SparkSDR 2rc6

[Alan Hopper]

Hi Group,

there is a new release here http://www.ihopper.org/radio/sparksdr2.htm . It should fix all the reported bugs. I'm trying not to add any features before the 2.0 release but this does report more spots to pskreporter and has some performance tweaks so cpu should be lower.

73 Alan M0NNB

[John Williams]

Nit - In WSPR mode, the TX % and TX Freq no longer show a number when setting the values. No way to accurately set the % and freq.

TX power working now on my Hermes 1

S-Meter not showing on first rec. If I add another rec I see the S-Meter.

John

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[Alan Hopper]

John,

yep all the sliders need some work to show the value. I have temporary put the smeter just on the ssb,am,fm modes as I have to play with the layout to fit it where it used to be. The smeter calibration will be affected by recent firmware mods and may be well off anyway as I have not tested calibration for a long time. Thanks for testing and the feedback, it is very valuable and much appriciated.

73 Alan M0NNB

On Friday, March 1, 2019 at 3:35:52 PM UTC, John Williams wrote:

Nit - In WSPR mode, the TX % and TX Freq no longer show a number when setting the values. No way to accurately set the % and freq.

TX power working now on my Hermes 1

S-Meter not showing on first rec. If I add another rec I see the S-Meter.

John

On 3/1/2019 6:39 AM, 'Alan Hopper' via SparkSDR wrote:

Hi Group,

there is a new release here http://www.ihopper.org/radio/sparksdr2.htm . It should fix all the reported bugs. I'm trying not to add any features before the 2.0 release but this does report more spots to pskreporter and has some performance tweaks so cpu should be lower.

73 Alan M0NNB

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[John Williams]

Alan, Do you have frequency calibration hidden somewhere? Looking.

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[Alan Hopper]

John,

yep it is in the radio settings, the '...' at the top of the panel with frequency.  For a number of reasons the differentiation of radio and virtual receiver settings is not as clear as it used to be and I need to improve that.

73 Alan M0NNB

On Friday, March 1, 2019 at 4:16:51 PM UTC, John Williams wrote:

Alan, Do you have frequency calibration hidden somewhere? Looking.

On 3/1/2019 10:06 AM, 'Alan Hopper' via SparkSDR wrote:

John,

yep all the sliders need some work to show the value. I have temporary put the smeter just on the ssb,am,fm modes as I have to play with the layout to fit it where it used to be. The smeter calibration will be affected by recent firmware mods and may be well off anyway as I have not tested calibration for a long time. Thanks for testing and the feedback, it is very valuable and much appriciated.

73 Alan M0NNB

On Friday, March 1, 2019 at 3:35:52 PM UTC, John Williams wrote:

Nit - In WSPR mode, the TX % and TX Freq no longer show a number when setting the values. No way to accurately set the % and freq.

TX power working now on my Hermes 1

S-Meter not showing on first rec. If I add another rec I see the S-Meter.

John

On 3/1/2019 6:39 AM, 'Alan Hopper' via SparkSDR wrote:

Hi Group,

there is a new release here http://www.ihopper.org/radio/sparksdr2.htm . It should fix all the reported bugs. I'm trying not to add any features before the 2.0 release but this does report more spots to pskreporter and has some performance tweaks so cpu should be lower.

73 Alan M0NNB

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[John Williams]

Does the automatic mode work well with standard Win10 NTP?

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[Alan Hopper]

John,

I've never tried, I've always used Meinberg , it would be interesting to find out as windows 10 is being improved all the time.

73 Alan M0NNB

[Alan Hopper]

Hi Group,

further to John's question about ntp on windows, I'd be interested to here anyone's linux suggestions on best advice for ntp on linux to put in the help.

73 Alan M0NNB

[John Williams]

Can you add a description on what ep6 is in the help also.

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[Alan Hopper]

John,

will do, and for reference it is a count of the number of times the udp packets from the radio arrive with non sequential sequence numbers, this indicates dropped or swapped packets. It is called ep6 because that is the name of the receiver data packet in the original HPSDR protocol docs from the original usb days (endpoint 6 I believe ). I keep meaning to give it a better name.  It only increments when a packet is received so is not a count of missed packets, just a count of unexpected sequence numbers.

73 Alan M0NNB

On Friday, March 1, 2019 at 4:46:33 PM UTC, John Williams wrote:

Can you add a description on what ep6 is in the help also.

