Brief QRZ lookup option

PoLo - Issues & Ideas
1

An option to a brief QRZ lookup. Pulling extra QRZ profile data (eg; photo, etc) on a slow data connection in a park sucks. :grinning:

2

Hi Dan,
Iā€™ll stand corrected here by @KI2D Sebastian, but the data pulled from QRZ in the first instance i.e. in the QSO entry lookup, is only the address of the image, not the full image.
image

The data pulled is found here for both paid and free QRZ subscriptions: Data Lookups | Ham2K Portable Logger
This string is all thatā€™s pulled initially:

<image>https://cdn-xml.qrz.com/o/vk1ao/rd_VK1AO_with_Badges_Alignment_M.png</image>

Itā€™s only when you go to the full callsign panel that the image gets pulled.
image

So for data/qso entry, if there is a latency in the lookup, its not the image.

As I say, @Ki2D may have more input on this.

Alan

3

When you have the info panel open to see operation stats, it will pull the image upon entering a callsign.

If you donā€™t think that pulling an image on an already barely functional cell data connection would cause even more bandwidth issues on subsequent qrz lookups, then I really donā€™t know what to say.

Not to mention the fact if you mistype a callsign, it will attempt to pull another image. Eg; aa0aaa --pull image-- oops wrong callā€¦ backspace, aa0aa --pull image-- oopsā€¦

An option not to pull the image at all would be nice.

4

OK thatā€™s true - I do not operate with the panel open. I only activate in portrait orientation and I probably up the font size one notch for easier typing.

Itā€™s probably the best way to go with poor coverage. Turn the device portrait would be the way to go in these cases. Give it a go and report back on whether the performance improves.
Alan

5

I totally see the problem here.

What I need to figure out is how to best handle this. I donā€™t want to just add a random ā€œBrief QRZ Lookupā€ option deep in the settings.

Maybe Iā€™ll just call it ā€œWD4DAN Data Modeā€ :rofl:

Even better would be to figure this out without the user needing to worry about it. Maybe I can avoid these lookups if any other data calls are taking longer than 2 or 3 seconds, for example.

Or seeing how the only data request we can avoid is actually just this QRZ image, maybe all we need is a little checkbox on the profile page itself that says ā€œShow imageā€ or ā€œHide imagesā€

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