Vic, thanks indeed for your nice words about Winrad. It is always reassuring to know that your work has not been done for nothing... the activity on this list is not very high, so sometimes I ask myself if the thousands of downloads of the program do correspond to a similar number of users, or if maybe, after having downloaded and quickly looked at the program, nobody then actually uses it... probably, as always, the truth is in the middle...
Coming to your requests : > 1) Does Winrad have an open interface or callable exit routine to > pass control information to outside devices such as a transceiver or > receiver? The answer is "not yet, but it will". I have been asked on some other discussion groups about the possibility to support specific hardwares. Given that, though I would like to be able to do that, my time is a scarce resource, and I cannot satisfy every and each request coming along these lines, I took the decision to publish the specs for an external DLL meant to be called by Winrad, much like now is done with the SDR-14 support DLL. The DLL will be dynamically called. Winrad at start time will check its directory to find if such a DLL is present, and, if found, it will dynamically load it, and call its functions at due time. I think this will answer your needs about controlling your other HF radios when the user changes the frequency Winrad is tuned to. > 2) Is there a way to save my SDR-14 related settings between Winrad > sessions? As this is an item that needs very little time from me to implement, and given that it has been requested also by others, I think I will modify the SDR-14 support DLL to do it. Probably the modified DLL will be issued by me together with the document specifying the interfacing specs. > 3) Out of curiosity... is the full passband of data available for > other programs to read & analyze? I am quite aware of the MAP65 development by Joe Taylor, and as a matter of fact, I have exchanged a couple of messages with him on the subject. I am waiting to see which kind of data MAP65 needs to operate. I understand that it wants two pairs of I/Q data, for the two polarization directions. Winrad, in its present status, does not support 4-channel inputs to support that, so I think that before even thinking of making the full range of data available externally to MAP65, the issue of polarization support must have been solved. I will consider this, which for me is a bit of a problem, as I don't have crossed antennas to test with. But before supporting xpol, there is the issue of automatic image rejection that waits to be examined and possibly solved, together with the despreading of 10 GHz signals bounced off the moon. This latter is a difficult problem. I have a couple of ideas on how to at least start to fight against it, but experience teaches that theoretical ideas often will fail the implementation step....:-) Time will tell... > 4) Is there anything that we, the winrad user community, can do to > help you? The easy answer would be "support me with money", but that is not my answer. In the past I thought about asking some money for my programs (Winrad, SDRadio, Spectran, Jason, Argo, TCube, Hamview, DSPBOX), but then I thought that that would have somewhat limited my freedom. If you ask money for a program, then you have an obligation towards those who sent you that money. Well, that would make me feel not completely at my ease... at least for the publicly distributed softwares. In the past I was requested to write a customized version of one my programs, that had to cope with specific needs, and I did that, and asked money for that. But that is a different case. What I don't want to lose is the possibility, should such a day ever arrive (and I hope not), to say everybody "Ok guys, it has been nice, but now I am fed up and will turn my interests elsewhere". You cannot say that to paying users....:-) So, thanks again Vic, and I hope to have answered to all of your questions. 73 Alberto I2PHD _______________________________________________ Winrad mailing list [email protected] http://winrad.org/mailman/listinfo/winrad_winrad.org
