Call for Alpha Testers - Radwave Engine and Explorer

Nick Richard -

Back in the fall of 2022, I attended the GNU Radio Conference, and I had an opportunity to get feedback from a few members the SETI Institute about the Radwave Android app. Taking that feedback into consideration, I decided to do a major overhaul of the app in order to better support Breakthrough Listen data and the SETI community at large. The key features that I wanted to include were:

  • Decentralized processing to allow the public to contribute their computers in much the same way as SETI@Home
  • Providing a desktop application that could support more in depth analysis
  • Audio extraction so that people can experience for themselves one of the most well known pop culture moments in SETI:

Long story short, these apps are now available for Windows alpha testers! Functionality is currently split into two apps:

  • Radwave Engine: performs all the heavy signal processing (tutorial)
  • Radwave Explorer: for interactive data exploration (tutorial)

I love working with alpha testers, and greatly appreciate your feedback. So the most important part of alpha testing is communication between you and me. To that end, the only requirement for alpha testers is subscribing to this blog so that I can email you about updates and improvements. Once you've subscribed, you can download the apps here: https://www.radwave.com/alpha-releases/. Alpha testers are encouraged to join me on the Radwave Discord channel so that I can be responsive.

While the primary thing I'm looking for is user feedback, I must admit that creating and maintaining this software is no easy feat, and does require some money to keep the lights on. For anyone who really wants to show their support, I'll soon be offering merch designed by my 10 and 7 year old kids. The store will be open soon, so subscribe to the store to be notified when products are available. In the meantime, here's a preview. I didn't major in art history or anything, but I'm pretty sure this is the coolest SETI-inspired design ever:

And yes, PowerPoint is my first choice for kid-artwork-T-shirt designs.