On 3/1/2019 10:44 AM, 'Alan Hopper' via SparkSDR wrote:

Hi Group,

further to John's question about ntp on windows, I'd be interested to here anyone's linux suggestions on best advice for ntp on linux to put in the help.

73 Alan M0NNB

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[John Williams]

Another item for the help - how to stop a virtual receiver.

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[Alan Hopper]

John,

yep, a surprisingly tricky issue, at the moment you can't and it is the main blocker to clever favourites that would select many receivers at once.  I think this probably needs to be at the top of my list.

The current list is:-

Get a stable 2.0 out so I can forget about the <2.0 code.

Enable a load of performance enhancements that I've disabled .

Make ssb/am more usable

Allow psk tx

tidy code and open source

add loads of modes 

73 Alan M0NNB

On Friday, March 1, 2019 at 7:41:05 PM UTC, John Williams wrote:

Another item for the help - how to stop a virtual receiver.

On 3/1/2019 11:03 AM, 'Alan Hopper' via SparkSDR wrote:

John,

will do, and for reference it is a count of the number of times the udp packets from the radio arrive with non sequential sequence numbers, this indicates dropped or swapped packets. It is called ep6 because that is the name of the receiver data packet in the original HPSDR protocol docs from the original usb days (endpoint 6 I believe ). I keep meaning to give it a better name.  It only increments when a packet is received so is not a count of missed packets, just a count of unexpected sequence numbers.

73 Alan M0NNB

On Friday, March 1, 2019 at 4:46:33 PM UTC, John Williams wrote:

Can you add a description on what ep6 is in the help also.

On 3/1/2019 10:44 AM, 'Alan Hopper' via SparkSDR wrote:

Hi Group,

further to John's question about ntp on windows, I'd be interested to here anyone's linux suggestions on best advice for ntp on linux to put in the help.

73 Alan M0NNB

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[John Williams]

Alan,

I just thought I was missing it. Not a huge issue, was just wondering if it was possible.

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[John Williams]

In my opinion, you are there, at least for WSPR... Running all day on 2
receivers, not a single hiccup... Win10.

John

[Amogh Desai]

Hi Alan,

SParkSDR v2rc6 wroked on Windows 7+ 32bit with little efforts. Atleast it shows RX at the moment. I will do more testing.

For anyone who is still on Win7 sp 1 64 bit,   I had to install the Visual Studio 2017 32bit redistributable, .NET Core 2.2.2 Runtime and KB2533623 to get it to work.

A Mode request:  Could you please add DRM as a mode in future?  Its a digital Radio mode, is opensource and a software implementation is located here https://sourceforge.net/projects/drm/ 

Just like how installing wsjtx enables it on Sparksdr, could you have DRM enabled in sparksdr too ?

Regards,

Amogh

VU3DES

[Alan Hopper]

Amogh,

good to know it works for you, I'm surprised you had to install .net core 2.2.2 because .netcore 3.0 is included in the zip,(that's why it is so big) what error did it give before you installed .netcore?

73 Alan M0NNB

[David Wilde]

Hi Alan,

just downloaded and installed.

This is looking great!

I decided to see how many spots I could get, so started loading up receivers.

You can see the order used in the screenshot.

Strangely the first 40m receiver works OK, but the subsequent selections for FT8 and JT9 do not, but then the PSK receiver works again.

I guess this is because the FT8/JT9 receivers fall outside the bandwidth of the receiver allocated for 40m.  Is it possible to see which hardware receiver is being used and perhaps adjust where its centre frequency is so that 40m wspr, psk and FT8 can use just one receiver centred on 7.058 or thereabouts??  I think there is enough bandwidth to manage that.  I tried starting a receiver, setting the frequency then starting receivers for the other bands, then adding virtual receivers, but the centre frequency adjusted itself.

Also it would be nice if the spots list could be resized as the main window is resized, and perhaps the spots map optionally allowed to undock and float to wherever the user want it.

Really enjoying this software and appreciating the many many hours you must have dedicated to it.  Thank you.

Dave M0WID

[Amogh Desai]

I cant remember the exact message but it said something like It has found hostfxr.dll but failed to load it and to install it a link was included.

I cant say what really fixed it but I installed these in the order below:

•  Visual Studio 2017 32bit redistributable,
• .NET Core 2.2.2 Runtime 

• KB253362

After installing that KB is when it started working.

Amogh

VU3DES

[Amogh Desai]

I just uninstalled the .Net core 2.2.2 and its still working.  So, I guess the KB had fixed it.

