The upper window is a real time display of decoded frame/packets. The lower area contains real time frequency spectrum display. There is ability to also view the spectra in waterfall format. Input waveform and symbol synchronization displays are available as well.
BPSK synchronization can be observed in the lower left part of the console. Frame synchronization is located in the middle lower area and finally controls for real time text display and disk logging in the lower right.
There is the ability to adjust the number of acceptable frame synchronization bit errors, the default value is 6. You can lower this value to 0 which means that a frame will not be decoded unless the two frame synchronization words are perfectly received.
The status bar at the very bottom of the console tells you the decoder state and if appropriate, which frame it is currently decoding. CPU utilization may be important to you if you don’t have enough horse power; high utilization may cause frame drop outs. BBER is Bulletin Board Errors, this gives you an idea of how well stable your signal is across the last 100 frames. The RX field tell you the current center frequency for which the decoder is tracking. And finally, the current date and time in UTC format.
Center frequency selection can be accomplished by using your mouse to move the yellow line in the frequency spectrum display - watch the symbol angle indicator that is in the upper left part of the spectrum display - try to ensure that the symbols are mostly up and down - use the screenshot below as a guide. You can also manually change the center frequency using the edit field in the lower left part of the console - type in a value or use the arrow keys to increment / decrement values - or use the mouse to click the spin controls.
There is a signal quality bar on the right side of the spectrum display area - watch this for an indication of how good your short term signal quality is.... it’s a measure of how much energy is at 0 and 180 degrees.
\You will notice quite a bit of traffic once you have things tuned properly. You may wish to filter out packets that don’t interest you. You can accomplish this by using the Packet Filtering option. This is located by selecting the Settings option in the toolbar. A screenshot of this window is shown below for reference.
