Open Tuner Update 0.7e

Its been an interesting few weeks developing OT. The original goal of learning has definitely been achieved. Still need to learn a lot more though. The latest version comes with various fixes and improvements, many of them suggested by DATV enthusiasts. As usual thanks for all the feedback and ideas. Its been a fun ride. Apologies if I haven’t replied to all the emails yet, but I have received a bit more than usually lately :p

Anyways, lets get on with it, here is a basic list of new updates and fixes for Open Tuner:

FFMPEG Audio Improvements: With all the experiments with the h266 codec on QO-100, ffmpeg supports has definitely been used by many. The support for ffmpeg is still very experimental, but I’ve managed to find a few more places to improve the audio stuttering issues. Its not perfect, but i’ll keep going at it to see where it can be improved.

ExternalTools: With the UDP output there are lots of tools to make use of it, including trying out different media players or TS analyzers. I’ve added a section to make managing this a bit easier. Its called the External Tools section (very creative I know :p). This will allow you to specify external tools that can be easily started from the Menu. For example, lets say I want to have the option to start an external VLC to make use of the data coming from the UDP port then I can load it as follow:

(1) Open the External Tools Manager:

(2) Select the Add Button

(3) Since we want to add VLC to make use of the UDP port on startup we can specify the following information:

This details basically specifies that we want to start the VLC executable with the parameters required to open a UDP network stream and also to enable the UDP port configured in Open Tuner

You will notice that the parameter text above contains {UDP1PORT} in the parameters. This means that OT will replace the text with the actual udp port configured for UDP1. Other parameters are also available:

{UDP1PORT} – gets replaced with the 1st UDP port configured
{UDP2PORT} – gets replaced with the 2nd UDP port configured
{UDP1URL} – gets replaced with the 1st UDP address configured
{UDP2URL} – gets replaced with the 2nd UDP address configured

This can get interesting depending on which external tools can be used. I’m open for ideas on adding more parameters and options. Maybe something that can take a screenshot and upload to an image service? Or an interface to a logging application? Send me your ideas and I’ll look what can be implemented.

Signal Report Template: Its always fun to be able to provide a signal report on QO-100 Wideband Chat. Many users have asked for some customization options. So I’ve added a setting that allows you to configure your signal report to your liking. It also has parameters similar to UDP parameters. Let me know if its missing something. Make your signal report your own!

Startup Frequencies: As per normal Open Tuner starts up by default to the QO-100 Beacons, but that is not always preferred, especially if used terrestrially. You can select a stored frequency to be used as startup. Be sure to configure your frequencies in the Stored Frequency Manager first. Setting it to Default will always select the QO-100 DATV Beacon.

Smaller Fixes: Apart from small bugs being fixed along the way, two other requested changes are

(1) Saving the position of the splitter on the main screen (helpful for high resolution screens, or custom display settings.
(2) Disable 2nd tuner Video. If there is nothing interesting to watch on your 2nd tuner, then you can always disable it to avoid all that lovely cpu processing to go to waste. Just select the checkbox to stop video from being displayed. This feature is not for everyone, but can be useful.

As always, this is another beta version. Advertised features may or may not work on your hardware/software or maybe I introduced another bug. We won’t know until you try it !

All issues can be reported on the Github Issues page. Latest version of OT can always be downloaded here.

73,

Tom