.

[Charlie Davidson]

That is just awesome..

[md5]

For some reason, I feel as if I've went back to windows 95 looking at those screens!

[Charlie Davidson]

This would be good for that Modulator 1004 I have to go pick up, it was removed 3 years ago because it "quit workin".

How much does this software cost? It would most likely come in handy since the 1004 comes with the controls (UltraVoice). The controls are the older kind, though, the ones in the gray boxes.

[Charlie Davidson]

Alrighty, good deal. I know who our FS dealer is for our area, but I think they only sell the sirens, and the installer programs them themselves. They are Electrical Sales Associates. Last time I called them for a price on a full 2001-130 and they had no pricing info on hand, however, they knew what I was talking about. Odd.

But..how does an UltraVoice just "stop working"? Could it be just as simple as a blown fuse, or something much worse? How would you know what happened to it, to even repair it? (that is, without having to send it to FS; however, if I have to, then I guess I will end up doing that).

[Jim Z]

You know, one common thing I've seen with custom written software like that, is no matter what it is for or what industry, the user interfaces are always horrible.

I guess this is what happens when you let engineers design an interface.

[Charlie Davidson]

You know, one common thing I've seen with custom written software like that, is no matter what it is for or what industry, the user interfaces are always horrible.

I guess this is what happens when you let engineers design an interface.

One possible reason for that, is that not all computers are alike. Some of them don't have 4GB of RAM like today's computers do, and sometimes they have older processors. They want productivity as the first priority, not the look and appeal. It just uses up more RAM and wasted hard drive space, so there's no sense in making it look purty. They want it to work with all computers, not just certain ones.

I think that's how engineers look at it, sounds logical though.

[JasonC]

Thanks for sharing the inner workings of the "Federal Commander Digital System". (Yes, I know it doesn't match with SFCDWare, but that's how they named it)


For a while, Federal actually had a demo version of the SFCDWare you could download form their website. It was a fully function program, but instead of actually controlling sirens, you had a "pretend" city with around 12 sirens you could pretend activate and do all this stuff with. The best part was the still had a Thunderbolt animation for when you activated the sirens (looks like Derek's version has a Modulator now), but this was back in 2006.


EDIT: I just looked on my computer, and I do have the program (version 9.12-002). This must be another version than the one I played around with on the old computer because the city has been replaced with a map of "clouds", but you can add sirens this time.

Anyway, the program is pretty cool, but its not much fun or anything unless you are truly activating sirens with it.

[Gil]

I was just thinking the same thing about the interface. It wreaks archaic.

Though it looks to be pretty powerful underneath the UI, which is what really counts in a software package like this. Jimz is right about the engineers designing the UI.

Soccerdude - I've seen software packages that run great under 10 MB of RAM and a 25 MHz processor. They look a helluva lot better than this.

[JasonC]

The software is made to function, not look pretty. The interface is pretty simple to use, and you have everything you need within a couple of clicks.

[JasonC]

This would be good for that Modulator 1004 I have to go pick up, it was removed 3 years ago because it "quit workin".

How much does this software cost? It would most likely come in handy since the 1004 comes with the controls (UltraVoice). The controls are the older kind, though, the ones in the gray boxes.

This software is made to interact over a radio network to activate a large number of sirens and poll them to find out the status. It's not useful if you only have a couple of sirens, or no radio network. It only sends out FSK bursts, there are no tones with the program (unless you broadcast them live via radio). The UltraVoice controller is what contains all the goodies.