DSDPlus Gave It Another Chance

[air-scan]

I noticed the short 6 inch USB-A male to female extension cables were not fitting snug on my RTL-SDR's. I could barely nudge the dongles then I hear the Windows' sound of disconnected USB. Well I decided to go to Walmart to see if they have any for sale. They had 3 on the shelf. I bought 2. Came home swapped out the old with the new now no more CRC fails and FMP24 doesn't hiccup when I try to change the gain setting. Sounds a lot smoother. Still has some burps but not near as it used to be by ten thousand miles.

It feels nice to be able to resolve an issue that's been puzzling me for months on end. Don't have to wait on Amazon to deliver now.

 

[mwjones]

I used to have a short 6 inch extension on the SDR for FlightAware's PiAware. Kept having it go offline for no reason, and it did so regularly. When I moved the Raspberry Pi to a new enclosure, I 3D printed a "foot" to go under the SDR, and eliminated the 6 inch extension, haven't had a problem since, and its been running for months.

When I started buying SDRs to use with DSDPlus/Unitrunker/SDRTrunk, I actually found a USB Hub that has sufficient space between the ports, and I have been successfully running 4 SDR's on it with no issues. I 3D printed a "cage" that holds three of the radios upright, and keeps the hub from tipping over, and recently added another "foot" to go under the fourth, although if I make another cage, I may build the "foot" into it for easier movement to the vehicle for mobile use.

 

[kb9mwr]

I am proud to say have haver given DSDplus a chance. I don't like how this closed source folk of the original DSD came to be and how it caused the original guy to give up on his work (stole his thunder). Since I am a ham, I like things that let me inspect and learn how it works. While a Windows version is nice for the newbies, it does nothing to further anyone elses learning. While most of the patents are expired, I have always found it funny that no one ever balks at that, and how this anonymous dsdplus dude collects $ for the fastlane versions.

 

[natedawg1604]

I am proud to say have haver given DSDplus a chance. I don't like how this closed source folk of the original DSD came to be and how it caused the original guy to give up on his work (stole his thunder). Since I am a ham, I like things that let me inspect and learn how it works. While a Windows version is nice for the newbies, it does nothing to further anyone elses learning. While most of the patents are expired, I have always found it funny that no one ever balks at that, and how this anonymous dsdplus dude collects $ for the fastlane versions.

I hope you realize that if a big company like Motorola or Harris made DSD+, it would probably cost tens of THOUSANDS of dollars? And you'd have to pay separately for certain features and pay even more for updates.

I'm pretty sure that for most people, $25 for a lifetime subscription with unlimited automatic updates to monitor DMR, NXDN, P-25, D-star, fusion etc is below dirt cheap...

 

[kb9mwr]

I am not sure what that has to do with what I wrote. Yes you may be correct, some of that cost would be in patent royalities.
The original DSD source code (now years later badly unmaintained) was and is completely free of cost. People who didn't know how to compile it (Cygwin for Windows isn't that hard to figure out) flocked to this DSDPlus crock of ****.

I'd gladly donate $25 here and there if there was source code shared for DSDPlus. Some of us want to use this in different ways than a Windows application.

 

[monty22001]

Wow, that's a very explosive accusation. So far DSD+ fastlane is fairly good if you're not on Linux, and face it most people need Windows software. If the software is updated and licensed, how is that so bad?

 

[air-scan]

I used to have a short 6 inch extension on the SDR for FlightAware's PiAware. Kept having it go offline for no reason, and it did so regularly. When I moved the Raspberry Pi to a new enclosure, I 3D printed a "foot" to go under the SDR, and eliminated the 6 inch extension, haven't had a problem since, and its been running for months.

When I started buying SDRs to use with DSDPlus/Unitrunker/SDRTrunk, I actually found a USB Hub that has sufficient space between the ports, and I have been successfully running 4 SDR's on it with no issues. I 3D printed a "cage" that holds three of the radios upright, and keeps the hub from tipping over, and recently added another "foot" to go under the fourth, although if I make another cage, I may build the "foot" into it for easier movement to the vehicle for mobile use.

My primary 2 reason for running the extensions is
1)Keep the heat from the dongle off the laptop's USB connector
2)Reduce noise level. Even if it's just a tiny bit. It's better than nothing.

These new ones are 6ft long which allowed me more length to get the antenna further from the laptop. VMR's are noisy buck convertors that power the CPU and antennas can "hear" the VMR circuit.

The bad ones were a purchase from Amazon. I skimped on the purchase. Bad no no of me. Poor quality product.

 

[maus92]

The issue is the design of the USB A serial connector - it is a consumer level design subject to vibration and bumping, and manufacturers are not always known for precision. This is why you sometimes see thumbscrew and other mechanically secure USB plugs and ports in industrial equipment.

 

[kb9mwr]

Wow, that's a very explosive accusation. So far DSD+ fastlane is fairly good if you're not on Linux, and face it most people need Windows software. If the software is updated and licensed, how is that so bad?

Its bad because DSDPlus was originally nothing more than an adaption of the original DSD code, precompiled for Windows. The problems are any DSDPlus enhancements (many now as the years have past), and also all closed source. That's bad because no one can learn anything or adapt DSDPlus to any other type of use. Its also bad because it has created a whole user base who apparently doesn't understand nor support open source software. Open source software creates a community of people working together by sharing their code. It doesn't mean; you cannot also distribute precompiled versions for other operating systems, or charge for your work.

The problems are when some bad player comes along like this and decides he doesn't need to play by the open source licensing rules of sharing your code and giving credit to the shoulders you built your software off of.

Sorry for derailing the thread a bit. But the thread title "DSDPlus gave it another chance," really set me off. I've been silently ignoring this long enough.

 

[lwvmobile]

I'd gladly donate $25 here and there if there was source code shared for DSDPlus. Some of us want to use this in different ways than a Windows application.

I'm probably going to regret this, but exactly what features are available in DSDPlus are you interested in using that aren't available in other open sourced software.

 

[M105]

The problems are when some bad player comes along like this and decides he doesn't need to play by the open source licensing rules of sharing your code and giving credit to the shoulders you built your software off of.

I get where you are coming from as I am a ham as well but I don't necessarily agree that he is a "bad player". Yes he used DSD as a base and that source code is still out there for anyone to use and build upon. The choice to open source one's enhancements or in its current form more of a rewrite, is up to the programmer and the choice to use it or pay for it is up to the customer. He acknowledged his base but chose not to open source his own work. No crime there.

I for one am glad DSDPlus Fastlane is available. Even if it stops being supported tomorrow it is probably the best $25.00 I ever spent for a software subscription.

 

[kb9mwr]

The choice to open source one's enhancements or in its current form more of a rewrite, is up to the programmer and the choice to use it or pay for it is up to the customer. He acknowledged his base but chose not to open source his own work. No crime there.

Not a crime but against how open source licensing works. Basically: If you build off someone else's code, then your code must also be open.

• The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

The DSDPlus guy has made some improvements in the vocoder performance and those secrets in particular I'd like to see other projects (like DudeStar/DroidStar and OP25) benefit from. If you don't like "bad player" then we will just call him not a team player.

 

[M105]

"Not a team player" is fair enough but the original program was distributed with a BSD style license. "The BSD license is a simple license that merely requires that all code retain the BSD license notice if redistributed in source code format, or reproduce the notice if redistributed in binary format. The BSD license (unlike some other licenses e.g. GPL) does not require that source code be distributed at all." Wikipedia