Ultra-compact transceiver Lab599 Discovery TX-500

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Follow the link at the top of this post, then scroll down for more info.

Neat concept, but the sheer quantity of spelling and grammar errors on that page don't instill a lot of confidence.

Still hoping it's a good product.  Competition for the KX3 can only make both products better.

Hmmmm, compelling form factor. Very rugged.

I can forgive the chinglish on the web page.

No internal battery or charger.

What would be even more compelling would be a modular battery slice that has the same outline and snapped on the bottom. Ditto for an ATU slice.

Interesting.

I've been following them on Instagram. It appears they're based somewhere in Europe, hence the non-perfect English website. The current iteration of this radio does not have a built-in tuner, but it is coming down the road. No internal batteries. Supposed to be around $700.

That ruggedized internal construction looks like they took an IC-7200 and shrunk it way down.

I'm not crazy about the types of connectors they've used on it but I assume its to help with its weather proofing. I am intrigued.

Are you kidding, man? All amateur radio should use connectors like this. I'm so tired of crappy DIN and crappier 3.5mm jacks. Yes, they are probably a little pricey, but the also probably won't break in the field.

Nope.  I want my 2nd QRP radio to have no internal battery and no place for one.
Let me decide how much of what type of power I want to carry.
An optional ATU that matches form factor and connectors/jumpers would be cool.  
But definitely needs to be an optional external accessory so that if I'm using a resonant antenna I'm not carrying a ATU I don't need.

I think it has an internal sound card and if so I think that's a good thing.
(update) the sound card thing may have been via an exchange on a QRP group on FB.  I'm not seeing that info elsewhere.

I also like the idea of using connectors that will actually be reliable.  
I too think its past time for some new standards.

Some videos of it here
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCju5qUmLJlqaLdMz2xzM81A

Internal pics here looks like it has a built in tuner:
https://qrper.com/2019/06/the-discovery-tx-500-qrp-transceiver/

If it hits the street at a sub $700.00 point I'm probably in.
At that price your at the price point of a bare bones KX2. ($770) Your at a tough decision time.

If we see a sub 600 price point, I think they can get some market share.

Needs carrying handles

Will be watching this space.

Yes.

I'd gladly cough up a couple hundred more for a screen designed sometime in this decade.

The packaging is awesome - But that screen...

What don't you like about the screen?

When the band comes back in 5-6 years I will be all over something like this.

Heck it is 1/4 the weight of my 857D.

Can't justify it right now though, I am not climbing a mountain to run 10W at solar minimum.

Oh and @MCSquared  your avatar is hilarious!

Thanks man.

I just remembered I have a ubitx kit I haven't assembled yet.

 guilt...shame...

1. Monochrome
2. Low-resolution (128 x 64 pixels? Seriously?)
3. Non-touch

Is it even back-lit?

Hopefully, they'll eventually offer a "premium" version.

It mentions on the website that the screen is backlit.

I'm not a huge fan of the screen compared to a KX series, but if that is priced at 7 bills or less, I'll probably get one.

Why can’t manufacturers include on-deck digital modes in the year 2019?

If this has an ATU built-in I’ll be all over it.

Why can't I easily write my own software to run on my radios in current_year?

If the foreign manufacturers (that don't often seem to use software features for market segmentation) released source code for even a mediocre hardware platform, you know it would always be out of stock from the demand.

Absolute truth.

I spoke with someone from Lab599 today.

EXSUM:

No internal ATU
Street price around $700

@Mike327: you absolutely can do this! And you can do it on the most cutting edge SDR environment out there.

Buy yourself some Apache Labs hardware. You'll only see currently shipping products on their main web page. See a data sheet describing legacy products here. Even a used ANAN-10E would float your boat and trip your trigger!

Don't let the flowery website fool you: Apache really only sells hardware and does you a favor by pre-loading the open source firmware. They are not a real, full service radio company. You are at the mercy of the open source developer environment for your software and firmware, Apache has nothing to do with it other than that they support the open source hand that feeds them.

All of the software and firmware is available here: https://github.com/TAPR. Just work on the software side, or download a copy of the free Quartus Prime Lite development environment and develop firmware as well.

The community is self-supporting via a Yahoo group and a web forum , both maintained but not censored by Apache.

The so-called openHPSDR environment, meaning the combination of open source software, firmware and the quasi-open source Apache hardware, is the most cutting edge stuff from a DSP perspective. No other radio has a the equivalent of a full digital audio workstation built-in. No other radio has coherent beamforming on receive. No other radio has adaptive predistortion linearization. The list is lengthy and I won't further bore you. The UI needs a major update, though. That is where the most work needs to be done. Alas, there are no dev's who are interested in UI work at this time, so that continues to languish. But as you can probably guess, the dev's continue to add cool new DSP stuff at a steady clip.

You have my full attention, and I have been reading.  I had heard of
Apache, but figured it was the typical open-source software connects to
it, but hardware/firmware are closed situation - they certainly don't
try and advertise that it's open source in any way.

The best evidence I am finding is the OpenHPSDR "Manufacturers" page links
to Apache as making products "based on the Hermes architecture", and every
once in a while the Apache website mentions a few OpenHPSDR developers.

It's still not clear to me that the Apache products themselves are
anything more than API-compatible, and the OpenHPSDR wiki has exactly one mention of "Apache" (on the Hermes page).

