V1.4 Demo

Bill -VA3WTB

Wow some people just don't get it,,so funny!! What promises are you talking about, and if it takes longer than the end of the month, what are you planning on doing?

Jay Nation

Dave - N7AIG

Ok, I figured out the firewire audio chipset the 3k/5k use without asking, schematics came in handy. The linux ffado driver seems to have more support for that chipset than it did last year when I was looking at it. Found several vendor docs for the chipset online and even found there svn site for drivers, with what might be driver souce code. Found better documentation about ffado than I'd seen before. What was impossible might be due for some deep thought and another look. Vendor states that chipset is now "Legacy" which might explain the "Legacy" status of the 3k/5k a little. Time to explore, is sort of nice. No promises, still just dreaming out loud. Getting the audio out of the radio and into the PC without windows was a tall hurdle. Might be just a speed bump.

73

Jay Nation

oops!
Not the driver source. Just the binaries. 
Doggone speed bumps!

Bill -VA3WTB

You go Dave! I wish someone who knew what they were doing did this a long time ago..

N7AIG

Hi Jay,

Very cool! Sounds like you enjoy "Bare-Metal" coding? Pretty neat stuff!

73 de Dave, N7AIG

SteveJ

People don't get what, Bill?  Nothing funny about that. Tony, probably can't get a refund but give it a little more time.  Then you can decide whether you want to keep the Flex or move on.

DrTeeth

Playing devil's advocate, forget the retailer's site. On FRS own site, the impression is that the capability is available. FM capability might be very important to Tony and he might have bought his Flex on that basis. The info on this site does not say that the mode will be available at some time in the future or not currently available.

On what grounds does one not trust the site of a manufacturer or company?

Jay Nation

Well, further research seems to suggest that since ALSA is working on adding firewire support into the linux kernel itself, and ffado is currently undermanned, and since both ALSA and ffado can't write drivers without hardware to reverse engineer. Well it's not likely to happen all that soon or easy. But I've got the ffado and ALSA source to stare at. ffado has a few utilities for testing/probing the hardware so it might still be do-able.  Alsa claims whatever they have working is only working simplex/playback so far, so that's a non-starter. Yep, I've bit off more than I can chew, but I've been there done that successfully before. Opensource and signed NDA's dont mix real well. So I'm not likely to get much help. I'll have to switch swap out linux distros to get to try the 5K with the latest ffado code, If it was easy I guess we'd all be doing it already. ;0)    

Jay Nation

Dave
I think all coding involve's bare metal, ever missed the nail, and hit your thumb? It goes just like that, sometimes. ;0)
Can't hurt unless I try.

Steve N4LQ

Seems to me like "whining" works both ways gents.

Jay Nation

And Google, scores!, when you know what terms to search with.
A bit of old but interesting news.
http://libregraphicsworld.org/blog/entry/firewire-audio-on-linux-gets-better-with-ffado-2.1.0
The current release is 2.2.1 and available in the ffado SVN on sourceforge.
I wonder how it is going to work.
Still no linux version of PowerSDR.
Just now there's one less thing keeping us from it.
;0) 

Gerald-K5SDR

In answer to the original question:

1. Tim is planning to show v1.4 at Frostfest in Richmond this weekend.
2. v1.4 will be shown in the booth next weekend at Hamcation in Orlando.
3. Greg is working to finish a video demo of LAN Remote operation.
4. The October and December Flex Insider editions contained detailed overview of the features.
5. We release test updates to our test group every weekend and one is going out this evening.
6. I just confirmed with Steve that we are down to one known critical bug that they are working now and they know how to fix it.  
7. We are running automated test scripts continuously to stress test the radio.
8. We will release v1.4 when it meets our QA standard and not sooner.  
9. We are getting close.

Otherwise this thread is a rehash and does not add constructive dialogue.  

Thanks and 73,
Gerald

L.Kubis

Fantastic news Gerald!!

I appreciate the response!

Lloyd

Jay Nation

Well ffado works!!! 
I have 8 inputs and 8 outputs and a midi in and a midi out.
ffado also says these are all connected to something called a Flexradio Systems - Flex-5000A, whatever that is. Sample rate choices seem to be limited to 48000 and 96000. I connects to Jackd, just fine. wish I had Wine installed to this box right now, but I think I remember PowerSDR setup used to crash in Wine. At some point in the past you could run a Flex with openHPSDR. or I could try installing Windows into a VirtualBox Guest If I can find my Win7 DVD and Serial. Have no idea if I can get VirtualBoxes IntelHD EMulator to connect to Jackd though. hmm. well the SDR 1000 might be worth a try again because ffado sees the FA66 just fine too. Ghpsdr3 used to run the SDR1K. Somebody hurry up and beat me to getting this working will ya!
I probably need some instructions. SDR-Shell worked before, I wonder if it will still compile? I wonder if I can even find it, It used DTTSP which will run the 5K but I never understood how it connercted the control lines over firewire, could it have been using Midi?

DrTeeth

Thank you very much for the update. I know this thread is a rehash, but we are so excited about the next release. I am checking this site more frequently than I'll admit checking for 1.4. It's much worse than waiting for exam results.

73