It's all about the Software

Posted: **Mon Feb 15, 2021 7:04 pm**

Running CWskimmer together with SDRconsole on the same high-performance CPU/GPU, CWskimmer slows down the performance so much that SDConsole and CWskimmer stutter. Changes to e.g. priorities has no positive effect.

According to my research, CWskimmer was written under Win.XP and is based on the graphics library GDI, which at the time worked very well on those slow PCs using GPU hardware support. With Win.7 the GDI has been expanded to GDI+, which was processed by the CPU. In Win.10, GDI+ is now completely processed by the CPU and displayed with DirectX.

Before re-activating an old XP computer, I had an idea that I didn't really expect to be successful. Installed Win.XP under Oracle VirtualBox and then installed CWskimmer there. Now the GPU is rendering again (+2% @ GTX1080ti) and CPU load is only 2%. Both programs now work very well together on a single Win.10 computer.
73
Volker
DF2JI

Posted: **Wed Feb 17, 2021 1:51 pm**

Yes, they stutter more and more and eventualy stop SDRC and CWskimmer completely.
Simon looked at this before but it has not realy been solved for me.
Strangly enough CWskimmer and i.e. Thetis work flawless together so it's not a Win10 issue.
It's worth trying different VAC software, not had the time for that yet.

Posted: **Wed Feb 17, 2021 2:47 pm**

Alex VE3NEA has just released an Android App "Morse Expert" that works fine on smartphones and without any hassle or stuttering concurrent with SDRconsole in emulators (e.g. KOPLAYER) unter Windows10. And he has launched a new Integrated Environment "Ham Cockpit", I bet next he will release a CWskimmer successor for it.
https://ve3nea.github.io/HamCockpit/
73
Volker
DF2JI

Posted: **Wed Feb 17, 2021 8:45 pm**

Hi Volker, thanks. I tried Cockpit a while ago but didn't got it working with "Conventional Receiver". (don't have a Afredi or IC7610)
I use al the same OmniRig and SDRC settings that normaly works for CWskimmer.
But Cockpit keeps complaining about a missing sound input and therefore will not start.

update: have it kind of "working" now, the WF runs but it isn't realy looking at the VAC that i choosed in SDRC (VAC for Skimmer) and in Cockpit setup.
It does display (small band) noise but not one CW signal. The connection with OmniRig doesn't work too (no freq reading) but i don't use the latest version. Not worth updating OmniRig for badly behaving Cockpit.
As you mentioned, i hope he'll finish the CW decoder soon but there's seems not much activity on his Github for many months.

It's all about the Software

Performance Problems / Workaround

Performance Problems / Workaround

Re: Performance Problems / Workaround

Re: Performance Problems / Workaround

Re: Performance Problems / Workaround