Superseded by RC3: Use v0.2.0-beta.6 Multi-Dongle RC3 for current testing. RC3 pins the tested driver fix and replaces this package.

OrcSDR v0.2.0-beta.6 Multi-Dongle RC2

RC2 is an experimental test release. The OrcSDR and esp-rtl-sdr pull requests remain unmerged.

Downloads

• OrcSDR-Tab5-v0.2.0-beta.6-multidongle-rc2.bin is the merged M5Burner image. Burn it at M5Burner's default address.
• OrcSDR-Tab5-v0.2.0-beta.6-multidongle-rc2-native-app-0x10000.bin is the native ESP-IDF application image for address 0x10000.
• Both contain ESP-Hosted C6 firmware 3.0.6. The release check found the complete C6 image embedded byte-for-byte in the main firmware.
• The local M5Burner ZIP is not attached because its Linux helper has the Windows line-ending problem tracked by issue #65. The merged M5Burner image is not affected.

Receiver support

• RTL-SDR Blog V4 remains the tested compatibility baseline.
• RTL-SDR Blog V3 is provisional. RC1 received a dongle-insertion reboot report; RC2 includes USB hotplug stabilization that needs physical V3 testing.
• Nooelec NESDR SMArt V5 is provisional. RC1 identified and streamed from it, but a tester heard static instead of a known FM station and later saw a USB disconnect.
• Below 24 MHz is blocked without an HF-upconverter capability. Gain, automatic gain, RTL AGC, and Bias-T follow the attached receiver's capabilities.

Changes since RC1

• Stabilized USB probing, hotplug handling, and receiver-state cleanup.
• Show the detected receiver instead of always displaying RTL-SDR V4.
• Reject unsupported tuning without false success or disrupting P25 automation.
• Safely handle AM scans with any number of candidates.
• Show catalog progress and restart the radio after installation.
• Add ADS-B gain controls and decoder diagnostics.
• Improve LoRa capture selection, overlapping capture/decode, detector relearning, Record IQ states, diagnostics, and full-window fallback when the fast candidate scan is empty.

Hardware evidence and known limits

Blog V4 passed the RC2 driver regression with continuing IQ through manual gain, automatic gain, and RTL AGC changes, with zero driver overruns and drops. Bias-T remained off.

ADS-B reception was confirmed with a dipole cut for 1090 MHz. The MLA-30+ result is not ADS-B acceptance evidence because that antenna is intended for AM and shortwave.

LoRa at 906.875 MHz, SF11, BW250k improved substantially and decoded controlled messages and natural telemetry. One difficult CRC-failed capture still occupied the decoder for about 47 seconds, so temporary LoRa backlog remains possible.

The C6 status/update problem in issue #82 is separate and is not fixed by RC2. C6 firmware 3.0.6 is still embedded and available to the existing reinstall path.

V3 and Nooelec have not passed repeatable reception testing. Build success is not hardware acceptance.

Tester request

V3 and Nooelec testers: cold boot, connect the receiver, and test a known strong FM, VHF, or UHF signal at 24 MHz or above. Report the receiver, antenna, frequency, installation method, waterfall activity, audio, and unplug/replug behavior. Attach a complete serial log when possible.

LoRa testers: report the region, frequency, spreading factor, bandwidth, antenna, messages received by another Meshtastic device, and messages displayed by OrcSDR.

Provenance and hashes

• OrcSDR: ef6953973859c581f8f646dc068ef51dc83eb80c (PR #81)
• esp-rtl-sdr: 8cc5bbbc3986b15ca28223df167abd8ccfce30d5 (PR #20)
• ESP-IDF: 5.5.4
• ESP-Hosted C6: 3.0.6 from e1a4f5492ac44fa248d77ac971d2055f8c565442
• C6 SHA-256: C5A91F2DC5C51A70CF1EC5A41673DA035F147E19DA2A7B6408A6B7F332307D35
• M5Burner image SHA-256: 0952B404EFB4E4E958DBA9C974908C99249EAF58E1541CF4B6B372B6992CEC8B
• Native app SHA-256: 1D1FB4FEE22F3637B5FBA7C4A8EC0A36569F15F976A7FC834721EDBBF62CEA08
• USB transfers: three 32 KiB buffers

Source and review: #81