[Alan Hopper]

Amogh,

thanks for that, I'll make a note in the non existent install instructions.

73 Alan M0NNB

[Josh Logan]

You can pick a wider bandwidth then 48khz, I think it's in the top three ... screen.

I was able to pick the same bands as you.  I have not been seeing many psk reports.

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[Alan Hopper]

Dave,

sorry my first reply to this seemed to get lost somehow. I guess you have found the bandwidth/sample rate control by now, there is a small issue in changing it once a receiver has run out of bandwidth, it is not corrected until you tune.

The auto tuning and selection of firmware receivers is a little cautious near the edges of the receivers as there can be a firmware dependent drop off, so you sometimes need a little more bandwidth than the numbers suggest.

I'll give some thought to a receiver allocation display, it could make the whole virtual receiver thing easier to describe ( and a good debugging tool).

I notice you are doing very well on psk reporter.

[claudio.gi...@gmail.com]

Hello Alan,
just to tell you I've just started playing with SparkSDR2rc6 on Linux; it started up without issues, immediately found my H-Lv2b3 (faster than the other SWs) and RX is working fine - looks quit nice!
Now I'm trying to figure out how to set up all the things and maybe later I'll try to see if I can get in the Top Monitors pskreporter list, hi.

73 de Claudio, DK1CG / IN3OTD

[Pascal Vilain]

Alan,

Same here. I played this morning with 2 hardwares : the HL2b6 on 40m and the RedPitaya with a transverter on VHF : very funny !

May be, you can add these small points to your todo list :

- to memorize the compression level,

- an option to switch off automatically the speaker of the hardware you are not looking on

- sometimes, when coming back from TX to RX , the rx rf gain has moved so you must adjust it again...( the sound level goes down)

Thanks again for your nice job.

[James Savage]

Hi Alan,

Just a quick note to report v limited success running the 32bit version of SparkSDR on Win8.1 32bit running on x64 cpu with the 32bit 2017 redistributable,

I only attempted this because I had that machine running and spotted your TC6 announcement.

 

Whilst the app initially launches ok, it is not yet usable.  The settings menu opens correctly. The Help icon launches help in a browser correctly but discovery does not discover the directly connected HL2 and after a few minutes I received a SparkSDR.avalonia error dialog stating that Windows will close the program...

I then restarted HL and some time later returned to have another go. SparkSDR now fails to launch, without any visible error report even when executed "as Administrator".

I will post a reply to this with 2 original logs and a sample log arising from it not starting.

Maybe network discovery is different under Win 8.1?  Is HL2 easily spotted using wireshark?

I will return to SparkSDR under Windows 7 64bit which still detects the same HL2.

James

[Alan Hopper]

James,

 I'm keen to see the log files, there should be nothing special about windows 8.1 for the 32 bit version, the code is the same for win 7,8.1 & 10. The 64 bit version does have code that only works from win 8.1 up.

73 Alan M0NNB

[Alan Hopper]

David,

congratulations on hitting the top spot on 40m psk reporter. Might motivate me to mend my antenna in an attempt to catch you:)

73 Alan M0NNB

On Saturday, March 2, 2019 at 9:45:24 AM UTC, David Wilde wrote:

[David Wilde]

Thanks Alan. I had noticed doing quite well but missed being in the top spot. Looking now i am in second place, still remarkably good. I assure you this is nothing clever on my behalf, but a testament to the team that developed the HL2 and also your software. My antenna is a badly tuned Carolina Windom that has stretched since originally set up. What really suprised me was the number of counties spotted in this sunspot minimum.

The agc you have to adjust the receive gain seems to be working well.

I saw the sampling drop down but thought that related to the soundcard. I should have realised as it in the radio settings, but maybe labelling this as bandwidth would remove confusion. This seems to apply to all receivers. Is it possible to have different bandwidths in the different hardware receivers?

Also it would be nice if it was easier to see which of the receivers is selected, perhaps highlighting the currently selected one in some way.

Is there a plan to implement transmit with Multipsk at some point? I quite fancy trying Olivia with the HL2, and perhaps also ROS and js8call, but those modes would need some form of cat interface and vac, not very elegant.

Your broken antenna seems to work quite well - I am looking forward to being thoroughly beaten when you fix it!

73

Dave M0WID

[Alan Hopper]

David,

yep the country counts amaze me, I have wondered if these synchronized bursts of rf every 15s from around the world are going to confuse astrophysicists on some distant planet someday.

