aethersdr/AetherSDR v0.9.3

v0.9.3 — External APD, FreeDV Reporter, Slice Colors, and v4.2 firmware updater

on GitHub

[v0.9.3] — 2026-04-30

External APD, FreeDV Reporter, Slice Colors, and v4.2 firmware updater

A broad release. Headline feature is External APD support for
SmartSDR firmware 4.2.18, which lets the radio sample its outgoing
RF from a coupled feedback path on one of the RX/XVTR inputs so the
predistortion engine trains against the actual transmitted signal —
required when a FLEX-8x00 drives an external linear amplifier.
FreeDV Reporter station reporting (NF0T) lands the long-requested
RADE-integrated reporting flow. chibondking ships customizable
slice colors plus two serial / pop-out fixes. AetherSDR's firmware
updater is rewritten to extract .ssdr files natively from
FlexRadio's v4.2+ MSI installer (no bundled tools needed), and the
NAVTEX data-layer plumbing lands ahead of the upcoming applet.

A long tail of UI polish and Windows-platform fixes also lands —
TX→RX waterfall continuity, scroll-wheel debounce, 48 kHz audio
sink on Windows, applet pop-out persistence, and floating-window
dark theming.

Features

External APD (#2187)

• New "APD" tab in Radio Setup with per-TX-antenna external sampler
  selection (ANT1 / ANT2 / XVTA / XVTB → INTERNAL / RX_A / RX_B /
  XVTA / XVTB). Tab is hidden unless the radio reports apd configurable=1, so it stays invisible on 6000-series radios and
  pre-4.2.18 firmware.
• Equalizer Reset button issues apd reset to clear all per-antenna
  training data.
• Protocol additions: apd sampler sub-object parsing (with
  fallback-to-INTERNAL for invalid selected_sampler), bare
  equalizer_reset flag handling, and the matching setApdSamplerPort
  command path on TransmitModel.
• Cross-checked against Flex.Smoothlake.FlexLib v4.2.18 source.

FreeDV Reporter station reporting with RADE integration (#2173, NF0T)

• Adds FreeDV Reporter (https://qso.freedv.org) station-reporting
  support driven by the RADE modem's sync / SNR / freq-offset events.
• New connection toggle in the DX Cluster dialog plus per-slice
  reporting toggle that mirrors RADE engine state to the Reporter
  WebSocket session.
• Builds opportunistically — without Qt6::WebSockets or librade,
  the toggles silently become no-ops.

Customizable slice colors (#2155, chibondking)

• Per-slice color selection through a new SliceColorManager
  singleton. Color assignments persist across sessions and are
  visible in VFO widgets, panadapter overlays, and meter strips.

Native MSI firmware installer support (#2169)

• The firmware updater can now extract .ssdr files directly from
  FlexRadio's v4.2.18+ MSI installer (which switched from PE/COFF
  self-extracting .exe to WiX 6 MSI). Vendored libmspack
  (LGPL-2.1) handles LZX-compressed CABs; a small OLE Compound File
  reader pulls the embedded CAB from the MSI envelope.
• "Browse .ssdr" → "Select Installer..." now accepts .msi, .exe,
  and .ssdr. No external tools required (no 7z, no MSI runtime).
• Format auto-detection on the first 8 bytes (OLE magic vs. PE/COFF MZ).

NAVTEX data-layer plumbing (#2186)

• New NavtexModel covers the SmartSDR navtex waveform protocol —
  per-message Pending → Queued → Sent / Error state, status parsing
  for navtex and navtex sent, and a navtex send command path
  with proper quote/backslash escaping for msg_text.
• Foundation for the upcoming NAVTEX applet UI; data layer ships
  first so other clients (TCI, scripting) can already publish NAVTEX
  traffic.
• 21-assertion unit test covers escaping, idempotency, error paths.

CWX active tracking (#2181)

• RadioModel tracks CWX send state so the audio gate stays open
  during long character sends.

Floating-window dark theme (#2096, AetherClaude)

• Pop-out panadapter and floating-container windows now inherit the
  full dark theme via a new Theme.h shared stylesheet, eliminating
  flash-of-light-theme on window construction.

