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v0.9.4 — AetherSweep, ShackSwitch, and multi-client startup hardening

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@ten9876 ten9876 released this 01 May 04:56
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v0.9.4
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[v0.9.4] — 2026-05-01

AetherSweep, ShackSwitch, and multi-client startup hardening

A heavy community-contribution release. Headline feature is AetherSweep
(jensenpat) — an in-panadapter SWR sweep analyzer that walks the current TX
band, plots SWR live on the spectrum surface, and handles TGXL bypass +
PGXL checks. ShackSwitch support (nigelfenton) lands as a
new Peripherals tab + dedicated applet, integrating any builder's open-source
Arduino antenna switch over the Antenna Genius protocol.

A trio of substantial reliability fixes from jensenpat addresses long-standing
multi-client startup issues — when SmartSDR or DAX is already connected,
AetherSDR's panadapter creation, slice ownership, and PC audio stream
acquisition now all hold up under the racey status interleavings the
ShackSwitch and DAX users were hitting. Plus a focused mix of platform
fixes: macOS DMG dark-theme on pop-out windows (Chaosuk97), Windows
without-Qt6::SerialPort build (NF0T), NRL gating correctness on 6000-series
radios.

Features

AetherSweep — in-panadapter SWR analyzer (#2202, #2220, #2230, jensenpat)

  • New Start/Clear Sweep buttons under the ANT slice menu, plus a 1-10 W
    sweep-power slider with cross-panel sync. Persisted as
    SwrSweepPowerWatts and defaults to 1 W.
  • Walks the current TX band stepping a tune carrier in 20 kHz increments
    with edge guards, sampling fresh SWR + forward-power meter data per step,
    and overlays the curve on the panadapter directly under the slice flag.
  • Per-band-edge guard, max-260-points cap, and 60 m channelized-band
    refusal. Refuses to start when split is active, when transmitting,
    when the band is wider than the radio's max pan width, or when a PGXL
    amplifier is in OPERATE mode (forces user to STANDBY first).
  • ⚠️ Third-party amplifiers are not auto-detected. AetherSweep
    only checks for Power Genius XL status — it has no way
    to talk to ACOM, SPE, Elecraft KPA, OM Power, or other linear amps.
    If you have a non-PGXL amplifier, manually place it in BYPASS or
    STANDBY before starting an SWR sweep.     The sweep will run a tune
    carrier through whatever path the radio sees, and a non-bypassed
    external linear will amplify that carrier into your antenna.
  • Full TGXL handling: snapshots OPERATE/BYPASS state, places TGXL into
    BYPASS to read raw antenna SWR, restores original state on completion
    or abort. Reads radio-side SWR while TGXL is bypassed (TGXL stops
    emitting RL meter packets in bypass — #2229).
  • 5-phase state machine with explicit timeouts: WaitingForTgxlBypass,
    TgxlBypassSettle, Sweeping, StoppingTune, RestoringTgxl.
  • Esc to abort. Inputs locked during sweep so the user can't accidentally
    retune mid-pass. Disconnect mid-sweep cleanly stops the carrier and
    releases TGXL.
  • Optimistic setTunePower() update so the sweep's chosen power lands
    immediately rather than racing the radio's status echo.
  • Sweep result label shows source — RADIO for direct measurement,
    TGXL BYPASS for tuner-bypassed measurement.

ShackSwitch antenna switch integration (#2214, #2227, nigelfenton)

  • New Peripherals tab in Radio Setup with auto-discovery and manual-IP
    connect for ShackSwitch devices via the Antenna Genius (AG) UDP/TCP
    protocol on port 9007.
  • New ShackSwitchApplet — compact panel with up to 8 labelled
    antenna-port buttons, click-to-switch, active-port highlight. SO2R
    dual-radio mode shows Input A / Input B side-by-side with conflict
    detection. Single-radio mode (4-port R4 hardware) hides Input B
    automatically.
  • Dummy-load / deselect (clicking the active port deselects it) and
    per-port labels driven by the device's own configuration.
  • Integration is invisible to users without ShackSwitch hardware —
    detected by the name="ShackSwitch" field in the AG broadcast beacon.
  • Web UI launcher button opens the device's local web interface.
  • Reference hardware: ShackSwitch v2.0 (Arduino Uno Q, SO2R, 8-port) and
    ShackSwitch R4 (Arduino Uno R4 WiFi, single-radio, 4-port).

