CloudRF makes use of open source software which keeps pricing competitive.
The original CloudRF engine Signal server, is a fork of the popular SPLAT! command line utility. The author John Magliacane has developed a truly superb piece of engineering software without which CloudRF would not have been possible. We enhanced SPLAT! with additional parameters, more propagation models and multi-threading for speed.
Clearly not everything CloudRF does is within Signal server. We have developed our own engine, Sleipnir, which was designed from the bottom up to work with smaller, higher resolution sites which complements Signal server’s wide area broadcasting heritage. We’ve also got proprietary scripts which perform operations on files eg. Meshing which are not open source and do not infringe upon the GPL due to way they are decoupled eg. a distinct program. We have taken the time to understand how to use mixed licence software in a single system and as a result are able to reduce costs and pass them on.
You can use the engine for free without paying for this service but it will take you a long time to prepare the reference data, antenna patterns and system inputs, not to mention the image outputs which must be prepared to work with different mapping systems. Trust us when we say we have had people contact us months after trying to go it alone and ask for a paid plan. It’s far more work than just a Google maps ground overlay.
SPLAT! v1.4.2
GPL version 2
http://www.qsl.net/kd2bd/splat-1.4.2.tar.bz2
Signal server
GPL version 2
https://github.com/Cloud-RF/Signal-Server
API Batch script
Sample Python client for the API.
https://github.com/Cloud-RF/CloudRFBatchjob
KML tour builder
Use this Python script to populate your Google earth cache if you’re going offline…
https://github.com/Cloud-RF/KMLTourBuilder
BTS antenna scripts
Python script to build a single pattern representing multiple directional panels/patterns on a tower.
https://github.com/Cloud-RF/BTS-ant