Hi Rein,

> You are asking for more feedback to improve the user interface.
> So here is one, granted it might be more difficult to do than I 
> understand at this moment:
OK. Good:-)

> I suppose once you select the certain sampling  frequency, one has 
> selected the range of the available frequency spectrum ( bandwidth )
Yes, the total frequency span is the bandwidth of the digital signal
that enters from the hardware. It is the Nyquist frequency (half the
sampling frequency) for real-valued signals and twice as much for
complex input signals (I and Q from direct conversion or VHF-sampling
units) 

> bin seize of FFT,  for waterfall calculations.
No. The bin size is another thing. The user has to tell Linrad what
bin bandwidth he wants for the main spectrum (fft1). From that Linrad
computes the appropriate FFT size that is a power of two. The size
must not be larger than 32768 which means that the minimum bin width
is about 5 Hz at 96 kHz sampling.

The waterfall uses the second FFT in case you have enabled it. The
size of the second FFT can be set to a power of two (0 to 10) so the
bin width in the waterfall can be made really narrow. 

> I have always found it very difficult to select a part of that spectrum
> and never really be able to use the arrows as you are using them.
> and never asked you or anybody else how they are handling this.
> Reason is that I think why am I so stupid that I can not do that?
This is not the right place to explain how to do. It is actually
not difficult but it takes several mouse clicks.

> OK an example 
> 
> Soind card sampling  selected 96 kHz -> 96 kHz not processed band cover.
OK. Transform spans 96 kHz. The main spectrum bin width may be anything 
from 2.9 Hz to 1.5 kHz with a resolution between 2.9 Hz and 7.5 kHz 
depending on what window you have selected. The lower bin bandwidth limit 
for the waterfall would be 0.02 Hz.

> Suppose one wants to select  lets say 16 or 8 or 4 kHz spread out over the
> full screen ( as in the 96 kHz width )  in real numbers from 32 kHz to 40 kHz.
Assume a 1024x768 screen with a main spectrum window of 900 pixels.
In case you have selected a resolution of 200 Hz for the first FFT, the 
transform size would be 1024 (with a normal window) with a bin bandwidth of
93.75 Hz. To cover 8 kHz one would need 85.333 bins. 11 pixels per bin would 
be too wide so 10 pixels per bin would be adopted The window would become 860
pixels wide.

> I dont now how one would do that in the present version without 
> lots of clicking and quite frankly I have never been able to do that.
hint: make the window narrow to move fewer points in or out when
clicking. Or use a text editor on the file par_xxx_wg

Rein, you are right in that it is not user friendly at all.
I will do something about it.

> But one solution could be to select some pop up window asking
> the user about zooming in/zooming out

> Pop up widow:
> Note: Allowed  zoom ranges only in multiples of whatever ( 4 - 8 - 16- 32 Khz 
> )
> ( To put a limit on the calculations involved )
> Low freq limit?  Answer 32   
> High freq limit?  Answer 48
> Ask confirmation 
> You want to zoom 32 to 48 ( Yes/No )
> 
> Enter .........
OK. The zoom range depends on what window size is available and the bandwidth
of the hardware. There is no limit on the zoom range, Linrad will just pick
whatever zoom range that gives room for the desired range within the screen
space available. Surely, if you would try to ask for 32.000000 to 32.000001 
Linrad would not accept such a narrow range so it would not be possible
to type in something like that.

> You now know how to start the display, where to stop the display and
> that the freq scale need to be multiplied by 6  ( 96/16 ) and everything in 
> the 
> waterfall needs to be scales along  x-axis by this factor )
> 
> And frequency selections in the waterfall need to be scaled back to the 
> original display or
> this might perhaps not even be needed.
> By now you know certainly where I am going.
> 
> It looks from here not such a difficult thing to do and I think it would make
> the user interface so much more friendly.

Thank you Rein. I will make some changes for the next version:-)

73

Leif / SM5BSZ

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