jks

If you're interested in getting a Kiwi at a substantial discount then make sure you've hit the "requested" button on the drop.com site (https://drop.com/buy/seeed-kiwisdr-kit?mode=guest_open) [registration required]. "Requested" is an expression of interest, not a commitment.

It's been 3 months since the last drop ended and they used to occur back-to-back pretty much. There are plenty of Kiwis available after a recent factory build, so that's not the issue.

The Kiwi is starting to function using a BBAI in place of the BBG/BBB. Lots of issues still, but in principle it works.

Turns out the US $125 price from Mouser and others is $100 MSRP plus the current $25 US China tariff. So for example you can get it from UK Farnell for £80/$100 (but then +VAT if delivered in EU). Seeed's Shenzhen-based website sells it for $125 which I find both amusing and sad. The AI is built by Embest, a, you guessed it, Shenzhen company. Go figure.

The thing is a beast. If you don't use some significant forced-air cooling it goes into thermal shutdown pretty quickly. It will also shutdown when your power supply can't deliver enough current! (5V 3A max)

Compile times for Kiwi codebase: (clang compiler, "make -j n" used)

BBAI    Debian 9.11    1m50s (3x faster)    TI AM5729 ARM Cortex-A15, 2 cores, 1.5 GHz
BBB/G   Debian 8.5     6m10s                TI AM3359 ARM Cortex-A8,  1 core,  1.0 GHz

Okay, there is a trial of this in today's v1.334, e.g. "kiwi:8073/users" Only responds to connections from the local network.
Response is JSON with a couple of the fields URI encoded. This mostly because it already existed as a protocol with the Kiwi Javascript and I've been trying to move everything to JSON anyway.

Example:

[{"i":0,"n":"ZL%2fKF6VO","g":"Tauranga,%20New%20Zealand","f":518000,"m":"cw","z":11,"t":"0:00:15","rt":0,"rs":"0:00:00","e":"","a":"192.168.1.2"},{"i":1},{"i":2},{"i":3}]

So a JSON array with as many objects as there are rx channels. Many of the fields can be an empty string value if there is no info.

• i: channel index
  
• n: name/callsign field, URI encoded
  
• g: geolocation, URI encoded
  
• f: freq Hz
  
• m: mode
  
• z: zoom level 0-14
  
• t: connect time h:mm:ss
  
• rt: time remaining type: 0 = no limit, 1 = inactivity limit will expire first, 2 = /24 hr limit will expire first
  
• rs: time remaining h:mm:ss (inactivity or /24 hr)
  
• e: extension in use
  
• a: user's ip address (as you would see on admin status tab)
  

Happy to see this. Greater appreciation and interest in distributed SDR applications is needed. So much that can be done..
https://www.rtl-sdr.com/electrosense-rtl-sdr-based-crowd-sourced-spectrum-monitoring-with-a-dc-to-6-ghz-rtl-sdr-up-downconverter

Yes, there seems to be a different bug in older versions of the antenna switch extension that prevents rebuilds.
To update and rebuild follow these instructions:

cdp
mst    [stop Kiwi server]
m git    [make sure Kiwi software is updated]
cd
rm -rf extensions    [remove old extensions build directory]
cd ~/KiwiSDR-antenna-switch-extension
gup    [update ant switch from github]
bash ant-switch-extension-installer    [rebuild ant switch and Kiwi software]
[Kiwi server should now be running]

I was able to do this from an old (March 2018) version of the antenna switch without any problems.