SmartSDR 1.11 Update

MichaelC

Does anyone have an estimated date that V1.11 will be released?

Thanks,

Mike
W7WRJ
https://www.qrzcq.com/call/W7WR

Ken Hansen

By the end of June?

Ken Hansen

Seriously, Gerald, K5SDR said 2 months ago that once there was some field exp. with SSDR 2 they would send 1.11 out for field testing. https://community.flexradio.com/flexradio/topics/smartsdr-v1-11-maintenance-update?topic-reply-list[settings][filter_by]=all&topic-reply-list[settings][reply_id]=18772220#reply_18772220

KY6LA_Howard

It will be released when it has completed testing and all discovered bugs are fixed

KF4HR

Consider Howard's answer, as the go-to answer for all "when" questions.

Steve Gw0gei

Before the contest season hopefully, but as worked all eu dx ssb contest kicks it off next weekend I am being optimistic. I plan to use the new ic7300 I bought this month in WAE Dx ssb to see how it compares with my 6300 on a busy 40m ssb band in a major contest. Still doing antenna work at home so hope to do the first contest of the season at a local friend's qth using his large optibeam at 100ft with 3 elements on 40m. It would be nice if flex could at least put out a beta version of the maintenance release for some of us active contesters to try out before cqww ssb, since it appears from reports that there are less radio crashes occurring with the new code used in 2.0.

Ria

They are putting it out to the alpha team, which has a few active contesters, some well known names you may know (I'm not saying who for privacy reasons). I don't know if there will be a public beta version as the maintenance release doesn't include any new features. But based on what I've seen, it should be relatively soon.

Tim - W4TME

+1

Tim - W4TME

Mike W7WRJ - Just to set everyone's expectations, "when" type questions will never be answered definitively.  We do not do time-based releases.  As Howard said, we release when we feel the code feature set has achieved a quality level that meets our internal standards.

Ken - We started alpha testing of 1.11 this week. It is a lot of code to test, as there are 81 fixes and feature improvements in the software.  That is a lot of lines of code to regression test.

Steve - It will not be released as a beta.  It will be a general release when distributed.  Yes, our data indicate that the bug fixes in v2 have significantly reduced the incidents of actual firmware crashes (as opposed to other external factors that can appear as a crash, which is not) You can always upgrade to v2 ;-)

 

Paul M

Tim - What do you mean by " (as opposed to other external factors that can appear as a crash, which is not)?

I put the 6500 back on line last week and still have crashes.  One crash  seems to be that DAX is crashing the radio or the radio is crashing DAX.  Either way it take a quit of DAX and restart for it to begin working again.  I have not upgraded to 2.0 this is all with .16.

Paul -W4PGM

Tim - W4TME

A poor network connection can make it appear like the radio crashed when in reality it was a communications issue not related to the radio hardware, as just one example.

MichaelC

Tim,  I wasn't looking for an exact date, just a time frame, like within the next 6 months or next quarter.  That's all.

Regards,

Mike Chasse
w7wrj
https://www.qrz.com/db/w7wrj

Tim - W4TME

Mike, I'd love to give you a projected or tentative date for SmartSDR 1.11.  I really would.  But unfortunately, there have been incidents in the past where we have provided a tentative date, something unexpected arose and we didn't achieve the date.  When that happened, FlexRadio was attacked and accused of deceit, lying, and other overt nefarious actions by a vocal minority.  We had hoped that everyone would have understood what a targeted or tentative date means, but that wasn't the case.  Therefore, in order to best manage everyone's expectations, we have stopped giving dates for future products altogether.  

As a compromise to those who were in the majority, the best you can expect is an official probability of when a major product may become available as we did for the recent FLEX-6400 and FLEX-6600 ship dates.  Hopefully, probabilities will not be misconstrued and we'll be able to use this method of communicating when a product might be available in the future.  Time will tell.

You can also "read between the lines" and make an assessment for your self.  Gerald has committed to 1.11 after SmartSDR v2.0.17 was released and we had an opportunity to evaluate the effectiveness of the bug fixes. His word is as official as you can get.

Also see my comment to Ken above.  If we are testing code, that means we are a lot closer to a release date than if we were still writing it.  

Occasionally I'll make comments and use the word "soon" to describe a release dates.  I'll only do that if I have a really high confidence level in making a declaration like that.

I know this answer is a mighty fine dance around your question, but circumstances dictate I put on my best dancing shoes to provide a response.

MichaelC

Tim,  That's fine,  My 6500 is running fine with the current 1.x code.  When it comes out, it comes out.

Regards,

Mike Chasse
W7WRJ
https://www.qrz.com/db/w7wrj

Steve Gw0gei

Thanks for the update Tim, that sounds very positive. I am looking forward to the increased stability and improved performance. I may well upgrade my 6300 at some point but a new 6600 will probably come first for me as I want the dual Scu , bandpass filters and double tvtr hardware upgrade. My main hope is that either the pre production or production versions of the 6600m or 6600 will be available to see at the rsgb hf convention in October with the main uk dealer sponsoring there. I am going for the whole weekend and it would be great to get hands on with the new radios and ideally the amp too. Is Gerald attending there this year?

Tim - W4TME

Unfortunately, no one from FlexRadio US will be in attendance this year.  Gerald and Matt are in Toyko this week.  It is going to be tight on logistics to be able to import one of the new radios by RSGB in October.  We have to get them CE approved before we can export them.

Steve Jones gw0gei

Surely if they are there for demo only and not for sale they will not need the ce approval to have been completed? Even getting one of the pre production ones to the uk dealer would be helpful in getting some orders in? Or ship one to me direct and i will run a fringe demo session there for you hi! It would be disappointing to say the least if the only new gear there to see is going to be from icom.

Ken Hansen

Steve, I suspect CE approval isn't something a Mfg. can take lightly, and I suspect Flex only has a very limited number of prototypes, traipsing around to every Hamfest around the globe will only prolong the development/testing timeline. Do you really think Flex is having a problem getting orders? Icom, Yaesu, and Kenwood all have new equipment to display inJapan & UK...