jks
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- jks
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Business survival and the ethics of Open Source
The following is representative of the kind of business advice I've been getting lately. I'd be interested in your opinions (any direct mention of competitors in your replies will be removed -- no free advertising for them on this forum).
It is commercial madness for the XXX guys to keep getting free source code for all your ongoing software improvements. Dealing with this is critical for your survival.
As I have mentioned previously, I would like to see you get (new Kiwi feature) working real soon now and freeze the source code on GitHub. Plenty of others do this and the flack is minimal (jks: emphasis mine). In fact, the majority of existing Kiwi owners will support this move, particularly when they learn that your future depends on it.
This is a matter of urgency as every day they are selling more product that is riding on your code. They are quite a bit behind at the moment. For example, I can see that there is no (recent Kiwi feature).
Every sale they make could have been a Kiwisdr sale. They have sold XXX in the last two weeks that I can see on (web retailers). If you don’t deal with this you are just working for them.
You can slow their sales by announcing that the source code is frozen and the reason why, plus the fact that their radios talk to servers in China.
Stop being nice!
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v1.700,701
This will be the last update for a while. I'm taking some time off to reassess my options.
From the CHANGE_LOG file:
v1.700 September 17, 2024
User interface:
Adjusting the passband edges should now work in most cases on mobile devices.
If it doesn't remember that there are other ways to adjust the passband including sliders
on the audio tab.
When adjusting the passband edges if the cursor wanders above or below the frequency scale
adjustment will continue to work. However the tooltip displaying the passband numeric
values continues to only appear when the cursor is positioned over the passband edge.
Remember that you can only adjust the edges when zoomed in far enough that the passband
color is green instead of yellow.
On narrow screen devices top bar now scrolls horizontally so all items can be accessed.
Mobile devices: sliding the passband to the screen edges causes the frequency scale to pan.
FT8/WSPR:
Added QO-100 satellite frequencies to extension and autorun menus.
Added FT8/WSPR V/UHF DX label entries to community database.
When the frequency offset is setup for operation with a greater than 1 GHz downconverter
the frequency entry box overflows due to the extra digit(s) displayed. There wasn't really
a good solution for this. Except that now if the cursor starts out inside the box the
keyboard left/right arrow keys will scroll left/right across the digits. As opposed to
tuning the current frequency as the left/right arrow keys normally do.
ALE extension:
Added "UN MINURSO" to milcom frequency list. (thanks M0HGK)
Added "MOROCCAN AF/Civil/Police/Navy" services to milcom frequency list. (thanks Mark W)
Admin interface:
The top bar (tab selection) and any status/error messages are now fixed at the top of the
page and no longer participate in any scrolling. This eliminates, for example, the page
"jumping back" to the top when you change a setting that requires a restart.
Config tab:
New menu "Frequency scale presets" has some pre-defined values that automatically puts
the correct entry in the "Frequency scale offset" field. For example, the menu entry
"144 => 28 (2m)" puts the value 116000 in the offset field which would map 144-148 MHz
to 28-32 MHz (assuming 32 MHz mode selected). We can add to this menu as necessary.
Network tab:
Better user interface behavior during "DHCP/static" and "Auto add NAT" changes.
Extensions tab:
WSPR option "Log spot debug info?" now produces a correct debug message in the log.
For example, WSPR UPLOAD: wsprnet.org said: "1 out of 1 spot(s) added"
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Dragging band edge and losing the "handle" [fixed in v1.700]
I've already fixed one aspect of this issue (will be included in the next software release).
After a page reload all is well. Adjusting the passband edge works when the cursor is dragged anywhere in the grey frequency scale area. When the cursor enters the waterfall area below the scale the edge dragging stops and reverts to passband tuning.
Here's the bug: As soon as you drag the waterfall just once then passband edge dragging in the lower half of the frequency scale breaks. It now behaves the same as a passband edge drag entering the waterfall area. Namely that the edge dragging stops and reverts to passband tuning.
So that problem has been fixed. What I'm working on now is trying to make edge dragging persist no matter where the cursor wanders to. But this is much more difficult.
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Dragging band edge and losing the "handle" [fixed in v1.700]
Well, looks like I'm wrong about this.
If you mess around long enough things change and you get the behavior you describe. Where the passband edges will no longer continue to adjust when the cursor is below the lower red mark in your diagram.
I think I see what causes the problem. Let me see if I can develop a fix.
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Please protect your KiwiSDR 2 from the high-level RF fields of nearby transmitters
From your description it certainly sounds like an open attenuator. Especially if you're getting the self-test patterns, just attenuated by 40 dB.
Please send an email to sales@kiwisdr.nz (note ".nz") requesting a repair. We're having to figure out some sort of formal solution to this problem since a significant number of people are asking.