News Archive

Greetings, colleagues!
Vasily R6NY (ex. RN6LHF) is here.

I have not been in touch for a long time, there were reasons for that.
As you know, our company has found its permanent home. After 15 years of work, we finally moved to our own building. Before that we had changed three locations and worked at the last one for about 8 years.
A Russian proverb says when you are at home, you know better how to overcome any difficulties. In our own building we are free to do whatever we want, or so I thought… I will open the veil a little and tell you how it was. Back in September last year, we bought a building where the first two floors were in good shape and ready to embrace us. There was one “but”, the building lacked a heating system, electricity, sewerage, plumbing, and other communal facilities. After all, the building was part of a large Soviet factory with centralized heat supply. To top it all off, the roof was leaking and there was a “jungle” growing on the property, behind which you couldn't see the first floor. From the outside, it could seem that the building had three floors :)
You never know what you can do till you try, Vasily had to master the skills of a construction foreman and for half a year revitalize the building for moving. No sooner said than done, at the end of April 2024 we started moving into a four-story building and at once occupied two floors of 500 square meters each, although previously the whole company occupied an area of about 600 meters.
Our radio-electronic equipment (REE) production department grew into a full-fledged REE production facility and occupied the entire first floor. Of course, there are technical offices on the floor, such as a switchboard room, sanitary facilities, and a passageway, but still, the electronics production has acquired its own space and began to realize its full potential. Following the REE production, developers and administrative staff moved to the second floor. Everyone knows that three moves are the same as a fire! Realizing this proverb, we had patience and began to frantically, but at the same time confidently, progressively master the new premises. We completely revised the principle of production organization and now we were able to implement the principle of linear construction of sites, when at the beginning of the process is a warehouse with radio parts. Then the production manager sets the production plan and starts the process of assembling a batch of transceivers. Parts from the warehouse move to the SMD assembly area, then DIP assembly, followed by the QA area, then the assembly area and packaging. In this way we managed to eliminate unnecessary walking between the sections, everything turned out organically. It is easier to work at the new place, because it is facilitated by the system of supply and exhaust ventilation of the whole building!
Developers of REE and programmers got their own large space where they continued their work. We managed to allocate a separate space for a large flow of students, with whom our leading programmers and engineers work. Now we rely on young people and actively participate in their educational life.
Around the end of June, I exhaled a little: “Phew, well, we've kind of moved, things are getting better!”. Since the beginning of July, we began shipments of new transceivers, which made me and our radio amateur customers very happy. Also, the repairs of transceivers got back on track. Please understand this moment, now we are working in normal mode and shipments of new transceivers are now on schedule, repairs are actively catching up.

or full-fledged production of radios and SMT-machines, we have quite decently grown the CNC and metal processing, forming a true factory with modern milling and turning centers, manual and other machines, which also earlier operated on rented space. We had already come to the point where we had exhausted all the authorized electricity in the main building. In the end, we decided to build a rapidly erecting shop next to the main building. In April there was a vacant lot with “palm trees” in its place, and at the beginning of July the roof was already being put on. At the current moment, the wiring of electricity and air for the machines is being done. A little later I will make a report and show the finished version.

The apogee of any amateur station development, especially transceiver production, is the presence of antennas on the roof of the building! Last Friday under the warm southern sun (+38 С in the shade) we’ve erected an aluminum mast of square cross-section 17 meters high on the roof of our building. On top of the mast there is a basket for safe installation work — not just a mast, but a fairy tale :), which I accidentally found in the form of scraps at a metal-receiving point…
We are now in the process of revision of all the antennas removed and will be at full strength this week. My power amplifier with the MB1 transceiver has been ready for a while now. The programmers are waiting for a live broadcast to test the CW skimmer and other software features. During this time, we’ve got new radio amateurs in our company who want to work on the air, of course, after hours :)
About next week, taking into account the commissioning of antennas and our machine production group, we can say that the move is over! With what, I congratulate all of us!
73! Vasily, R6NY ex.RN6LHF

P.S. For about a month the head programmer has been working on the ExpertSDR3 software. Current goal is the revamp of the control module, which is the junction between the program shell and the signal processing kernel, it also includes TCI control, it supports all types of our devices, including the remote-control mode. We can say that this is the first step before the updated ERS. While the transceiver firmware is in development, the programmer is completely rewriting the ERS into C++ language, current ERS is written using Go. Now “remote control” will be handled by a group of programmers who develop ExpertSDR3 and all the surrounding infrastructure (utilities, skimmers, etc.). Previously, this was handled by a programmer who completely left this area for our PiPlacer machines, which greatly complicated the development of ERS, we are fixing this now. As soon as more news on this topic becomes available, we will inform you.

Hello everyone!

Congratulations to all radio amateurs on Radio Day!
On May 7th, 1895, Russian physicist A.S. Popov demonstrated "a device designed to show rapid oscillations in atmospheric electricity" at a meeting of the Russian Physical and Chemical Society. Since then, radio has grown and developed, spreading its influence around the world. Expert Electronics contributes to the development and popularization of radio, in particular SDR. Among us there are not only circuit designers and programmers, but also active radio users R6NY and RW6MD. We wish all fellow radio amateurs good health, clear air and many more hours of enjoyable operation on the air!

In the coming days, we will publish a series of news, sharing with you what is happening with our company and what are our plans for the near future.