The bandwidth affects all receivers at once, this fixed by the protocol and firmware. The hpsdr protocol2 (not available on hl2) does support  bandwidth per receiver but I hide it as it complicated the virtual receiver tuning code.

I'll add an indication to tie the summary display to the current foreground receiver.

The developer of Multipsk has added tx into his protocol and gave me something to test but I got sidetracked, It should not be much work to get going.

73 Alan M0NNB

[claudio.gi...@gmail.com]

...I tried but I'm currently quite far from the the top reporters on 40 m, a few positions below Alan, so my 14AVQ with a single short radial is likely not good enough, hi.
SparkSDR has been working and spotting flawlessly since yesterday, I'll leave it running for a while. I could maybe later try with the H-Lv1 with more HW receivers to cover all bands but I'm not sure it will make a big difference in the number of spots. Does SparkSDR still support the H-Lv1?

As said, having an indication of the currently selected receiver and of which receivers are contributing to the audio output, perhaps with a colored frame around the selected receiver and a small loudspeaker icon would be great!.

Is there a way to clear the spot count for PSK?

73 de Claudio, DK1CG / IN3OTD

[Alan Hopper]

Hi Claudio,

Yep hlv1 should still work.  So how well is the audio working for you on linux? Some audio options work for me but I get a crash selecting one of the audio devices. The psk clear button is missing, I'm going to rework the psk display as I add tx. The psk63 option is new and interestingly the text noise filter I made for psk31 does not work very well on psk63.

73 Alan M0NNB

On Monday, March 4, 2019 at 5:33:30 PM UTC, 

[neil whiting]

Hi Alan,

Just tried this update with my HL2, Windows 10,  but finding a problem with multiple receivers. It works fine with one RX, FT8, 20m but when I add another RX FT8, 30m, neither of them work, the RX and waterfall displays show red colours. It works fine with up to 3 RXs using 1.0 beta 9.

Is this to be expected?

73, Neil  G4BRK

[Alan Hopper]

Hi Neil,

this should work, what version of HL2 is it and what firmware are you running? One difference between the 1.0 betas and 2.0 is that if newish firmware is detected I don't stop the radio when adding new firmware receivers, this makes adding receivers smoother but maybe I have not got the firmware detection/ cutoff point quite right. 

73 Alan M0NNB

[neil whiting]

Hi Alan,

Thanks for responding.

It's an HL2 build 6. I haven't yet updated the firmware from that which was supplied.

Haven't worked out what that firmware is numbered.

Thanks,  Neil G4BRK

[neil whiting]

Hi Alan,

I did a bit more investigation to try to find some clues. 

I added an RX on the same band (20m) and it starts OK (decoding FT8 like the first RX).

I then changed RX2 to 40m and decodes stopped on both RXs. 

As well as this the waterfall went mostly red. The PA temperature meter indicates varying values in the 1000-3000C range :-)

Screen shot attached.

73, Neil  G4BRK

[gvj...@gmail.com]

Hi Alan,
Got my HL2 b6 running ok on RX using pulse. Tried TX but not quite going. Putting it on to AM to get a carrier it gives me flicks of power out but mostly nothing. the PA bias current is correct and when I get flickers of carrier the TX current also flicks up. I am wondering if you detect the swr and shut down if high? My filter version doesn't detect swr so it is random and usually goes up with the open circuit input probably picking up some residual RF.

73, Graeme ZL2APV

[Alan Hopper]

Neil,

this sounds like your firmware does not like adding new receivers whilst running, as the new firmware receiver won't have been started until you changed frequency.  I'll try and see if I can differentiate between your version and the current one in the next release or put a setting in if the reported versions are the same.  I think earlier firmware also had issues with the temp reading (as yours is a little hot). Whilst I try and make Spark work with all firmware versions, I do recommend updating, you get and extra receiver in the current version.

73 Alan M0NNB

On Tuesday, March 5, 2019 at 5:43:41 PM UTC, neil whiting wrote:

Hi Alan,

[Alan Hopper]

Graeme,

Thanks for testing, I don't do any swr protection.  I assume tx works with other software? I'm just putting together a better linux test machine and will give tx a good test over the next few days.  Good to know it works with pulse.

73 Alan M0NNB

On Tuesday, March 5, 2019 at 5:54:08 PM UTC, 

[neil whiting]

Hi Alan,

I ordered a USB Blaster earlier today in order to do the firmware update. Will try again once I have it updated.

