How to update Contacts in the CS-700 codeplug

Here's the writeup I did for our club as an intro, in case it works for anyone else.

Radio ID Database

Every DMR ham has a Radio ID assigned to them by DMR-MARC, which is where this database comes from.

(Request link is here: http://www.dmr-marc.net/request_subscriberID.html) This same Radio ID can be programmed into all your radios, since only one will Tx at a time. 

It’s maintained by a team of guys that do a great job with really fast turnaround on updates and new registration.  The whole database is here:

http://www.n6dva.org/trbo-database/trbo_users_view.php

Filter the Listing

Go to Filters and set up:

State -- Equal to -- California

or whatever fits your most common users.

Nice!  Fresh up-to-date data.  Unfortunately, there’s no Export, so we have to improvise..

Export

Click “Print Preview” to simplify the HTML a bit.

Today that gives me 514 records.

Save the web page as HTML (I use Chrome if it matters).

Save it as "trbo_users_view.php.htm"

Scrape the Data

Now we have to extract the RadioID & Callsign entries from that table.

I have attached a small Perl script that does it (scrape.pl), but you can cut & paste text into Excel or work whatever awk/sed/python magic you like best.  There is an earlier writeup on how to use Excel-fu to extract the right parts from cut & paste, but I like the Perl approach for speed.

The goal is to get to a .CSV file as

RadioID#,Callsign,Firstname

Save the resulting .CSV file.

Merge with Codeplug

Then you run G4EML's CS700 Contact Manager app, load your CS-700 codeplug into it, and “Delete to End” to remove all your existing contacts.  (Keep your actual talkgroups, of course).

Import the CSV, and bam – everyone’s listed by callsign and name.  Save and program to the radio.

It sounds like a lot of steps, but it’s less than a minute from start to finish.


DMR-MARC CSV Contact Generator
 http://kd0wdq.com/getcsv.html

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