Retro Edition MkII

• Compatibility
• ADS-B Out remark
• Disclaimer
• Bill of materials
  • Required

Retro Edition Mark II is a direct successor of SoftRF Retro Edition.

It is supposed to require minimal skills from a user to begin with and gives an opportunity to evaluate if the SoftRF technology is appropriate for your needs.

The Retro is based on third-party's hardware - Ebyte® E80-900MBL-02 product, which is available for direct purchase from manufacturer at more or less reasonable price (10+ USD).

Ebyte® E80-900MBL-02 uses he most recent and advanced Semtech LR2021 multi-band radio on the market

• sub-1 GHz band
• 2.1 GHz S-band
• 2.4 GHz ISM band
• OOK modem @ 2 MBPS - ADS-B ES @ 1090 MHz
• FSK modem @ 1041 KBPS - ADS-B UAT @ 978 MHz ( needs for Semtech to fix issue https://github.com/Lora-net/usp/issues/4 )

Compatibility ¹

Type	Protocol	FLARM	OGN tracker	PilotAware	Skytraxx	SoftRF
Radio	FLARM AIR V7
	1090 ES ADS-B					2
Data	FLARM NMEA
	Garmin GDL90
	Dump1090

¹ - it is necessary for a reader to distinguish the difference between statement "compatible" and statement "fully compatible".
     SoftRF implements only a reasonable minimum of the protocols specs. No "bells and whistles" so far.
² - Reception of DF17 traffic 'downlink' frames only.

ADS-B Out remark

No doubts that an amateur-built non-certified low-cost ADS-B transponder is possible.
It was shown to public by our own "proof-of-concept" study for :

• 1090 ES ("ADSB-Out" GitHub project) in 2017, and
• 978 UAT ("UAT-test-signal" GitHub project) in 2018 .

However, as a certified and instrument rated pilot with 20+ years of experience, in no way I will give a tool for every looser in the world, all he/she can afford is to spend 10 USD for the Ebyte® E80-900MBL-02, to abuse the ADS-B technology and compromise my own flight safety and flight safety of every other air law abiding pilot.

SoftRF firmware does intentionally exclude every possibilities to transmit anything on 1090 MHz radio frequency.
Any attempt to contribute the transmit feature into SoftRF from aside will be blocked at very early stage.

Disclaimer

SoftRF firmware for Retro Edition Mark II is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

In general a lot of Chinese DIY electronics manufacturers are known to behave this way:

• sometimes they may not apply necessary Q.C. before releasing of a product from factory ;
• they may arbitrary change schematics and electronic components from one batch to the next one.

Author of SoftRF firmware:

• will reject any hardware related claims associated with Ebyte® E80-900MBL-02 product. Ask for support from seller or manufacturer ;
• reserves the right to suspend or terminate support of Ebyte® E80-900MBL-02 in the firmware at any time.

For the time being ( June'26 ) there were no critical hardware issues reported for current version of the Ebyte E80 product. However things my change over the time...
If you have issues with bringing up your new Ebyte® E80-900MBL-02 or just not happy with the product - be prepared to execute your Purchase Protection plan.

Bill of materials

Required

Number	Part	Qty	Picture	Source
1	Ebyte® E80-900MBL-02 2	1		Ebyte Store AliExpress

² - 868 MHz variant is applicable for these world regions: EU, RU, NZ, SA, IN ;
     915 MHz - US, CA, AU, KR, IL.