Channel and Zone Controls

[VK3KYY]

Looking forward to if/when this project is completed. I have 4 DM-1701s and I would be glad to dedicate one for testing if needed.

The project is already very mature, around 5 years of continous development, and is probably approaching the maximum that can be achieved with the hardware in these radios.

The GD77 type radios, including the DM1801 V1 and RD5R and MD760 etc have virtually no free program memory (ROM) to add any major new funcationality.

The UV380 / MD9600 radios have more ROM capacity, but the UV380/390/DM1701 all have the same cheap RF chip ($1), and lack of internal hardware connectivity as the GD77, so again, its unlikely that much more functionality could be added.

[VK3KYY]

To my mind, TGs are "channels" within a zone and I most often select a zone that is a local repeater then I switch between the channel/TGs using the encoder knob. Or, I have a zone set up with my simplex channels which may be either analog or dmr.

There is nothing to stop you using the old / outdated method of having to create a Channel per TG.

However its not practical to have mutliple UI paradigms based upon each user's own personal tastes.

If we went down that road there would probably be 16 or 32 or 64 different paradigms that different people would want.


We will be releasing updated source code for these radios in a few weeks, as soon as we are sure that the code is stable and there are no known bugs, and at that time you can download the source and build you own version with whatever permutations of controls you want.