SDR9700

SDR9700 is a native Qt GUI for controlling the Icom IC-9700 amateur radio transceiver over the radio's LAN interface. Supported operating systems include Linux and macOS (Apple Silicon).

The project provides radio connection profiles, independent MAIN and SUB VFO control, spectrum and waterfall display, gain/PTT controls, radio-backed memory management, optional RC-28 integration, and RX/TX audio routing through Qt Multimedia.

Screenshots

Status

SDR9700 26.9.1 is the current stable release. The project remains under active development and provides an IC-9700-focused LAN control surface on Linux and Apple Silicon macOS, backed by automated protocol, scheduler, routing, model, and GUI tests. Continued operator testing across different LAN conditions, Linux audio systems, and optional USB controllers is welcome.

Implemented Functionality

• Saved IC-9700 LAN radio profiles with username/password storage encrypted at rest.
• Radio chooser and preferences dialogs, including auto-connect and audio device selection, plus configuration backup, restore, and reset.
• IC-9700 LAN connection over the radio UDP ports, with connection status, network quality reporting, and user-facing connection error messages.
• Independent MAIN and SUB VFO displays with receiver-specific frequency, mode, S-meter, squelch, AGC, attenuator, noise blanker, notch, noise reduction, preamp, and RF-gain state.
• MAIN/SUB selection, transactional MAIN ↔ SUB exchange, and dual-watch control with startup gating, transition lockout, recovery, and repeated-exchange stress coverage.
• Radio-backed controls for RF power, mic gain, duplex/offset, tone mode, CTCSS tone, DCS/DTCS code, and speech-compressor level in addition to the receiver-specific controls above.
• Local AF gain and mute controls.
• PTT control and LAN transmit audio support, including LAN MOD level control and transmit audio ramping.
• Spectrum and waterfall display from IC-9700 scope data, with frequency-step and span selectors, click-to-tune, recentering, and configurable peak hold of 0, 1, 2, or 5 seconds.
• Receiver-aware scope and meter routing so MAIN/SUB activity follows the selected radio context without conflating the two receiver states.
• Network and status indicators for radio connectivity, LAN quality, CPU use, memory use, transmit state, radio-command activity, and enabled automation sessions.
• A meters window for signal strength, RF power, SWR, ALC, compression, radio voltage/current, and microphone average/peak levels.
• DTMF send panel with PTT gating.
• Receive-only AX.25 packet decoding from 1200-baud Bell 202 radio audio, with live decode-health indicators and text export in the Data Decoder window.
• Radio-backed IC-9700 memory management with add/edit/copy/remove, periodic and on-demand synchronization, CSV import/export, band filtering, ordering, and activation from the main-window memory browser. Each radio profile has a local SQLite mirror so the last radio-confirmed memory list is immediately available across disconnects and restarts; live radio replies remain authoritative for slot availability and write verification. The active channel remains highlighted until its frequency, mode, duplex, offset, or tone settings change. Memory Manager selection is reserved for managing memory records and does not tune the radio; Add and Edit open a modal form over Memory Manager.
• Main-window lock mode that prevents accidental radio-control changes while leaving PTT, mute, and AF gain usable.
• Icom RC-28 rotary controller support for step tuning and button mapping, including active-low button handling, disconnect-safe PTT release, and LED feedback (requires libhidapi when building from source).
• An opt-in local automation bridge plus non-transmitting IC-9700 control and VFO stress tools. The accompanying coverage audit compares application controls and backend commands with the exercised automation inventory; see the hardware-integration tool guide for usage.

