SDRplay Community Forum

It's quite clear that SDR# is focusing on the Airspy, the proprietary hardware from the same folks. That's the reason why they dropped EXTIO support. I have a copy of the SDR# source code from a year or so ago when it was available. (I was fortunate to get the latest version just one day before they removed it.) The reasons given of moving from .NET 3.5 to .NET 4.6 or trying to make SDR# run under OSX or Linux (i.e. the portable argument) are red herrings. They made a marketing decision to only have SDR# work with the Airplay and lesser quality dongles. That's their prerogative; it is their code. It would have been nice for the authors to be up-front about it, but they do not have a reputation for transparent behavior.

While we're experiencing short-term pain, this may not be a bad thing in the long term. Let's face facts: SDR# is not an aesthetically pleasant program. How many tries does it take to set a filter bandwidth by typing it? It's beyond frustrating.

Everyone has his favorite program, and I know that many folks did like SDR#. There are plenty of options: SoDiRa (decodes DRM and C-QUAM AM Stereo), HDSDR, and my personal favorite - SDR-RADIO (http://v2.sdr-radio.com), which comes from the same guy who made Ham Radio Deluxe. SDR-RADIO has support today for the SDRPlay, although I do not believe that the current version supports gapless coverage for the SDRPlay.

If you haven't checked out SDR-RADIO, I would highly recommend it. It's an amazing program.

Bob, N3OEA

Interesting thoughts, Bob.
I seem to have settled on SDR# and to a lesser extent HDSDR. They both work well for me, and I have to say I've never even tried typing in a bandwidth, I just slide the edge of the filter.
I don't get on well with SDR-Console. For me, there is far too much on the screen and I end up in a mess, with lots of VFO's open and stuff appearing and disappearing so I don't know where I am. I'd probably be OK with it if I spent more time with it and perhaps customised it to my fairly simple requirements - but I just get so boggled with it that I can't be bothered.

I second SDR-Console, the nice part is the screen is totally customizable, you can have as many windows open as you want, single VFO, Frequency Database, or as little as you want, and once Simon makes the final updates it should be perfect... runs pretty good right now as it is, once you have the layout you want, save the layout and you can go back to it at anytime... I personally find the audio on SDR-Console better than any of the other packages, I would put HDSDR in second and SDR# 3rd....

Paul - NN4F

At the moment SDR console doesn't provide auto-correction I/Q correction for SDRPlay (or at least it doesn't work on the FM band)and so images of strong signals appear on the other side of the centre frequency around 50dB down. I've not used it extensively enough on SW to see if this is the same.

Also no unfiltered (192kHz) audio output to allow linking to RDSPy for decoding RDS/RDBS signal in broadcast FM. So as I'm primarily interested in FM DX it is currently a no-hoer for me. Maybe when Jon has had his meeting with Simon Brown even more will be done for SDRPlay functionality/usability

I've found the layout can be cluttered but have just worked out - on the latest version that I loaded 2 days ago how to customise what appears by default and it looks a lot better.

Just a bit of data to help show that the position of the SDR# authors saying that we have to lose the EXTIO interface with .NET 4.6 is bunk. Here is one of the last versions of SDR# before they pulled the code. It's version 1193. I've upgraded it to .NET 4.6, which you can see via the version number I've added to the header - 4.0.30319.42000.

You can see

• The version number, which means .NET 4.6.
• The fact that I'm connected via the EXTIO to the SDRPlay receiver
• Everything works just fine under .NET 4.6

Again, the authors of SDR# have every right to do with their software what they want. However, here is something of keen interest. Build 1193 and 1194 are mostly open source. The only code that's covered by a restrictive license is the SDRSharp.Radio.dll. If you look at the code for that DLL, you'll find that a huge amount of that code was incorrectly lifted from other projects like PortAudio. PortAudio, which is FREE TO COPY, is being somewhat claimed by the SDR# authors as their own work. And it isn't.

I have to look more closely, and I've been talking with some folks off-line. But it looks like there are only a few parts of the code from 1193 or 1194 that would have to be rewritten. It looks like we can fork SDR#. There is some significant work, but once forked we could look for an open source solution that will grow to support more radios like the SDRPlay.

Bob, N3OEA

Dear Bob,
This information is extremely interesting. I don't know if you are a Facebook user and if so are also a member of the following independent Facebook Group:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/sdrplay/?fref=ts

If so, would you mind posting this information there? There are a lot of users of the RSP who would be very interested to hear this.

Many thanks for posting.

Sincerely

SDRplay Tech_Support

New plugin is installed on the SDRSharp version 1400. Changes is visible in the Frontplugins.xml but SDRplay is not on the list.
After upgrade to the version 1404 and reinstall driver work properly!

..

Hombre

Dear Hombre,
We developed a new native plugin after the support for the ExtIO interface was dropped (the last version that supported ExtIO was 1361). The new native plugin was release yesterday and worked for versions 1400-1403. However, last night Airspy released a new version (1404) which including a change to the native interface. As a consequence we had to patch the plugin and release a new version to support this change, which was done this morning.

Sincerely

SDRplay Tech_Support

Hi
Does it work with revision 1405?
It gives me this error:
"The source 'SDRSharp.SDRPlay.SDRPlayIO' is not ready' "
I can still use the version 1361 with my SDRPlay.

Your plugin work with version 1404. Have some problems but SDR# is VHF program for me. On HF I am using SDR radio or HDSDR.
And I am change nuclear blast resist ugly and drab plastic box with metal and both plugs on the rear side