Last Channel Name Character Cropped

[markusgritsch]

Hi armel,

thank you very much for continued efforts to improve your firmware even further! It makes the radio so much better.

The new release v5.1 now supports 1024 memory locations, which makes the channel number 4 digits wide. In the MAIN ONLY RxMode this leads to cropping of the last channel name character:

How about limiting the channel number to three digits 000-999 and get all channel name characters back?

[armel]

Hello,

I’ll first explain again why there are 1024 memory channels, as this number sometimes seems to come out of nowhere for some users.

As a reminder, one memory channel occupies 16 bytes. The UV-K1 and UV-K5 V3 feature a large external Flash memory, unlike the UV-K5 V1 and V2 which relied on a very limited EEPROM.

This external Flash memory introduces the concept of sectors, each with a size of 4 KB. A single sector can therefore store 256 memory channels, since 16 × 256 = 4096 bytes, which equals 4 KB. I chose to use 4 sectors, resulting in 4 × 256 = 1024 memory channels.

I deliberately limited it to 1024 initially because I considered this more than sufficient for the majority of users. That said, I’m aware that some users would like even more channels, and there is still plenty of free space available in the external Flash memory. It is therefore not impossible that I may offer 2048 memory channels in the future. Nothing is ruled out at this point.

In this context, reducing the count to 999 channels would only push a display issue further down the road, without actually solving it.

Finally, regarding truncated channel names, it seems far simpler to rename something like “XOT SVX 70” to “XOT SVX70” so that it fits properly, rather than modifying the firmware again in multiple places, not to mention the CHIRP driver.

Another option could be to display the memory channel number using the small font, but I know that many users find it difficult to read.

In short, as things stand, I do not plan to change anything here. The current situation seems to be a reasonable compromise.

Armel, F4HWN

[markusgritsch]

Thank you for taking the time and write such a detailed explanation. I cannot imagine how anyone would use or need such a large amound of channels, but different people have different tastes :)

[armel]

Hi,

Well, I’ve just checked. If I restore the limit to 10 characters, as before, there is still a slight overlap only when the channel is assigned to the ALL list. However, this was already the case with the previous system (v4.3) when selecting all three lists 1-2-3.

I’ll therefore restore the 10-character limit, as before, which should meet your expectations.

Armel, F4HWN.

[markusgritsch]

Thank you for finding a solution. Looking forward to the next release.

[bierviltje]

Suggestion which might be a good compromise: frequency on top in "main only", channel name at the bottom. There's plenty of space at the bottom. Correct me if I'm wrong.