New sBitx and zBitx Software: Everything in zbitxre

Ashhar Farhan, VU2ESE, has finally released the refactored software for the sBitx and the zBitx. He announced the release on the bitx20 group at groups.io on 20 October 2026, and his message carries a clear warning for anyone expecting a routine patch. This is no update, because the code is a full rewrite, the work took almost a year, and the new software goes by the name zbitxre.

Farhan is the designer behind the BITX family of transceivers, a name familiar to builders across the amateur radio world. When he says a project took a year, hams tend to listen. So let us go through what zbitxre brings, what Farhan fixed, and what the new design means for owners and tinkerers alike.

One program for every radio

zbitxre runs on the zBitx and the sBitx v3, the HF transceivers from HF Signals. Until now, owners of the two radios lived with separate code and separate quirks, but a single source tree now covers both machines. The same code also runs on both 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems, so a fresh Raspberry Pi installation no longer brings an unexpected compatibility puzzle.

At the center sits a program called sdr. This is the radio itself, and rather than a program with a screen bolted on, sdr receives, transmits, keys CW, decodes FT8 and RADE, and keeps the logbook. Every screen you see is a window onto a single radio.

Those windows come in four kinds:

• The zBitx front panel, with its touch screen and knob.
• The local GTK client on the sBitx’s own display, along with the two knobs on its front.
• The same GTK client on any other Linux computer, either on your home network or from far away through my.sbitx.net.
• A web page in a browser or on a phone, through the Operate page at my.sbitx.net.

All four show the same controls, and a change made on one appears on all of them at once. Turn the volume on your phone and the knob display in your shack follows, while one manual now serves both radios, and where the panel and the GTK client work differently, the manual says how for each.

The screen at a glance

The GTK client and the front panel share one layout, so skills carry over from one to the other. The top row holds STEP, the meter, and the frequency, with VFO A large and VFO B small above. Next come VFO, OFFSET, DRIVE, AGC, IF and VOL. The second row carries the band buttons from 10M to 80M, plus MODE.

On the left sit LOG and SET, along with buttons tied to the mode in use. CW shows KBD and ESC. FT8 shows CQ and HALT. The middle of the screen belongs to the spectrum above and the waterfall below, with the receiver passband shaded and a red line marking your frequency. A list of mode controls fills the right side, and the bottom row offers whatever the mode needs at hand: MIC, TX and RX for voice, or the CW macros.

One small detail deserves attention. The line directly above the spectrum is the status line, and the radio uses this space to report a connection, a VoIP speaker, or the reason a request was refused. Good radios explain themselves, and this one now does.

Old headaches, cleared

Farhan lists several long-standing problems as fixed:

• CW is sorted. He measured latency of under 25 milliseconds between the paddle press and the key-down, and he shared a picture of the measurement in his post.
• FT8 works reliably now, and he calls the result brilliant.
• The stray hash on the zBitx front panel is gone.

The CW figure matters most to anyone who sends with a paddle, since lag between your fingers and the tone throws off your timing and a keyer with sluggish response turns a pleasant hobby into a chore. Twenty-five milliseconds sits well inside the range where a paddle feels immediate.

RADE brings low-power voice to the build

The headline addition is FreeDV with the RADE1 and RADE2 codecs. FreeDV is the open-source digital voice mode for HF, and RADE is its newer codec, developed by the FreeDV project team under David Rowe, VK5DGR. Visit freedv.org for the technical background and the story behind the codec.

On the sBitx and zBitx the workflow is short: tune to a frequency, choose RADE, and press PTT. Farhan compares RADE to SSB the way FT8 compares to CW. FT8 pulls out contacts where CW struggles, and RADE promises the same trick for speech. Voice contacts need little power, which should please anyone running a modest antenna or a compact portable setup.

If you own a QRP rig and a few spare minutes on the weekend, RADE deserves a try. Finding a fellow station on the same mode will take some patience at first, since the mode is new to most operators. The map on my.sbitx.net, described below, helps with exactly this problem.

A smarter CW decoder

The CW decoder grew sharper too, because a look-back feature now reguesses a dot-dash combination to match common CW abbreviations. Say the decoder first reads a garbled group, and as more characters arrive the decoder revisits the earlier guess and swaps in a better fit, such as a familiar abbreviation from everyday traffic. Send some CW and watch the screen correct itself.

A modern interface and one-button updates

The old sticks-and-stones GUI has retired, and the Raspberry Pi display now runs GTK while the zBitx front panel runs the LVGL toolkit, which gives you a scrollable display and smooth touch-screen tuning. Try tapping the frequency display and see how the radio responds.

Updates become simpler as well, because after this release every later update runs from a single button. Owners no longer need a USB cable to refresh the zBitx front-panel firmware, a change anyone who has hunted for the right cable on a cold workshop bench will appreciate.

Radio meets the Internet

Here zbitxre steps beyond the shack, because Farhan built a small network around the radios and four pieces of the network stand out.

• Open the map and click any dot to listen to an sBitx or zBitx somewhere in the world.
• Operate your own radio from anywhere. Create an account at my.sbitx.net and add your radio’s key. No VPN is needed, and no complicated permission settings either.
• Your logbook exports to my.sbitx.net on its own, which saves considerable manual copying later.
• VoIP mode lets you call fellow sBitx and zBitx owners on your frequency over WiFi.

Remote operation changes how a radio fits into daily life, since a noisy apartment need not stop you from owning a station. Keep your sBitx at a quiet site with a good antenna, and operate from your phone or laptop. Check your national licence conditions and regulations before you operate a station remotely or share audio streams with the public, since rules differ from country to country.

For the tinkerers

The codebase is modular and considerably easier to understand, maintain and extend than before. The core sdr runs as a headless process and accepts text commands over TCP/IP. Each GUI connects to sdr over the same link, and so does the gateway process. A radio built this way invites custom front ends, scripts and logging tools. Anyone who writes a little Python or C might build a station dashboard, a beacon monitor, or a contest logger without touching the signal path.

Farhan also used Claude Code in the final two weeks to tie up loose ends. He reports the codebase has been reviewed, cleaned up and documented with comments by Claude, and a Claude skill for hacking the source is included in the release. For a project this size, thoroughly documented source code is a valuable gift to the community, since good comments often decide whether a stranger dares to open the project at all.

How to get zbitxre

1. Read the manual at sbitx.net before you begin.
2. Visit my.sbitx.net and click Upgrade to move to zbitxre.
3. Put your radio online and share your audio or FT8 stream with the world.

As with any major software change, back up your logbook and settings first, since a full rewrite brings new behavior and a few minutes of care now saves an evening of regret later.

What to try first

Once your radio runs zbitxre, a short test plan helps you meet the new features in a sensible order.

1. Send a few lines of CW and watch the look-back decoder correct its own guesses.
2. Run FT8 for an hour and compare the results with your old software.
3. Tap the frequency display and test the touch tuning.
4. Create your my.sbitx.net account and listen to a distant radio on the map.
5. Try RADE on a quiet band with a friend who owns the same radio.

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