Version 2.0.931

[ahop...@googlemail.com]

Hi All,

There are beta test versions below for everything except mac.

These support soapysdr radios and ExtIO radios(windows only).

There are a number of bug fixes and performance tweaks and support for PI4 beacons and JT65-B.

These are beta releases using the just released .net7.0 and Avalonia beta builds so there may well be issues. This is the base for an upcoming 2.1.0 release.

https://www.sparksdr.com/download/SparkSDR.2.0.931.win64.zip
https://www.sparksdr.com/download/SparkSDR.2.0.931.win32.zip
https://www.sparksdr.com/download/SparkSDR.2.0.931.linux-x64.deb
https://www.sparksdr.com/download/SparkSDR.2.0.931.linux-x64.rpm
https://www.sparksdr.com/download/SparkSDR.2.0.931.linux-arm.deb
 https://www.sparksdr.com/download/SparkSDR.2.0.931.linux-arm64.deb

There is a section on soapy and extio in the help. SoapySdr has not been tested on the 32bit windows version, I don't know of a prebuilt win32 version of SoapySDR so it maybe a question of building it from source.  32 bit extio files should work on win32, on win 64 you can use either 32 or 64bit extio files.

Please report all issues here, Trevor has very kindly lent me some Airspy radios for the next couple of weeks so it would be great to get feedback whilst I still have them.

Thanks for all the feedback so far.

radios that have worked

rtl

lime usb

Apollo

rx888 (extio)

Airspy

Elad FDM-S2(extio)

73 Alan M0NNB

[Rinse Pasma]

Hello Alan,

Thanks for the last update, the software works fine here with my Elad FDM-S2
I do have a question/comment, I use several SDR radios with different antennas.
Is it possible to specify an antenna for every SDR radio ?, you can now only specify 1 general one.
I also saw that when I start the software, the ExtIO is also automatically started with a DOS box that contains nothing else.

73 Rinse PD2RPS

Op vrijdag 25 november 2022 om 17:15:48 UTC+1 schreef ahop...@googlemail.com:

[ahop...@googlemail.com]

Hi Rinse,

I don't think the psk reporter api makes it easy to send a different antenna per spot or radio, I shall look into it, I'm not sure how pskreporter would handle, display different antennas if sent i.e. would they be tied to specific spots.  For other uses (eg cw macros) I could have an antenna field per radio.

I did leave a debug window visible by accident but that window looks different , does it only appear when you start the Elad?

73 Alan M0NNB 

[Rinse Pasma]

Hello Alan,

Yes the screen displayed when the Elad ddl is loaded
If you close the screen, the Elad screen will also be closed.
An Antenne per radio would be nice.
73's Rinse PD2RPS

Op zaterdag 26 november 2022 om 13:58:46 UTC+1 schreef ahop...@googlemail.com:

[jeff forber]

hello Alan.  i cant get spark 2.0.931 to load .....a had a problem with my pc and re installed windows 11 a few weeks ago .... this is the first time i tried to install.SINCE THE RE INSTALL...   cant get it to work now ..keeps saying i need an app to open it ....i cant find a path...... Spark 2.0.931 is in  downloads on my pc ...i thank you in advance for this super program ..please advise 
73 jeff TA4/G8SCU

[David Taylor]

On 26/11/2022 21:59, jeff forber wrote:
> hello Alan.  i cant get spark 2.0.931 to load .....a had a problem with my pc
> and re installed windows 11 a few weeks ago .... this is the first time i tried
> to install.SINCE THE RE INSTALL...   cant get it to work now ..keeps saying i
> need an app to open it ....i cant find a path...... Spark 2.0.931 is in
> downloads on my pc ...i thank you in advance for this super program ..please
> advise
> 73 jeff TA4/G8SCU

Jeff,

It might be helpful if you could say /what/ app was needed, perhaps even attach
a screenshot showing the error message. Is the Windows-11 32-bit or 64-bit?
It may be that one of the Windows Visual C libraries needs to be reloaded.

David GM8ARV
--
SatSignal Software - Quality software for you
Web: https://www.satsignal.eu
Email: david-...@blueyonder.co.uk
Twitter: @gm8arv

[ahop...@googlemail.com]

Hi Jeff,

very odd, have you un zipped it? Spark is entirely self contained and does not need anything else installed.  Windows should open the zip file in explorer and give you an option to 'extract all' , you should then have a folder with 8 files in and SparkSDR should just run when clicked.

73 Alan M0NNB

[david.wi...@gmail.com]

I have just installed this on lubuntu 22.04 LTS running on an AtomicPi and is working fine with HL2 and SDR-Play so far, apart from one issue that was also present in previous versions.

I have been running two instances of Spark on WSPR (40m) for the month of November in order to compare two mag loops, one instance with my original M6DPW call, the other with M0WID call.  Sometime in the last day decoding stopped in both instances and there were no spot uploads to the WSPRnet database.  The water fall was fine, and the instance that was set to transmit still did so.  I tried a reboot, but could not get the PC to boot at all, it was locked up.  After much messing around trying to get the thing to boot from its hard drive I booted it from a USB stick and established the hard drive was full of .c2 files (in the .config/m0nnb/SparkSDR2/wsprd/wsprdtmp_27122565 folder) These seem to be created every 2 minutes and never get deleted. Once deleted I had enough disk space to boot up the Atomic Pi and start the two instances of Spark again.

There seems to be another wsprdtmp folder in .config/m0nnb/SparkSDR2/m0wid/wsprd also creating .c2 files

What are these .c2 files?  Are there any other files I should look for and clean up?  Should they be cleaned up automatically somehow?  Is there a way of avoiding these files wearing out the emmc drive in the AtomicPi?

Dave M0WID

[david.wi...@gmail.com]

Just came back from a shopping trip to find both instances had shut themselves down with last recorded spots at 14:10, nothing in the log files.  Lubuntu still running fine.  I had the same issue with the previous version I was running (sorry forgotten what that was, downloaded about a month ago).  The first time SparkSDR was started after some time it just stops, the next time seems to run forever (or at least until the hard drive fills up!)

Anything to look for to try and find the cause?  Could it be specific to the AtomicPi or WSPR mode?  I have enabled extended logging now - it was not enabled before.

Dave M0WID

[ahop...@googlemail.com]

Hi Dave,

these .c2 files are iq recordings that the wsprd decoder uses, they should be deleted after the decoder runs. There should be a tmp directory for each wspr virtual receiver, these are deleted on start up.  Maybe something fails with multiple instances, I shall have a play.

73 Alan M0NNB