Any plan or intention to develope a true ATU?

N4AB

I have looked at the SSDR Roadmap but do not see any information on a "True" ATU. What I mean by TRUE is a completly automatic operation, what we have now is semi automatic operation. The ATU automaticaly tunes the antenna "only" after we push the button. I believe that the ATU once selected should "Sense" the rf signal and do its "magic" as required to keep the antenna in tune. This includes automaticaly changing the ATU during large frequency excursions and Band changs.
If I rember correctly when I ordered my 6700 at Dayton 2 years ago this was one of the items on the "DO" list.
What we have now works OK but is not the same Quality as the 6700 itself.
Are there any plans in the works? The unit certainly has the Horse Power to do it.
Just my question and two cents worth. The 6700 is GREAT.
Al, N4AB

Tim - W4TME

Adding features to the ATU to make its operation automatic is still planned for SmartSDR.  It has not been scheduled or assigned to a release at this time. 

Ken - NM9P

I would imagine that one of the issues they will face in making the tuner "smarter" is managing the CPU cycles and avoiding introducing additional latency or other problems.  

Example:  the CPU (or ONE of them) will need to sneak a few cycles to check the status of the ATU on/off switch, look at the SWR, determine if it needs adjusted, tune the equipment, and then return to processing the vocal waveform or CW note you were sending.... all without introducing latency or "pops" into the transmitted signal.  

When you have individual components, independent from one another, like an external automated antenna coupler, this is no problem.  In an integrated system like the 6000 I imagine that this is going to be a delicate ballet dance...one that could get very painful if not done very carefully.

Tim or Steve, please correct me if I am off base here.  Perhaps the ATU has more processing power itself than this and it won't be an additional load on the processor?  Or is this part of the task your engineering team is going to face?

Ken - NM9P