Announcing 2024 award recipients:

Jakob Ketterl (DD5JFK) for OpenWebRX
and
Marat Fayzullin (KC1TXE) for OpenWebRX+

The Amateur Radio Software Award (ARSA) committee is pleased to announce that OpenWebRX, a project led by Jakob Ketterl DD5JFK, and OpenWebRX+, a project led by Marat Fayzullin KC1TXE, have been selected as the winners of the 5th annual Amateur Radio Software Award. The award recognizes software projects that enhance amateur radio and promote innovation, freedom, and openness in amateur radio software development.

Nominations were numerous for the 2024 award and after careful consideration the committee decided to name OpenWebRX and OpenWebRX+ as winners. These projects allow access to radio reception from around the world, whether they are ham operators, shortwave listeners or somebody curious about radio waves. The committee is impressed with the ease of installation, simplicity of use, and overall features that are provided.

The history of these projects showcase the benefit of open source software. OpenWebRX was originally created by András Retzler but due to the demands of his career he decided to discontinue its development. Jakob Ketterl took over the OpenWebRX project and continues to maintain and improve OpenWebRX. Marat Fayzullin’s OpenWebRX+ builds on top of Jakob Ketterl’s OpenWebRX adding support for additional communication modes and advanced features. Both projects are currently separate allowing implementers of hosting sites to choose between the simple core version or the enhanced version without difficulties while allowing the developers to focus on their projects goals.

Jakob Ketterl plans to use the award money to purchase new hardware for the build system of the OpenWebRX project. Recently he added a number of avionics related modes (ADS-B, VDL2, HFDL), a new decoder for DAB (European digital broadcast standard), the ability to decode RDS / RBDS, and a new experimental data interface in the form of MQTT that is intended to allow third-party processing of the information that is received via OpenWebRX. Learn more about OpenWebRX at https://www.openwebrx.de/.

Marat Fayzullin's goal for OpenWebRX+ is to support as many communication modes as possible without the need of tweaking multiple pieces of software. In his own words: “In a way, I view OpenWebRX+ as a real-life ‘tricorder’ for the radio spectrum.” Learn more about OpenWebRX+ at https://fms.komkon.org/OWRX/.

The ARSA committee is already looking forward to next year's award and welcomes input and nominations for future awards.