Center active VFO when zooming in from keyboard (#2183, jensenpat)

• The keyboard zoom-in shortcut now centers the active VFO in the
  viewport (matches the mouse-wheel zoom behavior).

Bug fixes

TX→RX waterfall continuity (#2171, #2182)

• Force FFT-fallback rendering on TX→RX transition to prevent a
  visible gap in the waterfall (#2171).
• Blank waterfall rows for 400 ms after TX ends so any residual
  hardware tail doesn't paint over the noise floor (#2182).

Hide 8000-series DSP filters on 6000-series radios (#2184)

• NRL, NRS, RNN, NRF filters are FLEX-8x00-only. 6000-series
  radios no longer show greyed-out controls for filters they can't
  use.

Stream-status helper consolidation (#2145)

• Deduplicates the per-stream-type status helpers. Annotates
  m_daxTxClientHandle and documents the TCI receiver-index policy
  for future contributors.

TCP close handshake before socket destroy (#2113)

• Wait for disconnected() before tearing down the QTcpSocket on
  user-initiated disconnect. Fixes occasional "connection reset"
  reports on the radio side.

rigctld short-form split direction (#2111)

• S (set split) and s (get split) were transposed in the rigctld
  mapping table, so external loggers couldn't read or set split.

CW sidetone on Windows (#2105)

• startSidetoneStream() was never called on Windows because the
  audio backend init order put it after the first key event. CW
  sidetone now starts immediately on connect.

48 kHz RX audio sink on Windows (#2123)

• Prefer 48 kHz over 24 kHz on Windows where WASAPI's resampler
  introduces audible high-frequency artifacts at 24 kHz.

Scrollbar styling on applet panels (#2088)

• The applet-panel scroll area was inheriting Qt's default thin grey
  scrollbar; restyles to the dark-theme bar.

USB mic level gauge on connect (#2086)

• The USB mic-level gauge wasn't drawn when connecting with mic source = PC; gauge now appears immediately.

VOX phoneStateChanged on keyboard shortcut (#2084)

• VOX setters didn't emit phoneStateChanged(), so the UI didn't
  refresh when VOX was toggled via keyboard shortcut.

Scroll-wheel debounce (#2151)

• Debounces high-frequency pixelDelta scroll events from
  precision-scroll mice in VfoWidget and SpectrumWidget.

Marker-width settings cleanup (#2156, mvanhorn)

• Slice<N>_MarkerThin setting key is now removed after migration
  to Slice<N>_MarkerWidth instead of being left in place.

Serial PTT — Win32 WaitCommEvent path (#2147, chibondking)

• FTDI VCP drivers only refresh DSR/CTS in the completion of a
  WaitCommEvent call; AetherSDR's polling-based detection missed
  edges on Windows. Adds a Win32 native event-wait path on top of
  Qt's serial port for DSR detection.

Applet pop-out persistence race (#2154, chibondking)

• Floating applet windows were sometimes restored at the wrong
  position because the geometry-save signal raced the close event.
  Systemic fix wires save before destruction.

Windows build guard for FreeDV Reporter (#2186)

• The FreeDV Reporter freedvReportingToggled connect-lambda used
  RADE-guarded symbols inside an #ifdef HAVE_WEBSOCKETS block.
  Windows has WebSockets but no RADE → undefined-identifier compile
  errors. Added the missing HAVE_RADE inner guard.

Docs

• Data-modes help refresh (#1939) — replaces lingering "DIGI
  applet" references with the current independent-tile UI vocabulary.
• DIGI applet scrub (#2179) — sweeps the remaining stale
  references in tooltips and dialog text.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to NF0T for the FreeDV Reporter station-reporting
integration; chibondking for slice colors, the serial PTT
WaitCommEvent fix, and the applet pop-out race; jensenpat for
the keyboard zoom-center shortcut; mvanhorn for the marker-key
cleanup; and AetherClaude for the bulk of the long-tail bug
fixes.