First, we want to share with you a happy event for us, we are in the process of moving into our own building! All these years we have been renting offices, growing and developing in, frankly speaking, cramped conditions. At a certain point it became clear to us that we couldn't go on like this, we needed more space and more freedom.
A little backstory:
At the end of 2015, we moved into our current 100 square meter office, with only 12 people at the time. Development, a small CNC milling machine, hand soldering and repair, and administrative staff fit in here. All our serial production then took place in Taiwan, and in Russia we assembled only SunSDR2 transceivers and control panels. Photo of what this office looks like now, during the relocation, in the attachment (Old_1-4).
After a few years, we got bigger and needed more space for production and development. We rented a neighboring office with an area of ~50 square meters. It housed a warehouse of components, workplaces for installers (SMT-manual_1) and here started the development of our SMT-machine. Later, in 2021, our first SMD assembly line with PiPlacer4 (PP4_SMT-line) will be placed here and several batches of SunSDR2 DX transceivers, tuners and control panels will be manufactured.
In 2019, we rented a third office of ~70 sq.m. and managed there additional places for assembly engineers (SMT-manual_2), a place for QQS engineer, a small assembly line and a warehouse of finished products. We continued to grow, but space in an office building is not infinite, at that time we started to think about our own building.
By 2020, we were already 24 people and needed to expand again. We were lucky, a ~140 sq.m. office became available next door, which was too big for us at the time, but we realized that it was only a matter of time. Here we found a place for PCB developers, programmers and designers, also in this office we placed test benches and all the most science-intensive work took place. It was in this office where we got a decent canteen, which is an integral part of successful work)
In 2021, we launch on the market the most productive domestic SMT-machine - PiPlacer4. In 2022, we rented a 250 square meter workshop next to the office building, where all the metalworking (PP4_CNC photo shows one of our milling machines) and all the employees of the company working in the direction responsible for the development (PP4_design) and assembly of our SMT-installers (PP4_assembly) will be located. Now we have four CNC milling machines, one CNC and one classical lathe machine, three laser machines, a sheet bending machine, we can do the full cycle of metalworking we need, but we are again short of space...
The total area of our office and production premises at the beginning of 2024 was 615 square meters. Nevertheless, in April we introduced the first domestic SMT-machine for assembling medium and large series of electronic products - PiPlacer8.

Now a few words about our new home, it is a four-story building (New_bld), where each floor has ~500 square meters. Next to it, we are already laying the foundation of a new workshop for metalworking and assembly of SMT-machines.
The first floor of the building is fully dedicated to assembly, quality control and storage of radio equipment. A new SMD assembly line with our PiPlacer8 at the head and a new six-meter solder reflow furnace (PP8_SMT-line_1,2) is being set up there. The production cycle is built taking into account our experience and all modern trends in the world of manufacturing of electronic devices. The rooms are organized in a single chain that connects them with each other: storage, assembly, quality control, assembly and subsequent packaging. This approach and class of equipment will allow us to achieve the highest quality of products, increase their volume and reduce the impact of negative factors on their cost.
The second floor will be occupied by programmers, developers and administrative staff. This will allow us to separate noisy production from people whose work requires high concentration.
After May holidays we will start production of a new batch of ColibriDDC receivers and in parallel we are preparing for production of a new batch of SunSDR2 DX transceivers in Russia.

Thank you all who believe in us! Soon we will present a new version of ExpertSDR3, you will hear more about it in the next news!

Hello everyone!
We would like to share with you what has been happening with Expert Electronics in recent years.

Our company is constantly growing and developing, since 2021 our staff has more than doubled. We have expanded the team of programmers by adding young institute graduates. Their first success after a year of internship was the RadioSync and RadioMacros utilities, which we published this autumn. Now, under the guidance of a senior programmer, they continue to gain experience and get into our programming technologies (yeah, yeah, they exist). Also, we have significantly expanded our staff of hardware designers, circuit designers and other specialists. You will be able to see the result of their work next year.

In 2017, our company started independent development of PiPlacer4 SMT pick and place machine and in 2021, we've launched its serial production (so far selling only in Russia). In 2023, we actively develop and improve in this business direction, aiming at a bigger machine next year. Mastering new business activities has helped us not only to stay alive in the current realities, but also to significantly increase the growth rate. Several PiPlacer4 machines are now used for our own needs when assembling printed circuit boards. Working in this area has allowed us to significantly expand our production capacity, rethink and raise competences in the design of complex block structures, including the development of new approaches in programming. Now we are able to transfer our positive experience in firmware design into ham radio.

Also in the second half of 2023, we started expanding our milling and metal processing capabilities to fully localize transceiver production in Russia. This is particularly relevant today, when demand for domestic equipment is growing and logistics from abroad are becoming less and less reliable (which we encountered in November this year). Now we have at our disposal several high-class milling centers (CNC machines) for metalworking, laser, lathe machines, etc. These production facilities allow us to speed up the development process, shortening the path from 3D model to serial product. The new unit/housing/heatsink is transferred to the workshop for production after development without delays and waits. The designer of the assembly can then immediately install it in the device and test the idea.

It is worth saying that working in several directions at once influences the company's activity in general and long-term planning in particular. So, the implementation of the new firmware into ExpertSDR3 will be carried out during April 2024, respectively the release of ExpertSDR3 with new firmware is postponed to May 2024. Further development of the Server and Client SW for ERS has been moved to Summer of 2024. New ExpertSDR3 with bug fixes will be released in 29th of December, we are working on it at the moment.

It should be noted that duplex is only one of many features that the new firmware will bring. For example, we’ve already implemented the DHCP net protocol, it greatly simplifies transceiver operation in the network. On top of this we’ve added service functions which automatically informs user about hardware malfunctions of certain important chips.
Among other innovations will be:
- extended reception range up to 800 MHz (for SS2DX/PRO/MB1);
- ALC;
- fundamentally new firmware structure, eliminating the existing defects in the operation of the program and transceiver.

Before release in May, we will again check the bug reports published on GitHub. This version of the program will be the final version 1.0 with new firmware and no bugs.

Thanks to everyone who read to the end, thanks for being with us!
Expert Electronics Team wishes you all Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
73!