yes, thats the idea. the “manual upload into the opaks folder” simply emulates what the demodulator in skylark would have done had I sent the file over the air.
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I’m ready. If you want to try with 5.3 to 5.4 after everybody upgrades to 5.4, I’ll prepare a new Skylark 5.3 micro SD card and conduct a test for you. Ken
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Thanks. Yes, I am actually thinking I will send down the update to everyone post-Halloween. I am sure there would still be lots of people with 5.3 running, and you can add your own 5.3 receiver to it so we can complete the OTA test in this iteration itself.
Great - - thanks. Let us know when you’ll be doing it, so I can set up a receiver to capture it. Ken
On the North American service, I’m sure most of us would not miss an hour of audio if the file were loaded in the wee hours when few of us would be awake…
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@Abhishek
@Syed
@zoltan
@kenbarbi
@ac8dg
What are thoughts about having the app icons open automatically on the screen at login instead of having to click to get them visible? Is there a reason this hasn’t been done already?
Also, a question, could the audio links simply be added to the icon group?
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Jerry @maxboysdad pointed out to me when he reviewed my new Draft User Manual that I didn’t address the Touch Screen control of Increase/Decrease Volume in Skylark 5.4.
I checked it and found the Touch Screen to be still very sensitive to touch as to make it flaky. In any event, I was able to adjust the Audio Volume of just the speaker (not the native audio in Skylark) from the touch screen (mimicking the adjustments one would make doing a SSH alsamixer adjustment - - but not as easily and cleanly). I don’t know if this functionality was in Skylark 5.3 because I never looked for it.
@Abhishek can you comment? Ken
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The possibility of writing too many times is real and can ruin an SD card.Question: Without the an external SD card plugged in, where does the News or anything other data get written to? Maybe this could be considered. Have nothing written to the external SD, unless the user selects a news service he wants to save to the external SD and enables it at a time he chooses. So, the external SD would be damaged much less over time. I believe reading the SD does not harm the card at all. A safe method to un-mount the card, before removing it could be in the to do list, also.
The external SD card is entirely optional - all data storage happens on the “OS” SD card. external SD card is used by some only to share additional files (like RACHEL) and to keep up full backup of files that would get cleaned from the OS SD card.
As I mentioned a good quality SD card can last a long time, even with usage as heavy-duty as mine. Of course, no card will last forever. A periodic replacement of SD cards is better than having the storage mounted on-board (like on cellphones/etc) and having to replace the whole device merely cause the flash part on-board has worn down (thats what happens to cell phones/kindles in 2-3 years when they “slow down”).
Thats not really possible - the news is sent down as a pack; even if its selected, it would first have to be written down to sd card before being filtered for user preferences.
Also added to the lcdui.
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no, this was added in 5.4 - i cover those in my release notes in the first post of this thread. Volume up/down and Volume mute/unmute were added in this release.
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I’ll add that to the User Manual. l.missed it in the original release (I was so excited about the Native Skylark audio) Ken
I found vlc media player to work much better then the mp3 player in my browser.
The volume control on the LCD is only for the audio jack and external speaker (must be connected to the two-pin header).
the update went painlessly via the OTA and the audio quality is great now Good job on this update 
One out of two suggestions could be done. No problem. Do you think some time in the future we could receive a general description of how the whole OS works. If not, again no problem, at least for me.
I’m a few days behind, but what a surprise! Downloaded the OTA update file, followed the directions and everything went well. Good job! Love the http audio streaming.
In my opinion that’s the best feature of audio over http
Absolutely agree 
I know the Othernet Team will be working hard on content for both files and future audio. Old Time Radio Podcasts interspersed with VOA hourly News works great.
I’ve got Othernet Satellite Radio running on an MP3 to FM transmitter so I can pick it up all around my house. Ken
We will be releasing some news about the testing that has taken place in the South Pacific next week. It’s directly related to satellite-FM use case.
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I agree that the starting home screen hides “what you are supposed to do next”. It is not obvious that you have to click on an obscure blue icon in the corner of screen. Adding something START HERE or File:OPEN might help.