Dan You might want to highlight the beginner guide on the wiki page, I must have looked past it over a dozen time before I found it. Not sure what you need help with on Documentation, I do some "JIT" Just in time type guides for our MRC group. I can maybe help with some documentation. I did not realize the other options were so intermixed with the memories. The read before write now make more sense. I see a need for a bulk erase memories option. In my case I want to leave everything but the memories alone, and replace anything there. So reading the Radio, Blow off the current memories, import new list, program radio. would be my primary mode of operation. At least for the first radio, after that the next 25 or 100 are exactly the same. i.e. in MRC we have 27 radios that should be exactly the same. So I would read the first one, setup the memories, then program all the rest the same.
Allan WB5QNG
On 9/19/2011 12:16 PM, Dan Smith wrote:
Is there any documentation ( wiki or otherwise) on how to use Chirp and about the different format to save in ( csv, vs chrisp vs img) ?
Just the beginner's guide:
http://chirp.danplanet.com/projects/chirp/wiki/Beginners_GuideIf you and others can come up with some specific things that you'd like to see documented, I'll be glad to try to write those up. Being neck-deep in the internals, it's hard for me to "see" what needs to be documented.
Of course, anyone that wants to take a stab at actually writing something up gets bonus points :)
How difficult would it be to allow something like an import of a csv to a generic radio then set the type up and do a write to the Radio.
Well, you can import a CSV into a CSV right now. I think what you're looking for is the ability to upload a CSV directly into a radio, and have CHIRP do the behind-the-scenes work to create an empty image, right?
I'm a little hesitant to start distributing blank images of radios with CHIRP itself, but I have considered providing some sort of a bootstrap process which would let you capture "base" images of your radios and have them stored internally. Then, chirp could provide something like a direct upload from CSV by silently merging to the base image and uploading that.
Is that what you're looking for?
The only problem here is that you could put something in your CSV that your radio can't support, which means when you go to do the upload, you'd see an error like "The IC-2720 doesn't support 50.525MHz" as opposed to seeing it immediately while editing now. It's definitely something I can look into though.
I also worry that people will constantly be asking why CHIRP is (seemingly) reversing settings such as backlight intensity or beep volume. Since that stuff would be stored in the base image, if you tweaked it just before doing an upload, it would revert.
Do other people think this is a useful workflow?
Currently I do not seem to be able to setup the type of radio except for a read from the radio.
Well, the idea has always been that you download an image of your radio, edit or import, and then upload. You can store a .img file of your 2720 and open it later (without having to do a download first).