Why is the Apache hardware "quasi-open-source"?

No, the hardware is also open source because it is considered a derivative work of the original Hermes board and its predecessors, and the licensing agreement for that work required that derivative works also be open source. But there's a catch--more on this below.

You can find the legacy website here, but there's not a lot valuable on it because it is so dated at this point: https://openhpsdr.org/

Not exactly sure what you are trying to say here, sorry. But ALL the software and firmware is 100% open source, the source code is there for the taking, and all of it can be modified and built with free tools.

This is where it gets tricky, and has raised the ire of more than a few people (but not me). Apache has released all of the schematics for all of the models prior to the 7000 and 8000 variants. You can find them here. And, under the derivative works clause of the original Hermes hardware open source license, Apache will (has to) provide you with the schematics for at least the Orion MKII SDR board. And they will, by email, but request that you do not post them publicly. Not sure why. But what Apache has NOT released are the Gerbers for the boards, not even the SDR boards, much less the amp, filter and other ancillary boards, the latter being all Apache designs. Hence some folks say it's not open source. I don't agree, myself. Anyone is free to make their own board from the schematic, and AFAIK nowhere does the original licensing agreement say Gerbers are a license-able part of the design.

When Apache originally started with this everyone was in love with them. Prior to Apache, you had to order a bare board (or take the publicly published Gerbers yourself to a board fab) and do all the SMD work yourself. Apache decided to make boards for the masses. So all of the bleeding edge SDR hobbyists were in heaven. Then this grew into sort of a hobby time thing, I'm guessing out of a love of the hobby because they can't be making a ton of money, and they started in on some more capable, derivative designs which the very small developer community embraced. But where this goes sideways is in the advertising copy on the Apache website, which makes it seem like a "real" radio company. And, since Apache was able to get HRO and Gigaparts to carry their hardware, it amplifies that myth. But at the end of the day Apache is really just a hardware-only company with a soft spot for the dev's and users. But you'll never see them write a stitch of code, or publish anything like a real manual.

As long as you can sign up to the fact that Apache makes hardware and the very small open source developer community (and I mean VERY small) makes the software and the firmware, and that you've kind of got to figure it all out yourself, you can wind up with a really unbelievably awesome radio. The only thing it really doesn't do is work well remotely like the Flex radios do, because the openHPSDR architecture is "thick client" (no dev. has every been interested in splitting it into thin client/server).

Does Apache have a US repair center?

They do. The US repair center is run by Doug, W5WC. Doug is speedy and very highly thought of. And, since there really aren't that many Apache units in circulation (I estimate no more than 3000 worldwide with maybe 2/3 of those in the US), he's not terribly busy.

Ah, I understand!
Yeah, that (not releasing everything) doesn't seem in keeping with the expected spirit or culture, but given that I primarily want control on the software side, that's not enough for me to be upset with them. Open source hardware is very hard to do for profit.

I wouldn't mind working on a thin-client setup, but that will be an incredible amount of work to get anywhere near feature parity. My own needs are pretty simple, so maybe something very stripped-down would work to start.

Thanks for the explanations, I know what my next radio is going to be! (It'll be expensive is what it'll be.)

Might be a hard sell compared to a kx2.

Somewhat agree. I don’t know what the deal is with manufacturers, but it’s like they’re incapable of offering a complete solution; it’s like they’re dropping out in the last semester of senior year.

What I’d personally like to see in the *perfect* QRP radio:

1) SDR
2) Internal, easily hot-swappable battery
3) Waterproof/Dustproof
4) Internal Tuner
5) 160-10m
6) Spectrum Scope
7) SWR Meter

If we’re wishing upon a Star, I’d throw native decoding of digital modes in, and a USB port for a keyboard.

The closest thing I’ve found to a legit shack-in-a-box for QRP is the Xiegu X5105. It’s far from perfect, but is a significant improvement upon the FT-817 it replaced.

Regarding the Lab599 offering:

The diminutive form factor is a waste, considering an external battery and separate ATU are required. In typical ham radio fashion, it’s like the design scope included a requirement that, in order to be a proper ham radio product, a spiderweb of wires, cables, and accessories should be mandatory.

In 2019 I’d like to have the option of grabbing a brick, plugging in an antenna, and being done with it.

You and me both. Plus I want it to 25w HF to UHF

25W and I am in.

I do want a battery module and an ATU. Would buy if those were available.

Seems they are Russians and not ChiComs..

The design looks like a great concept to me.  A few upgrades still needed, though.

yep, love the form factor.

I contacted them to ask about native digital encode/decode via keyboard and an antenna tuner, this is the response I got:

——————————-
Good day,

Unfortunately, decoding is not possible without using an external PC, but we are working on it. The built-in tuner will be in the next version of the transceiver.

73!

--
Alex
Lab599
www.lab599.com

————————-

If they sort these two things out and come to market at a reasonable price, I will definitely have one of these. I love the construction and would really like to have something similar to my KX3 but in a ruggedized form factor for a true backpack HF radio that I don’t have to be careful with.

FYI i have confirmed with the maker that even though input voltage is listed as 9-14v it will in fact work with 14.4v so this radio with a nice 4s lifepo4 battery would be a great combo.