Bug fixes

Multi-client startup panadapter creation (#2222, jensenpat)

  • AetherSDR's startup pan creation now holds up cleanly when SmartSDR,
    DAX, or another GUI/audio client is already connected. The radio
    replays status for all current pans/slices/streams on connect; without
    this fix, AetherSDR could correctly reject other clients' objects but
    then fail to instantiate its own PanadapterModel if ownership status
    arrived out of order.
  • Adds display panafall create x=100 y=100 (FlexLib v4.2.18 syntax)
    with capability-based fallback to legacy panadapter create.
  • New ensureOwnedPanadapter() factory; deferred-status replay queue
    for display pan frames that arrive without client_handle; waterfall
    ordering recovery via panadapter=... parent ID lookup.
  • Routes failure cases through the existing panadapterLimitReached /
    sliceCreateFailed status-bar signals so radio resource exhaustion
    is visible instead of looking like a startup hang.

PC audio remote stream ownership (#2226, jensenpat)

  • Fixes PC Audio failure when SmartSDR / DAX is already running — the
    shared remote_audio_rx pipe was being silently removed because
    AetherSDR was parsing the stream create response body as decimal
    instead of hex. "4000009" (no 0x prefix) was becoming
    0x003D0F09 instead of 0x04000009, so the create-response stream
    didn't match the status-reported stream and AetherSDR removed the
    real one.
  • Extracts a new RadioStatusOwnership helper (header-only, fully
    unit-tested) that handles ownership decisions for both panadapters
    and remote audio streams — defer when no client_handle, claim
    when ours, ignore when another client's.
  • Stream-acquisition state machine now tracks create-pending,
    remove-requested, and adopted-from-status separately so toggling
    PC Audio doesn't race the create response.
  • Adds radio_status_ownership_test with 25 assertions covering all
    the ownership decisions and the headline parse bug.
  • Fixes #2037, #1418, #1473.

TGXL meter goes silent during bypass (#2229, #2230)

  • AetherSweep aborted with "no fresh TGXL SWR meter data" whenever the
    TGXL was in OPERATE before sweep start. The TGXL stops emitting RL
    (return-loss) meter packets while in BYPASS — bypass relays are
    passive wire-through, no measurement engine.
  • Switches the meter source to RADIO while the TGXL is bypassed; the
    radio's own SWR coupler measures the same physical signal through
    the bypassed relays. UI label still shows TGXL BYPASS since
    that's what describes the configuration.

Pop-out applet panel white background on macOS (#2190, Chaosuk97)

  • macOS DMG builds rendered floating windows with a white background
    even though the dark-theme stylesheet was applied — the CI-built
    libqcocoa.dylib enforced Qt::WA_StyledBackground more strictly
    than Homebrew's Qt 6.11.0 build.
  • Adds setAttribute(Qt::WA_StyledBackground, true) on all three
    floating-window classes (FloatingContainerWindow, PanFloatingWindow,
    MainWindow::floatAppletPanel). Cross-platform safe: the attribute
    is harmless on Linux/Windows where it was a no-op, and now the
    pop-out applet panel correctly themed on every platform (was
    defaulting to system theme on Linux/Windows too — latent bug fixed
    as a side effect).

Windows build without Qt6::SerialPort (#2195, NF0T)

  • Compile error introduced by #2147: the <QElapsedTimer> include was
    guarded by #ifdef HAVE_SERIALPORT while m_debounceTimer is declared
    under #if defined(HAVE_SERIALPORT) || defined(Q_OS_WIN). Mismatch
    broke the Windows-without-SerialPort build configuration. Widens the
    include guard to match.

NRL DSP filter visible on 6000-series radios (#2219)

  • Fixes regression from #2184 where NRL was incorrectly grouped with
    the 8000-series-only firmware DSP filters (NRS, RNN, NRF). NRL is
    available on 6000-series too — only NRS/RNN/NRF require BigBend /
    DragonFire hardware. Fixes #2198.

Acknowledgements

Massive contributor batch this cycle:

  • jensenpat — AetherSweep (3 PRs: feature + power-control polish + TGXL
    meter fix), multi-client panadapter startup, PC audio ownership. This
    release wouldn't be the leap it is without his work.
  • nigelfenton — ShackSwitch integration (3 PRs across the cycle:
    protocol fix, full integration, callsign-detection cleanup).
  • NF0T — Windows build fix.
  • Chaosuk97 — macOS DMG dark-theme fix.
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