Any progress report of v 1.4?

Takeshi Yamada

Could anyone report the progress/status of v1.4, like alpha tests completed and about to be launch by the end of Nov.?  
Gerald's announcement implies that FRS will release v1.4 in the end of November, and it is about a week to the month end.  Although I do not insist to the implied due date, I would be very happy if any of the progress report and rough launch schedule becoming available at this point of time.

73 de JI1BNU
Ken Yamada

KY6LA_Howard

Like all cakes in the oven...

It will come out of the oven when it is done!

Takeshi Yamada

Gnerally, oven has a small window to peek inside.  And it is fun to see the progress...

Stan VA7NF

He got you on that one.

Ned K1NJ

       Seems like reasonable request.  It's "about a month" now.  A "Basic 1.4", as on the
published roadmap, with "remote inside LAN", and basic FM, would be great, with the
additional features to follow in December.
   Too much cake at one time sometimes not good for you.

Ned,  K1NJ

Takeshi Yamada

I have no intention to fire up the non-productive discussion.  
However, I have no means to know about the progress of the work other than "FRS Insider" at the other end of the earth.  
And I would expect FRS to issue "The Insider News" periodically so that we can know the progress.  I am not intending to yell at the delay of the work, neither hasten the shipment.  I just want to be connected.

73 de JI1BNU
Ken Yamada 

Marc Lalonde

whit all that time cake will came out the oven like ash ;-)

honestly i have hope to have see it for last week before end of mont
but see it no yet ready ..

Alan - KA4B

Dudley stated on the net yesterday that they are working on a few final details and it should be soon.

Takeshi Yamada

Thank you Alan for updating.

Jon_KF2E

I too would really like to hear from Flex about how things are going. I'm starting to get concerned that things aren't going well. It's time for Gerald or Steve to reassure me again;)

Jon...kf2e

Bill -VA3WTB

I may be wrong, but I think they have a few things up their sleeves that will surprise.

Ned K1NJ

   Just speculation, but I'm encouraged that Dudley uses the word "details" and not "problems".
Also I'm encouraged that there has been no end of February "Insider".  With any luck the next
"Insider " will accompany the 1.4 release and it will be soon.  Coming out with an "Insider"
followed in a few days by the release wouldn't make much as much sense as their being
concurrent.

Ned,  K1NJ

Takeshi Yamada

I speculated the same and expected to have Insider at the day 1st of March which did not happen, though.   Also, I support your (and my) speculation because Steve explained about AGC-T with fairly long explanations that implies me he was released from the hard part of v1.4 release.
Don't take this serious it is just my speculation.  And it is fun to speculate.
Thank you FRS for giving me another fun!!

W4WHL

I was hoping 1.4 would be out prior to the ARRL DX International.  Would have been nice to not be confined to the shack.  Oh well hopefully soon.

Steve-N5AC

v1.4 is going well.  We made a lot of internal changes to improve performance and to support LAN remote.  There is always fallout from making these level of changes and so we've been working to make sure everything works well before a release.  We issued another Alpha on Friday and it is looking good with only a few remaining issues.  Sorry I can't give you a date -- all I can say is "soon."

Ken - NM9P

Thanks for the update, Steve.  It helps reduce the anxiety!

Will the performance improvements be "noticeable" to the average operator, or are they primarily "under the hood" and CPU load reductions? Tease us a little, if you have time...!
 
I am already aware of the massive reduction in data throughput brought by the change in audio codec, etc.  Really looking forward to LAN Remote.  I am now looking for a good Bluetooth or other wireless headset for that purpose.  Also looking forward to FM and some of the other improvements.

Thanks for the hard work.

Ken - NM9P

Mike_N1MD

It is always good to "hear" from you, Steve!

I feel like I am 5 years old again waiting for Santa to deliver that special v1.4 present!

I live in New England and last night I thought I heard Santa and the Sleigh land on my roof to deliver 1.4!

No joy. It was only the ice dams causing my roof to buckle.

