News Archive

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!

Es ist nun möglich, die Frequenzerweiterung auf dem FT-710 durch eine HW-Modifikation zu implementieren, indem die neueste Firmware installiert wird.

Il est maintenant possible d'implémenter l'expansion de fréquence sur le FT-710 via une modification du HW en installant le dernier firmware.

Adesso è possibile implementare l'espansione di frequenza sull'FT-710 tramite una modifica HW avendo installato l'ultimo firmware.