OK, just installed the latest DataExplorer (v.3.8.0) and had a look. On the positive side, it’s opensource and runs perfectly on Linux (and should run as good everywhere there’s a JRE, as it’s written in Java).
On the negative side, it’s large and complicated and worse, incomplete: can’t use it for eg seeing the device firmware/hardware versions nor change any of its “global” settings.
AFAICS its largest advantage vs the bluetooth app is being able to back-up/restore programs from/to the device, but it’s quite labor-intensive as one has to operate the device and set a specific program to each slot, and then use the DataExplorer device dialog to read that program and save it in a DataExplorer slot; AFAICS there’s no way to read all programs and save them correspondingly, it has to be done one by one, and carefully so as not to mix slots as the program doesn’t guarantee any correspondence of its own slots vs the device slots. And restoring the device programming has to be done the same way, one by one and operating the charger and the program in concert, carefully and laboriously.
Worse, the program data you went to all that trouble to transfer to your PC is then saved in ASCII-encoded-binary form (ie, illegigle/uneditable), despite it being saved in a XML file that’s otherwise totally legible and editable. WT actual F?!
Well, I guess I won’t be using DataExplorer much either – my modded mc3000ble.py serves me well so far, has the added advantage of working totally over Bluetooth (so it’s one less cable, and the charger can be anywhere in Bluetooth range). I will eventually mod it further to support eg saving slot programs in the PC and have them transferred to the device.