Opening the RF StateSide Projects

RF StateSide is entering a new chapter.

After many years of developing RF, embedded, marine-electronics, and software projects, I am now retired from the product-sales side of RF StateSide. Rather than allowing these projects to simply remain private or disappear over time, my goal is to make them available so others can study them, build on them, continue their development, and improve them.

The RF StateSide website has already begun that transition. The store is no longer the focus of the site. RF StateSide is now centered on engineering projects, software and hardware development, technical documentation, downloads, and community discussion.

A project-by-project public release

The existing RF StateSide projects are being reviewed individually before publication. Each project has its own history, dependencies, documentation, hardware files, software, firmware, and licensing considerations, so there will not be a single bulk release.

The goal is to prepare each project as a Public Engineering Reference — AS-IS, with reasonable best-effort cleanup, documentation, provenance and licensing review, and release validation.

The current planned release sequence is:

1. RayCoupler — including the 200 W and 2 kW designs
2. RayRigAntSw
3. RayRailSwSense
4. RayNmeaSimulator
5. RayPowerMeter
6. MercuryLuxPc
7. RayWn2Meter
8. RaySspaController
9. RayVessel
10. RayEltekController

This order reflects the current audits and relationships between the projects. It may evolve if additional historical material or technical dependencies are discovered during release preparation.

What will be published?

The exact contents will vary by project, but the intent is to make useful engineering material available wherever rights and provenance allow. Depending on the project, that may include:

• source code and firmware;
• editable hardware design files;
• schematics and PCB layouts;
• BOMs and fabrication files;
• desktop applications and utilities;
• release packages;
• build and configuration documentation;
• technical notes and project history.

Some projects are software-only, some hardware-only, and several combine hardware, firmware, and desktop software.

A project will not be labeled Open Source or Open Hardware until its individual audit and publication work are complete.

BrickSuite is already showing the direction

BrickSuite is already publicly available as an open-source project and represents much of the direction I want RF StateSide to take going forward: an actively developed project with public source code, documentation, downloadable releases, and continued development.

The other RF StateSide projects will follow one at a time as their release preparation is completed.

Follow the progress

This Blog will serve as the ongoing record of the transition.

I will add Posts as projects move through their audits and preparation, when significant issues are resolved, and when repositories and design files become publicly available.

There are no fixed release dates. I would rather publish each project carefully and accurately than promise a schedule that does not reflect the actual work involved.

RF StateSide remains active

Although I am retired from the previous product-sales focus, RF StateSide is not shutting down.

I continue to develop engineering projects, including BrickSuite, and remain open to interesting opportunities involving technical collaboration, consulting, engineering work, licensing discussions, and related projects.

The goal is simple: preserve the work, make it useful, and give others the opportunity to take these projects further.

I’m looking forward to sharing them.