Calls to a few stations you commonly speak to, you would be better off adding the contacts manually, and using the ID look-up system which I added to the Digital Contact screen.

ie You just need to enter the callsign and then press lookup and it gets the ID from the RadioId.net website

Filling up your Digital Contacts with callsigns and you don't make private calls to, is just putting extra load on the radio's CPU, as it does a lot of processing when looking up the ID of the incoming signal.

VK3KYY wrote: ↑

Sun Sep 13, 2020 3:21 am

If you want to add individual Digital Contacts, to make Private Calls to a few stations you commonly speak to, you would be better off adding the contacts manually, and using the ID look-up system which I added to the Digital Contact screen.

ie You just need to enter the callsign and then press lookup and it gets the ID from the RadioId.net website

I can actually fit all the NZ callsigns in my radio
But it might be useful to download the ids by group and then filter it further so you could manually select callsigns to add ?

Zl1XE wrote: ↑

Sun Sep 13, 2020 3:50 am

VK3KYY wrote: ↑

Sun Sep 13, 2020 3:21 am

If you want to add individual Digital Contacts, to make Private Calls to a few stations you commonly speak to, you would be better off adding the contacts manually, and using the ID look-up system which I added to the Digital Contact screen.

ie You just need to enter the callsign and then press lookup and it gets the ID from the RadioId.net website

I can actually fit all the NZ callsigns in my radio
But it might be useful to download the ids by group and then filter it further so you could manually select callsigns to add ?

You can in the DMR ID database. Not sure about the Digital Contacts. But like I said, you should not be putting them All into the Digital Contacts without a very compelling reason.


Goto
OpenGD77CPS

Extras->DMR ID -> "Download from RadioId.net - filtered by region"

The download from HamDigital is usefull for countries like the USA, who have more ID's in their region than can be fitted into the DMR ID memory in the radio.

Note. The memory size for this is fixed, so you can fit more ID's if you allocate less characters per ID.

I generally leave that number set at 15 or 16, in fact I should really default it to 16 in the CPS as I think it defaults to 15 for legacy reasons when I was using a hacked version of the official firmware, where I'd modified their DMR ID lookup code to handle up to 15 chars per ID.


BTW.
The DMR ID data is completely separate from the codeplug data (as with the official firmware), and you can only write the DMR ID data to the radio and not read it back.

So you should write to the radio after you have downloaded whatever IDs you need.

BTW2

You can download multiple regions, it just appends any new ID's onto the end of the current list, so you could add 530 and then add 505, or perhaps 234 then 235

You can also just download all ID's for region "5" ie Oceania, and it would still fit in the radio

What won't fit is trying to download all of region "23" i.e most of Europe, as you'd end up with about 20,000 + ID's

I do think people are confused between the DMR ID Database and the Digital Contacts.

The DMR ID database can hold a vast number of call sign to operator name mappings. This is, of course, a great feature of OpenGD77.

I don't think I need to import vast numbers of IDs into the Digital Contacts tables. These are mainly used for direct private contacts and could likely be manually edited by most people for the number of people they directly speak with by DMR number. Most of us use Groups and GroupIDs, of course...

I think dropping a feature is generally less attractive than simply adding an explanation and warning.