73/Thanks,  Neil  G4BRK

[Graeme Jury]

Yes TX works with Quisk and piHPSDR and 3 dB down with linHPSDR. Thanks for all you have done and for your intention to test TX with Linux.

73, Graeme ZL2APV

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[claudio.gi...@gmail.com]

Graeme,
on my machine I've seen with Quisk that sometimes pulseaudio needs to be restarted to get TX working properly otherwise I get some distorted or pulsing output, not sure if it could be the same issue there.

Alan,
the soundcard selection here seems to work fine, I played a little with that at the beginning while trying to get the audio out on my monitor loudspeakers instead of my headphones and did not get any crash. I did not try TX yet.

BTW, sometimes I get several lines of "Can't queue property Can't queue property Can't queue property" on the console, I think while SparkSDR launches some digital mode decoding but I'm not sure when it actually happens; everything still seems to continue working fine after that.

73 de Claudio, DK1CG / IN3OTD

[Alan Hopper]

Claudio,

the 'can't queue property' error is not critical but indicates things got a bit busy and scope/waterfall data was not sent to the display.  The linux version does not set thread priorities yet which can be improved.  

Graeme,

is the ep6 count steady during tx? If not it would indicate a networking issue (possibly in my code). You could try wspr or sig gen tx and see if they are stable, if so it would indicate a audio input issue (again probably in my code).  You could also try turning off the audio resampler.

My new old linux box is now up and I have linhpsdr running so will try and test tx on that as well.

73 Alan M0NNB

On Tuesday, March 5, 2019 at 8:30:32 PM UTC, 

[James Savage]

Hi Alan,

I left SparkSDR running overnight and today. This evening after some TX related tweaks I noted a message towards the top left of SparkSDR indicating, iirc that it was waiting to connect.  I am connected via a hub at present. Once this error cleared itself , I deselected two receivers I had pinned and clicked on clicked on  20m FT8 receiver in screenshot. Note Waterfall missing. Clicking on other receivers revealed that several were also missing waterfalls.

See attached log too.  I have removed a huge no of repeated entries in the middle to keep the size down

James

On Friday, March 1, 2019 at 12:39:12 PM UTC, Alan Hopper wrote:

[gvj...@gmail.com]

Hello Alan and Claudio,

Thanks for the responses and I will try the suggestions tonight. I hardly know how to navigate around Spark yet as I really had my first proper look last night and went to bed excited that I had it going with 3 or 4 receivers. I could listen to audio from them all at once or mute whichever combination I desired - really cool stuff. Just to complicate things I am moving house and although it's not til 23rd April, I am packing now and the shack is in total disarray, something to do with the xyl believing that I will never make it 😉

73, Graeme ZL2APV

[Alan Hopper]

Hi James,

I don't think Spark displays any messages like ' waiting to connect', could it have been something else popping up on top? When the waterfall was blank were things like temp and adc level frozen? If so it sounds like the radio watchdog has triggered, possibly due to a network blip, Using the sw power button normally fixes this, In future I want to auto detect this and restart.  

Did you ever get to the bottom of your win 8.1 issue?

73 Alan M0NNB

[Alan Hopper]

Hi Graeme,

I've done some initial playing with tx on my new linux box. Firstly I discovered the am page is not showing the proper controls, it shows the controls for whichever mode was previously selected so I would avoid using it, however am tx did work for me.  I did get something like the effect you described when I did not have an audio input device selected (in the bottom ... settings).  

It also needs documenting that mute affects the mic as well as the speaker and you may have to tweak the rf lna gain on tx, I think I have the default set too high. If you run Spark from a command prompt you will see some extra logging.

Enjoy your packing:)

73 Alan M0NNB

On Wednesday, March 6, 2019 at 12:26:25 AM UTC, 

[Graeme Jury]

Hi Alan,

I tried Claudio's suggestion and ran pulseaudio -k then started SparkSDR. Success!! It ran ok on AM and SSB. I could not find a tune button but then at this stage I have not found my way around much of the radio yet. It goes really well on RX but I have not tried anything through wsjt-x yet as I still need to figure out how to do this. To be honest I have not even looked properly at your web site to see if there is any kind of a wiki or documentation but will get to it soon. Thanks for the tip on RX mute also affects the mic.