But what fun it will be when 1.4 gets loaded!

Mike N1MD

Steve-N5AC

Ken, at the possible cost of oversharing gory details here's the scoop.  We have over 40 threads that run in the main radio processor to handle everything the radio has to do.  We made some alterations to the Linux kernel and the software to ensure that events are more carefully scheduled avoiding conflicts and ensuring the most important tasks are always done first.  This included an implementation of priority-based preemptive multitasking, a multi-level locking structure using Pthread rwlocks and mutexes and movement of some algorithms from the processor to the FPGA where it made sense.  All of these things make the radio run cleaner and more efficiently and will be noticeable during normal operation I would say.  All of these changes were implemented and tested across all of the FLEX-6000 line.

On top of this, the SmartSDR client was worked over from a performance standpoint and a number of major enhancements in performance were made.  A lot of these changes had to do with how we handle memory on the PC.  Microsoft tends to hide a lot of this from programmers, which is generally good.  With a high performance program that is expected to draw and communicate a lot of data, we really have to try a number of things and see where we can get the underlying language runtime (CLR) and the OS to do what works best.  The results have been fantastic.  I've seen a number of "marginal" computers go from having difficulty to performing very well in the transition to the new code.  This will help everyone that runs SmartSDR.

As you mention, we did implement a standard audio codec to transport audio between the PC and radio that has excellent performance, excellent audio quality and good self-healing for situations where there is some packet loss.  This codec is expensive in terms of CPU usage, but the results are really amazing.  I literally cannot tell that a codec or any compression is involved.

Bill -VA3WTB

Steve, sounds like there is nothing to it..lol

W5XZ - dan

WOW ! sounds great !  thanks for the details, steve

Patrick

Thanks Ken for the detailed update and please keep them coming.  I thank you and the rest of the engineering staff for working on these issues.  Flex is truly a great radio system and with time and persistence will continue show the way to remarkable performance. 

Norm - W7CK

Thanks for the update Steve.  Just hearing from you folks means a lot to all of us folks out here trying out best to patiently wait for v1.4.   Having no news was getting to be just a bit tough for us!  Thanks again and I for one really appreciate the effort all of you at Flex are putting into blazing this new trail through the SDR forest! 

Ken - NM9P

Love those gory details, Steve!  Thanks.  Just enough sugar to make the medicine (waiting) go down!  With all that, it is easier to understand any delays.  Sounds like almost a complete rewrite of a lot of the code.... Then you get to do it all again for V.2.0!  ha ha!

Ken - NM9P

Peter K1PGV

Don't you just hate it when destabilizing code changes cause regressions!  Sigh.  It's the way of the world.

Better to bite the bullet and get them all fixed the right way, as opposed to succumbing to pressure and shipping something with a bunch of work-arounds.  That just leads to problems later.

Please.  Take the time and fix stuff at the root cause now. When 1.4 is great, everyone will be happy and start waiting for 1.5!

Carl K5HK

Serve no wine before it's time...

Richard McClelland, AA5S

How about a new hardware platform that covers 125 khz to 450 mhz inclusive.  Surely, that would be something Steve can do as an extra lunch-time project.

Tony Hateley

donnt hold your breath

Steve W6SDM

The upside of waiting for 1.4 is that we don't have to listen to people complaining about the release of 1.5... yet.

Bill -VA3WTB

Good one Steve, Maybe the will not suggest a release date on that one, or any others..

DrTeeth

I hope the lack of discussion of release dates will not mean FRS clamming up on info like they have with 1.4; in particular we were told that FreeDV and the Waveform API were out officially, then rumours that they were in again. Then a few weeks ago there was one bug to be squashed and then more a few weeks later. The flow of info should be consistent during a dev period - keeping to a regular period (monthly/bi-monthly) would be best even if there is not much to say.

Mike NN9DD

We beat them for speaking. We beat them for not speaking. I would keep my mouth shut if I were them it's much easier. Mike N9DFD