This is the second page of screen captures showing the SDRMAXII software in action. It's the user interface to an USB 'Software Defined Radio', an high tec., state of the art, sampling, radio receiver. Designed, initially, "as a testing ground for ideas to be used in HPSDR Mercury", soon to be generally available, as a complete short wave radio (with the addition of a computer to run the software and a decent antenna, of course). The pictures also show the history of changes to the program interface, made by Cathy over a couple of weeks!
The history of Quick Silver 1 R is a great read: Phil Covington's blog |
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Cathy introduced several new features in this version of the GUI. We now have four receivers and each one remembers its setting. There's a new 'set' button, mid right, which shows or hides the pan and waterfall settings dialog. Six different waterfall gradients appeared in this version, and a 'peak hold' in the panadapter display. High and low waterfall threshold settings now have an automatic option. (1018x756 .png 613kB) |
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Well, I'm pretty impressed by it. I've listened to The Radio for many years; owned everything from a hand held Japanese transistor radio labelled "Super Hi-Fi" (before the UK trade descriptions act came into force), through CR100, HRO, NRD525, AOR AR7030+ and WiNRADiO G313, but these waterfall and panadapter displays add an whole new dimension to my hobby. (1280x997 .png 1.8MB) |
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Oh, we now have the ability to re size the GUI window. This 21" CRT monitor is set to 1280 by 1024 and this is the second of several full screen captures. (1279x996 .png 1.7MB) |
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That's the date and time in the status bar. Another new addition. Cathy has said it may be possible to have one of the receivers tune to a time signal, around the top of the hour, and set the computer clock! There are many more features which can be added, in time. A recording feature is a work in progress, according to Phil. (1279x996 .png 1.7MB) |
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Did I mention it sounds as good as it looks? SAM mode is particularly good and hangs on to transmissions through quite bad fading. I haven't heard a single glitch, pop or gap, which is more than I can say for other, more expensive, SDRs running on the same computer hardware. (1280x1024 .png 1.6MB) |
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Here you can see the six colour gradients available and a few stations in the lower part of the medium wave band. (1280x1024 .png 1.6MB) |
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Waterfall displays even make computer generated interference look interesting. Running the server part on a different computer seemed to reduce it, but fitting a 100nF capacitor across L1 completely eliminated it. See the 'modifications' page for more details. (1280x995 .png 1.6MB) |
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The filter and display dialogs. New 'retro' shading for the S meter background. This also shows the GUI as small as it will go. Note that in later versions, the GUI can be made much smaller. (1020x625 .png 485kB) |
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Showing the new shaded S meter in all its full size glory. A long Peak Hold time enabled. (1280x1024 .png 1.6MB) |
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This is Shannon Volmet, Shannon Volmet. (1020x991 .png 1.5MB) More on the next page. |