Reliability and Diagnostics

• Duplicate CI-V LAN datagrams are suppressed before parser delivery, while packet loss and out-of-order arrival remain observable through transport diagnostics.
• Receiver-less CI-V frequency and mode replies are serialized by reply family so delayed responses cannot silently cross between overlapping MAIN/SUB requests under ordinary operation.
• High-rate tuning, polling, cache refresh, and UI routing paths use bounded queues, deduplication, coalescing, and backpressure to keep latency and memory use stable during sustained input.
• Startup radio reads are paced, and controls that can create conflicting radio work remain unavailable until the required VFO state is ready.
• Radio-session teardown follows the verified IC-9700 token-removal sequence, keeps required control traffic alive through shutdown, and preserves an unconditional PTT release path.
• Runtime logging can be enabled selectively with --log=radio,udp,ci-v, or in full with --log=all; --log-file=<path> writes diagnostics to a file.

Installation

macOS (Apple Silicon)

Download the SDR9700-<version>-macOS-apple-silicon.dmg from the latest SDR9700 release, open it, and drag SDR9700 into Applications.

The release application includes Qt and its other runtime libraries. Users do not need Homebrew, a separate Qt installation, or any other developer package to run SDR9700. macOS will request local-network and microphone access because the application communicates with the radio and can send transmit audio.

Linux

Prebuilt Linux packages are not currently published. Follow the source-build instructions below.

Building from Source

Building requires a C++ toolchain, CMake, Ninja, GNU Make, pkg-config, Qt 6, OpenSSL, Opus, SpeexDSP, Eigen, and optionally HIDAPI for RC-28 support.

On Debian, Ubuntu, and related Linux distributions:

sudo apt install build-essential cmake ninja-build pkg-config \
  qt6-base-dev qt6-multimedia-dev libqt6sql6-sqlite libssl-dev libopus-dev libspeexdsp-dev \
  libxkbcommon-dev libeigen3-dev libhidapi-dev

After building, make install creates the desktop launcher and icons for the current user. It also requests administrator access to install the Icom RC-28 udev rule in /etc/udev/rules.d, reloads the rules, and triggers the hidraw subsystem:

make release
make install

Reconnect the RC-28 after installation if it was already attached.

On macOS (Apple Silicon), Homebrew may be used to install build dependencies:

brew install cmake ninja pkg-config qt openssl@3 opus speexdsp eigen hidapi

Homebrew is needed only by developers building from source. It is not an end-user runtime requirement.

make release
make run

make release performs a clean Release build in src/build. Only Release and Debug CMake configurations are supported:

make debug

Run the complete automated test suite after either build:

ctest --test-dir src/build --output-on-failure

The built application can also be launched with diagnostics enabled. On Linux:

./src/build/bin/SDR9700 --log=radio,udp,ci-v

On macOS:

./src/build/bin/SDR9700.app/Contents/MacOS/SDR9700 --log=radio,udp,ci-v

Repository Layout

• src/gui/: Qt widgets and dialogs.
• src/models/: UI-facing radio state models.
• src/backend/: bridge between models and the IC-9700 protocol stack.
• src/radio/: IC-9700 LAN and CI-V radio protocol code.
• src/audio/: Qt Multimedia audio handlers and conversion utilities.
• src/core/: settings, profile storage, queues, and shared types.
• docs/: architecture, development, protocol, and implementation research documentation.
• resources/: shared images and Qt resources, hardware-integration tools, local research manuals, and platform-specific packaging assets.

Documentation

The documentation index links the architecture, development, release, radio-protocol, and research material maintained with the source.

Repository-level policy and community documents remain at the project root:

• AGENTS.md: canonical AI-agent project guide.
• CONVENTIONS.md: coding standards and engineering rules.
• CONTRIBUTING.md: contributor workflow.
• SECURITY.md: vulnerability reporting.
• CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md: community behavior expectations.

Acknowledgements

SDR9700 benefited from the public work, operator experience, and hard-won lessons of the AetherSDR, wfview, and radio-webop projects. Their codebases and communities helped validate radio behavior, highlight practical implementation details, and provide useful points of comparison while SDR9700 was shaped into its own IC-9700-focused application.

License

SDR9700 is licensed under the GNU General Public License version 3. See LICENSE for the full license text.

Third-party attribution is tracked in THIRD_PARTY_LICENSES.md.