Really can’t understand why your program is causing difficulties for me and others. I have loaded it on three near identical machines and it only works on one. I’ve got a feeling that it might be a file association problem but the spots are not coming frequently enough for me to find out.
I have disabled I-tunes and Real Player and set Media Player as default on all three machines.
BAFFLED
Roger G4OWG
ps Sods Law the only one that works is the one that I use for data modes so doesn’t normally have a speaker attached.
The first time I installed the program it didn’t work. I un-installed it and tried again a couple of days later. Success!! Now I wouldn’t be without it.
In reply to G3VQO:
Les,
What do you mean by “installed” and what do you mean by “uninstalled” other than delete the unzipped files. Once the program is unzipped into a folder, there doesn’t seem to be anything else to do other than run the executable. Is there some ideal location for the folder e.g. c:\ or C:\Program Files or D:\anywhere. Its is difficult to see how unzipping a second time into a folder should make it work when the first time didn’t.
73 jim
g0cqk
Yes, not “installed” and “uninstalled” in the Windows sense, just unzipped, tried, failed and deleted. The second time was unzipped, tried, succeeded and kept. I don’t claim to know why, I’m just reporting my findings in the hope of helping somebody else!
When the programme is open, it reads the spot window (no proxy Norby).
Then it reads the most recent spot, announce it, and put it in memory (call and time)
Then, every minute, it reads again. If there is no new spot, it stays silent.
If a new spot put by another than you, it announce it.
It uses MP3 files with media player.
The connexion to sotawatch server uses a mini browser which needs SHDOCVW.DLL. This DLL is provided with IE4 and more.
A better version (V1) of spot.exe will be on line soon, but no change with media player and internet connexion.
It will be improved with decoding calls as ON/F6ENO/P or G3CWI/P (sri Ric, the letters ‘CW’ in your call where thought as ‘CW spot’…hi!),
comments with the words ‘ssb’ or ‘cw’ etc…
In reply to F5AKL:
Still no joy I am afraid. I tracked it through the firewall and upon loading, it made 6 TCP calls to www.sotawatch.org port 80 using local ports 2090,2091,2,3,4&5 - but no sound. Thereafter it sat there and made no further calls. Operating system is Windows XP MCE Version 5.1.2600 SP2 with an Intel Pentium D dual core processor.
73
jim g0cqk
When it starts, it announces the latest spot.
Then you will see 2 windows. On the right one will be displayed
the SOTA spots windows (as on sotawatch)…if it works…
When you push the TEST button, it reads again.
May be this will help you to find what is wrong…
73 all
Alain F6ENO
PS: for those who have a working well program: do you think it would be
a good idee to leave the spot window (wide open of course)?
When I run the test program, the spots page is correctly displayed in the window.
However I still hear nothing.
So it seems that the problem lies with the sound and not with reading the information from the web site. As before, the individual sound clips do play correctly. I have Windows Media Player 11 installed and it is the default player for .mp3 files.
Yes, if the spot page is displayed, the problem is around the sound player.
The program uses media player from Borland; so, may be it doen’t work well
with Media Player 11 when they both try to play the sound.
I think it’s time to have a button that allows to simulate a spot from within the test application to track down the problems. Sometimes, you have to wait for hours until a new SOTA spot shows up.
It wouldn’t make sense if everybody does fake spots (and removes them) just to test the application.
I tracked down my problem to the following and I think it’s weird.
I have to login to sotwatch.org from within the spot_test web window (on the right-hand side, then spot_test announces the last spot available.
If I don’t login, I don’t get anything. This is not documented, at least I did not see notes on it.
spot_test reads your Internet access settings as defined in IE (through the DLL mentionned earlier), this allows to use proxy servers that do not require specific authentication.
I don’t know how those do where it’s working. At least, on my setups (several machines tested), I have to login through the web window of spot_test. As a consequence, this means for me that the spot application as such is of no use to me. I do need a seperate login possibility. hw?
Unfortunately, the login is being “dropped” as soon as the window refreshes after 1 minute. To keep using spot_test, I would have to login every minute.
I’am very sorry for the trouble I gave to some of you with this program.
My intention was only to help you in spot watching.
As you can imagine, it is not easy to try to find what is wrong on some machines and OK on others…
Now I’am going to start my hollidays and hope I will be able to climb some summits with my FT817.
“I’m just a boy whose intentions are good, Oh lord…”
Please dont think that my comments are a criticism in any way. I am very impressed with your software, I couldn’t even imagine where to begin on something like this…
I added my message to the others to try and help you to trace the problem. I think all the others were in the same spirit.
I located file SHDOCVW.DLL which was in my windows.32 directory. I copied it & pasted into my Mozilla Firefox folder & the program now works. It doesn`t pick up 100% spots but does find most of them.
Steve, SHDOCVW.DLL should be located in your %windows%\system32 folder, accessible through one of the values in the PATH statement (it’s on all my setups here).
The problem, as proofed through spot_test is, that spot_test finds the sotawatch webpage but incoming spots are not parsed. They are parsed only, when I’m logged in. But, since spot_test does not seem to have knowledge of cookies (I suppose that’s the reason, but not sure yet), I can clearly see, that after the next refresh, I’m logged out again, which means spot parsing is “switched off”.
This has been proofed true on my setups and the one of Steffen DL4ALI.
In reply to LX1NO:
The previous message gave me enough clues to make the program work for me. What I had to do was go to the Sotawatch2 site in Internet Explorer and log in. Both are required - it has to be IE and I have to be logged in. Previously I had gone to the site but not logged in. Normally I use Firefox, and that doesn’t help.
I presume the problem is that the software needs to be able to see the “logged in” page, but is sharing its cookies with IE. So if you’re logged in to SW2 via Firefox, or not logged in at all, it won’t work.
What I don’t understand is WHY it needs the user to be logged in. You don’t need to be logged in to get the spots, so why should it care?
Thanks for that - now working here
I seem to remember at the beginning of this thread it was stated that your own spots are ignored. Perhaps this is why it requires the user to logged in.
Pity I have to use Explorer though I changed to Firefox to avoid the constant ‘Explorer has encountered an error and had to shut down’ messages.
