Privacy Policy

VFO-Knob is made by RF.Guru (rf.guru). RF.Guru™ is a registered trademark of Dielectricum. Questions about this policy: info@rf.guru.

vfoknob.com has no accounts, no forms, no analytics, no advertising and no cookies. It doesn't load third-party scripts or fonts.

The videos on the home page are RF.Guru's VFO-Knob playlist on YouTube. The site's server — not your browser — reads the playlist and the videos' still images from YouTube, and the page shows them from this site. Only when you play a video does your browser load it from YouTube, through youtube-nocookie.com, and from then on Google's privacy policy applies to that player, cookies included.

On a first visit the site asks whether you have a new knob to update. Your browser remembers that it asked, in its own storage on your device; nothing about it is sent to us.

Like any web server, the hosting platform (Google Cloud Run) keeps short-lived request logs — IP address, time, the page requested and your browser's user agent — to operate and protect the service. We don't use them to identify or profile visitors.

To show the latest firmware version, the site's server — not your browser — reads a small manifest from GitHub.

Update a knob over its cable has your browser download the firmwares straight from GitHub (raw.githubusercontent.com) and write them to the knob over its USB cable, reached only from your browser, with your permission for that one port. Before it writes anything, it sends us the knob's MAC address — and nothing else about it — to check that RF.Guru made the knob; we keep no record of the check. So does Add Bluetooth to your knob, before it writes the knob's second chip.

A knob you built yourself can be added once, through a link we send you. That page reads the knob's MAC address over its cable and sends it to us with the link, and we keep the two together — the MAC address and the name or callsign we wrote on the link — so that the update page takes the knob from then on. If you buy us a coffee, we note beside it that you did; Buy Me a Coffee, where you would buy it, is a service of its own, under its own privacy policy.

Set a knob's WiFi over its cable talks to the knob alone, over its USB cable: the networks it hears, the one you choose and its password go between your browser and the knob, and none of it to us. Only the firmwares' names come from GitHub.

The knob needs no cloud service and no account of ours. It talks to your radio or to AetherSDR on your own computer or network, and its settings — WiFi networks, the radio's address, audio levels, password — stay on the knob. The one exception is the diagnostic log service, which is off unless you switch it on: see Diagnostics below.

Over USB the knob and your computer share a private link with no route to the internet.

The configuration page — whenever you open it, over USB or WiFi — has your browser check GitHub (raw.githubusercontent.com) for a newer firmware version, and download it from there if you choose to install it.

On WiFi the knob itself checks GitHub for signed firmware updates — every 24 hours while it's switched on, by default. GitHub sees the knob's public IP address when it does, as with any download; see GitHub's privacy statement. You can change the interval, or switch automatic checks off, on the configuration page.

Some firmwares reach a service of your choosing, and every one asks the internet for the time — from the knob, directly. None of it passes through us, and we receive none of it:

• FlexRadio, through SmartLink: if you log in, the knob talks to FlexRadio's SmartLink service. Your password goes to FlexRadio's login service and is not kept; the knob keeps the login it is given, until you log out.
• Web SDRs and UberSDR: a KiwiSDR, Web-888 or UberSDR you add sees your knob connect — its public address and what it tunes — as it sees any listener.
• SVXConnect: the SvxLink reflector you choose receives your callsign and email address for its certificate, and the location you give for its map.
• Telephone: your SIP provider carries your calls. If you sign in with Google, the knob reads your starred contacts — read-only — with a Google client of your own, and keeps Google's token on the knob; Sign out deletes it.
• ADS-B Radar: the feed you choose — adsb.fi, adsb.lol or airplanes.live — sees your knob ask for the aircraft round the middle you set, every few seconds, from your public address; your own receiver keeps it on your network. Opening an aircraft's card sends its callsign to adsbdb, for its route.
• Weather: Open-Meteo sees your knob ask for the forecast at the place you set, every 10 to 60 minutes, from your public address. Finding a place by its name on the configuration page asks Open-Meteo's geocoding from your browser, not the knob.
• The time: every firmware asks pool.ntp.org, a pool of volunteers' time servers, for the time, about once an hour — for the screensaver's clocks, the Clock and the Weather, and the dates of SVXConnect's certificate and the Telephone's calls. The server you reach sees only your public address.
• Bluetooth: a headset or speaker is paired with the knob itself; nothing about it leaves the knob.

Under Diagnostics on its configuration page, the knob can keep a diagnostic log and send it to us when something goes wrong — a crash, audio held up, a link that won't stay, a radio refusing commands, a failed update — or when you press Send log now. It is off until you switch it on, and it needs an email address, which you confirm through a link we send. Until that address is confirmed, the knob sends nothing. While the service is on, the knob shows a small mark on its face.

What a report contains: the knob's log lines for the minutes around the problem — what it connected to, call and over events, link states, the audio's buffers, errors; the firmware, its version, the radio model and why the knob last restarted; after a crash, the knob's memory dump; and, if you sent it by hand, what you wrote about it. The knob is identified by a random id of its own, never by its hardware address.

What is never sent: passwords, tokens and the Google client secret — the firmware never writes them to its log in the first place — and audio: nothing the microphone or the speaker carries is recorded, ever. With Hide numbers and names (on by default) the knob shortens telephone numbers to their last three digits and contact names to their initials before a report leaves it. What can still show in a log line is what the knob works with: your radio's or reflector's address, callsigns, talkgroups and frequencies, the SIP server's name and your router's address.

Your email address is used only to confirm it, to send you a receipt with the report's number, and to reply to you about a report. Nothing else: no newsletter, no marketing.

How long: a report is kept for 30 days on our server, then deleted automatically. On the knob, the log stays on its microSD card for at most 7 days. Reports are stored in a private Google Cloud Storage bucket in the EU (Belgium); emails go out through Mailgun's EU region.

Switching it off stops the knob sending and deletes your email address and the knob's access from our server; reports already sent are deleted when their 30 days are up. Forget me does the same and deletes every report from that knob at once. You can also ask us to delete them at info@rf.guru.

This site links to AetherSDR, GitHub and the RF.Guru shop. Those sites are run under their own privacy policies.

If this policy changes, the new version will be posted here with a new date.