Detect callsigns in transcripts, and say whose they are

Under the transcript, headed DETECTED CALLSIGNS:, every callsign heard in
it with the name and location on its licence.

Finding them is not one regular expression over the text as written.  A
speech recogniser is poor at callsigns -- they are not words, they are
said one character at a time -- so it breaks them wherever the speaker
paused and writes the phonetic alphabet down verbatim.  The recording that
prompted this has "Alright, KU 0W" in it, with a space; spelled out it
would have been "kilo uniform zero whiskey".  All three forms read back to
KU0W.

Not inventing them matters more.  A run of words is accepted only when
none of its parts is an ordinary English word: "or 3. Can you open 4" and
"CC1 boy", both from real transcripts here, fit the shape once the
punctuation is gone and are not callsigns.  A single token said in one
breath is still trusted, because W1BOY is a perfectly good callsign, and a
lone "a" or "i" cannot start a join or "a B4U player" becomes AB4U.
Across the 126 transcripts in the recordings directory that turns three
candidates into the one that was actually said.

Lookups use the FCC's own licence data at callook.info -- no account, no
key, the callsign the only thing sent.  They never delay the display: the
entry reads "looking up" and fills itself in, and results are cached under
~/.cache so a net recorded night after night is looked up once.
--no-lookup contacts nothing and still describes a callsign from its own
structure, the ITU prefix giving the country and the digit the US
district, which is also all there is to say for callsigns outside the US.
--callsigns prints everyone who identified themselves and where they were
heard.

Also asked: are transcripts appended to, or overwritten, when another
transmission arrives on the same frequency?  Neither could be shown from
reading the code alone, so there are now three tests that run real scans
and look at the files.  By default each transmission has a transcript of
its own -- the timestamp is in the name, so two overs cannot land on one
file.  With --combine there is one recording per frequency and therefore
one transcript, opened for append with the time of each over; a second
scan into the same directory adds to it rather than starting it over,
which is the case the last of the three tests covers.

The browser and callsign tests refuse to reach the network at all.  One
test did, quietly, and passed -- visible only because the assertion it
failed printed a real operator's address.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_016PsWPTweCT6pwxKngvVxcg
This commit is contained in:
The Dust Council 2026-08-22 15:41:02 -07:00
parent cc317914e1
commit 739a2faaf4
11 changed files with 1502 additions and 16 deletions

View file

@ -30,6 +30,8 @@ saunterbrowse \- read and listen to what a bandsaunter scan collected
.RB [ \-\-player
.IR CMD ]
.RB [ \-\-list ]
.RB [ \-\-callsigns ]
.RB [ \-\-no\-lookup ]
.SH DESCRIPTION
A scan leaves a directory of recordings. Beside each one is a JSON file
holding what the classifier made of it, and for speech a transcript of what
@ -118,6 +120,14 @@ The command used to play a recording. The path is appended as its last
argument. By default the first of these that is installed is used:
{players}.
.TP
.B \-\-callsigns
Print every callsign heard in the directory, with the licence it belongs to
and where and when it was heard, then exit.
.TP
.B \-\-no\-lookup
Do not contact the licence database. Callsigns are still found and still
described from their prefix; only the name and address are missing.
.TP
.B \-\-list
Print one line per recording and exit, without drawing anything. This is what
to use over a pipe, in a script, or anywhere there is no terminal.
@ -133,6 +143,46 @@ message says which packages would fix it.
.PP
Over ssh there is usually no sound server at the far end. The browser and its
transcripts work regardless; only Enter has nothing to do.
.SH DETECTED CALLSIGNS
Under the transcript, headed
.BR "DETECTED CALLSIGNS:" ,
is every callsign heard in it, with the name and location on the licence.
.PP
Finding them is not a matter of one regular expression over the text as
written. A speech recogniser is poor at callsigns \[em] they are not words,
they are said one character at a time \[em] so it breaks them wherever the
speaker paused and writes the phonetic alphabet down verbatim. "KU 0W",
"K7 RA" and "kilo uniform zero whiskey" are all one callsign each, and all
three are read back correctly.
.PP
False positives are the thing to avoid: a browser that invents callsigns is
worse than one that finds none. So a run of words is only accepted when none
of its parts is an ordinary English word \[em] "or 3. Can you open 4" fits the
shape once the punctuation is gone, and is not a callsign \[em] while a single
token said in one breath is trusted, because W1BOY is a perfectly good
callsign.
.PP
The lookup uses the FCC's own licence data, published at callook.info, which
needs no account and no key. The callsign is the only thing sent, results are
cached under
.I ~/.cache/bandsaunter/
so the same net is looked up once however many nights it is recorded, and a
lookup never delays the display: the entry says "looking up" and fills itself
in.
.PP
.B \-\-no\-lookup
contacts nothing at all. Callsigns are still found, and still described from
their own structure \[em] the prefix is allocated by the ITU and the digit is
the US licensing district, so a callsign says which country and which region
it belongs to without any database. Outside the United States that is all
there is; callook.info holds US licences only.
.PP
.B \-\-callsigns
prints every callsign in the directory, who it belongs to, and each frequency
and time it was heard on, then exits.
.PP
US amateur licence records are public by law, and include the licensee's
address. That is what is shown.
.SH TRANSCRIPTS
A transcript appears only where a recogniser produced one, which means the
capture was judged to be speech and
@ -189,6 +239,14 @@ saunterbrowse \-\-list | grep \-i "mile marker"
.RE
.PP
Search the transcripts from a script.
.PP
.RS
.EX
saunterbrowse \-\-callsigns
.EE
.RE
.PP
Everyone who identified themselves, and where they were heard.
.SH EXIT STATUS
0 on a clean exit, 1 when the directory holds no recordings, 2 when it does
not exist or there is no terminal to draw on.