WM15

A Windows Mobile control widget for the Uniden Bearcat BCT15 radio scanner 

Here is a small application I wrote to control my BCT15 using a smartphone running Windows Mobile.
The handheld natively supports BlueTooth communications, while I added BT  capability to the radio using an external dongle. More info about it at the bottom of the page.
Please be aware that functions or keys layout may change anytime while I keep working on the software. For this reason the following documentation may not reflect perfectly what you find in the current release.
Software is written in Basic4PPC: I bought it when I discovered a bug in TCL preventing its use with the Bluetooth dongle and I'm very satisfied with power and ease of use in comparison to the price.

Approach
Development is focused on my needs and my hardware. This means, for example:

• no attention at all was paid to functions that will only work in the US (pre-programmed services, state related things...), since thy're by and large useless in Europe
• my mobile phone is a MWG ZincII: application may not work properly on other mobiles. There is a big variety of mobile phones powered by Windows Mobile, hardware specifications may differ significantly and I wouldn't know how to test them.

• pair the Bluetooth device
• create an outgoing virtual COM port

Once connection is setup you can tell the handset to connect by clicking on the "disconnected" status string. If you normally keep Bluetooth disabled (good idea for battery life), remember to enable it before trying to connect to the radio. The odd error message may pop-up when you first connect: it has to do with syncing the first exchange of message, just ignore it and tell the software to proceed anyway. If everything worked fine you should be gratified with a real time reproduction of your scanner's display on the mobile phone. I had to find a compromise between functions available on the first screen, display availability and touchscreen size, so controls aren't a perfect reproduction as you'd get on the BC-RH96. My phone has a 4 ways controller + central button, which has been assigned as follows: up volume increase down volume decrease left equivalent to turning vfo knob counterclockwise right equivalent to turining vfo knob clockwise central equivalent to vfo knob push ("select"/"F") Main soft keyboard operates in two ways: normal and number. You can switch to/from number mode by pressing the nbr soft button. When in number mode a "#" is shown in the top right corner of the display. Main Keyboard
Normal Operation Number Operation sq- decrease squelch level LO L/O button sq+ increase squelch level HR HOLD/RESUME MEN MENU button NO NO/. button FN same as pushing vfo knob nbr toggles keyboard to number mode SS SCAN/SEARCH 0 no function so far YES YES/E button kb2 recalls secondary keyboard Each button will produce a number 0-9, kb2 will produce a decimal dot. nbr switches back to normal keyboard operation. Touching display area has no effect.
Secondary Keyboard State equivalent to pushing the SQuelch knob Mute equivalent to pushing the VOLume knob © Starts Close Call search POL Same as POL hardware button HP Same as HP hardware button GPS Same as GPS hardware button (I think you may only use it if the BT dongle is connected to the front serial port) CustSrch starts a custom band search LOG logs current frequency and time in a plain text file saved in the same folder where the software is installed. File name is <date-wm15>.log SRCH1/SRCH2/SRCH3 same as hardware buttons ATT/REV same as hardware buttons FUNC same as pushing the vfo knob Back switches back to main screen and keypad

• when going to the "MENU" screen only the currently selected row is displayed on the Smartphone. Works fine when connecting from my laptop (Basic4PPC runs on desktopWindows too), so I guess there must be some issue with the development platform. I'll try to raise the point in the support forum if I can reproduce the issue so that deveopers can see it without a scanner handy.
• screen flickers: maybe finding the right balance between polling time, comms speed and screen redrawing tecniques can improve the situation, but so far I'm mainly focused on getting the thing operational.
• from time to time an error message pops-up complaining arrays exceeding size... ignore them and tell the program to keep running. Probably due to syncing issues.
• running the application with your wi-fi connection enable may cause errors.

Bluetooth dongle
I found mine on eBay from Hong Kong for about €35: model BT-0240 DCE.
Seems well made, including CTS/RTS lines that you will have to "fool" using the wiring below to make it actually talk to the BCT15.

License
Software is distributed complete with source code and is free for non commercial use.
GNU/GPL would be a better choice, but I shall check conditions on the libraries I used before I can  use that kind of license.

Compiling
The following libraries are required (thanks to the developers):
SerialEx.dll v.1.1
FormLib.dll v.2.5
Hardware.dll v.3.51

Feedback
Feedbacks and complimentary beers appreciated.

Contatto:

Pubblicato: 2 Dec09 Home