JS8Call version 0.14 released

About JS8Call

JS8Call is an experiment to test the feasibility of a digital mode with the robustness of FT8, combined with a messaging and network protocol layer for weak signal communication on HF, using keyboard-to-keyboard style interface. JS8Call is heavily inspired by WSJT-X, Fldigi, and FSQCall and would not exist without the hard work and dedication of the many developers in the amateur radio community.

JS8Call is a derivative of the WSJT-X application, restructured and redesigned for keyboard-to-keyboard message passing. It is not supported by nor endorsed by the WSJT-X development group. While the WSJT-X group maintains copyright over the original work and code, JS8Call is a derivative work licensed under and in accordance with the terms of the GPLv3 license. Source code can be found in this public repository: https://bitbucket.org/widefido/wsjtx/ 

Please Note that JS8Call is currently pre-release software

As such each version will have a limited lifespan, you should also be aware that there may be bugs in the software and that links on the websites may become out of date at times. If you want a stable version of the software then we ask you to please wait for Version 1.0 to be released.

The reason for the limited lifespan is because older versions of the software may be incompatible with the current release, for this reason we encourage you to sign up to the JS8Call groups.io discussion  to stay informed about latest releases.

 

About this release

Version 0.13 of JS8Call has been released.  Head over to https://groups.io/g/js8call/wiki/Download-Links to grab the latest copy!   You might be asking…what’s so exciting in this version? 

• Tons of bugfixes and tweaks. 
• The app now keeps track of which stations can hear which (through incoming HB and ACKs). This is displayed in a little tooltip if you hover over their name. More on this in the next version, but a cool start to graphing the “network” that is created with JS8. 
• You can now hide the status bar…great for tiny RaspberryPi screens!
• You can now send relay messages “to” a group callsign. Perfect for nets!
• The HB and the STATUS command are now closer related. Meaning, when you HB, you’ll heartbeat the status flags like SPOT RELAY AUTO, etc. 
• There’s a new whitelist setting that you can enable to restrict which callsigns your station will AUTO reply to.
• I’ve added the CQ FIELD and CQ CONTEST single frame CQ transmissions.
• A subset of commands can now be relayed to a station with an automatic relay response. These include SNR, QTH, QTC, GRID, etc.
• The frequency control is now both in a menu (for when you hide the top panel) and in a menu when you click the current frequency in the window. This makes it way less cluttered for frequency control and an obvious way to enter a custom frequency. There’s now also a dialog to change the audio offset if you click it too. 
• And finally… you can now store a message at an intermediate station using “MSG TO:” and it can be retrieved with “QUERY MSGS”. A very cool way to use a third-party relay station to deliver a message to you at a later date. This is only the beginning,  it will likely be refined in future versions.

  Below is the complete changelog. If you run into any issues, please file an issue in the issue tracker: https://bitbucket.org/widefido/js8call/issues?status=new&status=open   Changelog:       Remove legacy control menu items       Fixed issue with removing band activity rows       Added heard activity graph logging       Fixed network messages to include an id so they are both 1) indexable and 2) do not cache in the network buffer       Fixed issue with requests being sent out of the MessageClient when udp is disabled       Merge branch ‘ft8call-develop’ of bitbucket.org:widefido/js8call-private into ft8call-develop       Clear activity should clear the heard graph too.       Cut down on a few false positives of auto-prepended callsigns with text override for words 3 characters or less.       Removed SQL dump       Rename variable to be more correct       Fixed #77: Added an option to hide the statusbar       Fixed #75: allow messages to group callsigns       Fixed #72: added a tooltip of the band activity text       Updated HB and CQ menu labels       Initial commit of detail panel       Fixed self logging       Refactored heard graph logging       Conditionally compile call detail browser into the app       Unified STATUS and HB flags for better visibility.       Added whitelist to the configuration for AUTO replies. That way you can restrict who you allow to use your station       Bump to v0.12.1       Fixed bug in flags hb message generation       Added call detail tooltip into the call activity       HB should only move freq if necessary       Fixed a few bugs related to message duplicates       Fixed duplicate acks printing       Only have a relay status if AUTO is enabled       Fixed issue with tx queue when idle watchdog kicks in       Updated CQ spec to include CQ FIELD and CQ CONTEST       Fixed main header       Closed #45: A subset of directed commands will be autoreplied when relayed. This includes: SNR, GRID, QTC, QTH, etc       Make sure selected text found matches search       Fixed issue with printing messages with the autoreply whitelist non-empty       Added a new, more obvious frequency control and a menu item for setting the frequency       Added dialog to set audio offset       Bump to v0.13.0       Added message storage and retreival       Bump eol       Added query msgs to the menu       Added msg to to the menu

Download JS8Call

You can read the JS8Call documentation here and you can download JS8Call from http://js8call.com/downloads/