Pre-emptible extension in background
I was trying out background decoding for FT8 the other day on one of my Kiwis, selecting "yes" for pre-emptible. That seemed to work, though I was hoping that FT8 decoding would resume once that slot was unoccupied by a visitor. So if I understand correctly, pre-emptible is a one time event that will free up a channel for a user if it's needed, but will not return to the decoding afterwards.
Comments
No, it should return to decoding afterwards. There will be a slight delay before it restarts (I forget how long).
Ok that is good to know. I did some more testing on another Kiwi in 4 channel mode, loaded up with FT8 decoding, and it seemed to work just like that, returning to decoding once the user let go. I need to do more testing on the other one that was in 8 channel mode, with seven of the eight slots normally occupied a wsprdaemon PC. I'll do some more experimenting with that one.
Remember that 8 channel mode is a little weird because things that don't use the waterfall, like autorun WSPR/FTn, try and always leave rx0/rx1 free for user connections. So although it will restart after preemption it may not behave exactly as you might expect.
Ahhh, it now all makes sense, since the only open slot on the Kiwi in 8 channel mode was RX1, so assigning the background task to that slot probably is what made it avoid starting up again. Thanks for the rapid feedback to all my queries!