The best I can say is that the packing is proceeding.
Thanks again, Graeme ZL2APV

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[Steve Haynal]

Hi Alan,

Linux RC6 RX has been working very well for me over the last week, up without problems for 7+ days. I have been running two instances with two HL2s and skimming 160,80,60,40,30,20,17,15M. I am consistently in the 35-45 range on the 50 top monitors list. I'm very happy with that given I have just long wires on my roof and my QTH is not near the most active European region. I haven't seen anyone else from the North American west coast on the list. North American's on the list tend to be from the east where they have better propagation from Europe. Claudio is number 11 on the list and is only skimming 4 bands. I've also seen you and other HL2s users on the list.

Many of the other stations reporting to pskreporter.info include radio and antenna details. Is that done via the software, and if so, is there a place in SparkSDR for me to specify this? Or do I need to create an account at pskreporter.info? I didn't find a way to do either of these.

I still want to try TX, but have been busy with other stuff.

73,

Steve

kf7o

[Alan Hopper]

Steve,

that's great, very good to know the linux version is behaving.  I need to add the radio/antenna details stuff, it is a bit tricky as the protocol to pskreporter does not account for software that might be connected to multiple radios, be good to get this done to advertise the HL2. I think you are right, Europe is the place to be to get to the top psk reporter spots.

73 Alan M0NNB

[claudio.gi...@gmail.com]

yep, SparkSDR works really well - here it has been running and spotting the whole week without any issue.
The Top Monitors list gave me some motivation to improve my antenna setup so a few days ago I doubled the number of radials under my vertical, from 1 to 2, that is, hi.
It's true that here in Europe it's easier to reach a good position on the list, due to the higher number of stations. For some time me and Alan were fighting for the first place on 40 m today, which I find quite surprising given the noisy urban environment here but the H-L seems to work fine in these conditions anyway - I do not have any special filter besides the N2ADR board.
Maybe next week I'll dig out the H-Lv1 and start skimming all bands using a small active antenna to see how well that works.

Regarding the station info, I had the same question and saw this thread but didn't try the suggestions there yet.

73 de Claudio, IN3OTD / DK1CG

[gvj...@gmail.com]

Spark is working well for me here too. It is fine with multiple bands and does the reporting with no problems. It was so easy to get going, just a matter of choosing pulse (I am on Linux) setting wspr and choosing the band. After I stopped SparkSDR I could not use Quisk without a reboot but probably that was unnecessary and I just needed to restart pulse. I am experimenting at present with a 4.5M per side square loop laying on the ground and fed with a 2t pri and 5t sec transformer. John Williams W9JSW sent me the link http://www.kk5jy.net/LoG/ to the article on the antenna. Still evaluating.

73, Graeme ZL2APV

[f6ehp]

Hi,

 in less than 20 hours, listing only the 40m band in FT8, pskreporter pushs me at the 20th place with around 7000 reports. Not too bad ! But we must remenber that FT8 users run high power. in Europe I can see FT8 signals as strong as some well known; ham using several kW !

I need to upgrade my HL2b6 firmware to listen more bands. I will try to do soon with the Pi3 method

Pascal

[f6ehp]

Hi,

Today after 20 hours running rc6 and HL2b6 upgraded with the latest firmware, results on psk reporter listening 4 bands, 80,40,30 and 20m, are  really surprising:

7th on "all bands", 11th on 80m, 3rd on 40m and 30m, and 4th on 20m !!

My Antenna is an inverted V top at 15m, tuned for 40m with a matching box, not really well located for DX.

Thanks to Alan and Steve for this nice setup. Digital mode is not my usual mode, but I was happy to do this test, as I never expected to get such results,

73, Pascal

[neil whiting]

My USB Blaster arrived and I spent quite a while getting it to update my HL2b6.

Fortunately it is the version with a PIC  and I eventually got the 20190223 update loaded.

Now I can start up to 4 receivers with no problem and all is working very nicely.

73,

Neil  G4BRK

[gvj...@gmail.com]

Hi Neil,

Where is you get your blaster from? I have 3 of the STM blasters but none of them work with Linux but I believe that the PIC ones do.

73, Graeme ZL2APV

[neil whiting]

Hi Graeme,

It was from this listing  https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/200943750380

Seller alice1101983

I think others have had either STM or PIC versions from this seller so maybe I was lucky.

I didn't try with Linux, I used Windows 10.

73, Neil  G4BRK

[gvj...@gmail.com]

Thanks Neil,

I have bought 2 blasters from this supplier and got STM versions both times. I might have another go and ask specifically for a PIC version. They're cheap enough to take a chance on.

73, Graeme ZL2APV