Live Signal Deck
Plots the last 60 seconds of Input, Level, and Output as paired trends, and shows the connected unit — serial, live or stale state, controls, and health — without guessing.
Companion app
Your QRNix, in your terminal.
QRNix Manager is a free companion app that connects to the box over USB. Watch the live signal, check the installed firmware, and update it — all from one terminal window.
What it does
Monitor, check, update.
QRNix Manager talks to the device over the same USB port that powers it. No cloud, no account — the link is direct.
Firmware version check
Compares the installed firmware against the latest release, so the box is never silently out of date.
Verified updates
Browses firmware releases, downloads the hex, verifies its SHA-256 digest, and flashes it through the Teensy bootloader. A bad download is never written to the device.
The Monitor
Watch the live signal deck.
QRNix Manager auto-connects over the same USB cable that powers the box and renders the status stream — one line per second — as a live dashboard: paired signal trends, operating state, and link health, with the connected unit's identity and freshness always on screen.
Illustrative frame — the same rendering you get with the box plugged in.
What you're looking at
Session strip
Who is connected and how fresh the link is. The serial carries an explicit VERIFIED/UNVERIFIED state, and the last-line age is marked LIVE or STALE — a frozen screen is never mistaken for a live one.
Reboot and crash banner
A device reboot or CrashReport never scrolls past silently: the banner stays until you dismiss it with d.
Operating strip and controls
The front panel in text: mode, source, Tone-kill and post-filter states, clip indication, and the four controls as compact values.
Audio trends
The last 60 seconds of Input, Level, and Output at the 1 Hz cadence, paired Left/Right on independent AUTO scales. p pauses the view — and marks it PAUSED — when you want to study a moment.
Adaptive metrics
When the firmware reports the NR2 tail, the deck adds SNR average/min/max, band counts, gain, and mix. Without the tail it says so — it never guesses.
Health and footer
DSP blocks, bad blocks, and unparsed line count stay visible. The footer compares the installed firmware with the latest release — checked on connect and on r, never on a timer, so the app works fully offline.
Firmware
Update from the same terminal.
The Firmware module — Tab from the Monitor — replaces the old PlatformIO and bootloader-flasher workflow: browse releases, download a digest-verified hex, review what will happen, and flash, without leaving the app.
The release list — qrnix-firmware releases newest first. d downloads the selected hex; the artifact state after a verified download is shown below.
The flash review opens over the release list. Every gate below is re-checked at Start, not trusted from earlier in the session.
The five-stage journey — 1 SELECTED → 2 VERIFIED → 3 REVIEW → 4 FLASH → 5 VERIFY. The write gauge tracks the hex upload; when it completes, the QRNix reboots with the new firmware and the app waits for the device to report its version.
Nothing gets flashed by accident
- Download with
d.↑/↓selects a release,ddownloads its hex on a background thread with a progress gauge. The file is SHA-256 verified against the digest GitHub publishes for it, then cached atomically — and re-verified on every reuse. A mismatch is re-downloaded, never accepted. - Flash with
f.fopens the flash review, which names the prepared target, the connected unit's serial with its explicit VERIFIED/UNVERIFIED state, the installed version, and the path from installed to target. The safety gates are re-checked fresh at Start: a target below wire contract v0.3.13 is refused up front — the manager could not read the device afterward — and with more than one QRNix present the flash is refused, so the wrong unit can never be written. - Confirm with
Enter. The review's[Enter] Start flashbegins the journey: the app sends a reboot request over the live USB serial link and the QRNix reboots into its bootloader — no button needed. If the bootloader never appears, the app says so and the Program button is the fallback. - Watch the upload, then the reboot. The UPDATE JOURNEY panel tracks the five stages, and the hex lands behind a live progress gauge. When the write completes, the QRNix reboots with the new firmware and the app waits for the device to report its version —
flashed v0.4.0 · device reports v0.4.0— before the update is done.
Key map
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| Tab / Shift-Tab | Switch between the Monitor and Firmware modules. |
| ↑ / ↓ (or j / k) | Port picker and release selection. |
| Enter | Connect to the selected port — or confirm the flash from the review. |
| r | Re-run the firmware-version check (Monitor) or refresh the release list (Firmware). |
| d | Dismiss the crash/reboot banner (Monitor) or download/cancel a release (Firmware). |
| f | Flash: open the review for the verified artifact (Firmware). |
| p | Pause and resume the live view. |
| u | Advance the self-update flow: check, download, apply at quit. |
| c | Rescan serial ports (Monitor). |
| ? / Esc | Open and close the help overlay. |
| q | Quit. |
Self-updates follow the same discipline as firmware: u checks for a newer manager build, downloads it with a progress gauge, and applies it when you quit — the running binary is never overwritten.
Platforms
Runs in any terminal.
| Windows | Supported — x86_64, single executable. |
|---|---|
| Linux | Supported — x86_64, glibc 2.35 or newer, single executable. |
| macOS | In progress — Apple Silicon and Intel build exists; hardware acceptance is pending. |
First steps
Running the app.
- Download the archive for your platform from the downloads page.
- Extract it and run the executable from a terminal. The interface is a terminal app, not a GUI window.
- Plug in QRNix. The app auto-connects when a single unit is present; with several, a picker lists them by serial.