Removing old versions of SmartSDR on the Maestro and M model radios - post v4.2.18

Tim - W4TME

As part of our ongoing software release process, we periodically review the versions of SmartSDR available on the Maestro and M-model radios’ Select a Version screen.

With the release of SmartSDR v4.2.18 on April 28, 2026, the following older versions will be removed from the version selection list on June 26, 2026:

• 4.1.3
• 3.10.10
• 3.9.19
• 3.9.18
• 3.8.23
• 3.7.4
• 2.12.1
• 2.10.1

For all Maestro and M-model radios, if you have not upgraded to SmartSDR v4.2.18 before June 26, 2026, those older versions will no longer be available after the device is rebooted.

If you are operating a remote station and cannot perform a firmware upgrade remotely, and your radio is currently running one of the versions listed above, please make arrangements to upgrade your system before this date to avoid any disruption in operation.

Steve-N5AC

We've received a couple of notes from customers that are alarmed at this note. Here's the background and some more detail that I hope will explain:

1. For all M-series radios and Maestro's, software updates are accomplished when the radio polls our server, looks for available versions and presents the list to the customer. The customer then selects a version to upgrade to and the radio handles the rest. Radios without an M-Series front panel require the user to go to our website, download an installer and run it.
2. Over time, the M-series and Maestro platforms amass a long list of available versions, which creates confusion when there are 10-20 software versions. Which to choose?
3. Instead of showing this long list, we periodically pare it down to a manageable number (generally about once a quarter). Engineering does this at the request of our support team who suggests the new list (removing some old versions). Again, if we didn't do this, the list on an M-series and Maestro would become very long so we do this regularly.
4. As an example, if we release v3.1.0 and we find a significant issue and then later release v3.1.1, we might later remove v3.1.0 in one of these clean-ups. Why would a customer want this version if we have released the "same version" with a fix for an important issue?
5. Unfortunately, some customers read this as: FlexRadio will be removing software from your radio. This is, in fact, not directly the case. There are two scenarios here: 1) If the radio/Maestro connects to the Internet, it will request that you move to one of the versions specified if you are not on one of the versions in the list. We have always left a few old versions, typically the most recent v2 and v3 releases in case someone wants to stay on the older releases (as you can see from the note above). 2) If either the customer doesn't want to upgrade or isn't connected to the Internet, none of this will happen and the radio/Maestro just run the version they have. So if a customer were so inclined, they could put this off "forever" by simply removing the Internet connection at startup of the radio/Maestro. The versions we pare down to are versions we feel are the best versions to run. Of course, upgrading to any version 4 software is "free" so we feel there are very few good reasons to stay on older versions, but again we leave the "best" of the old versions available.
6. In this particular case, our support team requested the periodic cleanup on 4/27/26 with a suggested implementation date of 6/26. As you know, we recently announced this. I suspect that our support folks thought we would announce it sooner, but we didn't get around to the announcement until recently so it looks "sudden" when it's really been planned for months. Since Field Day is this weekend, it seems unwise to force this over the weekend. I just called engineering and told them to hold off removing the old versions until 7/1 so that's what they will do.

There is no specific issue, backstory, or other contributing factor to this. Again, we do this periodically and this was just another routine clean-up for the M-series and Maestro to make software selection easier. I feel like if we never did this, we could get calls that say "Can you remove some of these old versions no one uses anymore to clean up the menu?"!