Suggestions for SDRuno 1.22

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SG_Ken
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Joined: Fri Aug 10, 2018 4:40 pm

Suggestions for SDRuno 1.22

Post by SG_Ken » Fri Aug 10, 2018 4:54 pm

SDRuno Notes

Having used a number of programs, here are some suggestions for improving SDRuno. What do you think? Do the "powers that be" look at the boards?


The channel selection line should cover the waterfall as well as the spectrum. When trying to select a sideband channel, it’s hard to do when it’s in the waterfall but not actually transmitting at the moment and not showing up in the spectrum.

It would be nice to edit the Band selections. There are often stations outside of the official broadcast band limits up to a few hundred kilohertz away. Also, it would be nice to select the bandwidth and decimation defaults for the bands. As it is, I select the band and change the bandwidth and decimation every time I change bands. It’s tedious when I just want to do a quick check of the bands.

In the HDSDR version SDRPlay has provided, when you click ExtIO, a lovely block diagram of the receiver pops up. The Tuner AGC has a bar called Gain Control. I assume that is the same AGC listed in SDRuno as IF AGC. When Tuner AGC is Enabled and you adjust the LNA you can see the Tuner AGC automatically adjusting. It’s handy to see that so you have an idea if you have enough Gain on the LNA. If the Tuner AGC is at the top, it is turning the AGC up as far as it can go implying that you need more signal. On the other hand, if it is at the bottom, it means you need to turn the LNA down as you have saturated the input and the AGC has turn it’s control all the way down. You want to adjust the LNA so the AGC hovers in the middle. So, on SDRuno, I would like to see the check box for the IF AGC near the RF Gain/ Gain Reduction control along with the floating AGC level. It would make setting the RF Gain (LNA) adjustment easier.

Several challenges with the LO.

Sometimes when I set a channel a good ways away from the current LO, it sets the station and the LO to the same value. Not good for demodulation to have them the same as per this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fsns4P3JxrM. There should be a built in offset or perhaps a selectable/adjustable offset so when I manually put in a frequency, that the LO is always off set. It would have to vary by frequency as and offset of 50khz would work for shortwave but not for broadcast FM.

The LO is sticky at times. If I select the 60 meter broadcast band (looks to be about 4740-5050khz) and I want to choose WWV at 5000khz, it’s on the down side of the passband. I click it and the LO stays where it is and I get a much weaker signal than if I was further into the band. Sometimes I have to go way out of band and come back to get the LO in a reasonable place.

I am not aware of any keyboard commands so it would make sense that if you start typing a number, you are typing a frequency. It’s an extra step to move the mouse to the frequency area and click then type the number in. By the same token, using the up/down arrow keys should always mean to adjust the freq up/down without having to hover over the Freq in the upper right corner.

The LO Lock doesn’t works quite as expected. Or should I say the having it Unlocked doesn’t. If it’s unlocked, you can change the frequency and the LO only by being at the edge of the band and using the up/down arrow keys or the mouse wheel but not by sliding the bar that shows the freq range. Sliding the freq bar would be much more intuitive. The only time sliding the freq bar works is when you are zoomed in and you haven’t hit the edges of the bandwidth set by the LO/bandwidth combination. With LO Lock off, it should slide as far as you want to go adjusting the LO along the way.

Additions to Aux SP

It would be very useful for fine tuning to be able to use the Aux SP window to accomplish that. That way I could have a wide band view in the Main SP window and then fine tune in the Aux SP window. Otherwise, I have to zoom into the Main SP to see the signal accurately enough. Having to zoom in reduces the advantage of seeing the whole band at once. Having the spectrum level adjustable would help to make sure there was adequate signal showing to do that. Look at SDR-Radio Console to see how that works.

Thanks for looking, Ken
Last edited by SG_Ken on Thu Jan 01, 1970 12:00 am, edited 0 times in total.
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