On 07/02/2019 11:56, Stephen Hicks wrote:
Good Morning —
I’m not sure if it’s the right thing to do, but we generally just tell
our customers to use TS-2000 for the rig setting in WSJT because the
FLEX setting has been unreliable. Our CAT protocol is modeled after
the Kenwood command set so this seemed like a logical recommendation
and it seems to work well. Without knowing a lot about WSJT
internals, my recommendation would be to do the same thing for the
FlexRadio setting as you do for the Kenwood setting or write directly
to the SmartSDR API (TCP/IP and possibly UDP/IP for audio).
I do understand the objection to writing to the SmartSDR API which is
generally given (don’t want to write to a protocol for one specific
rig manufacturer) but the hope is that eventually one of the WSJT
developers or ourselves will have the time to write to the API because
of what it could buy — the ability to watch and decode many bands at
once and without all the complicated setup outside WSJT. Our
customers often do this with WSJT now (decode many receivers at once),
but it’s complicated to setup. A CAT port has to be created for each
of up to 8 receivers in the radio, a separate directory for the wave
storage for each receiver and a DAX receive channel (virtual sound
card) for each receiver.
Please don’t take the above as criticism. The WSJT software is
terrific and I use it often as do our customers. Just like my
customers do with me, I dream of more without always acknowledging the
work involved and thanking those that tirelessly provide it. So
please understand I respect and thank everyone here for both your
skills and the effort you put into the project.
73,
Steve
Hi Steve,
thanks for your comments.
Hamlib has a back end to talk to the SSDR TCP/IP CAT emulation and users
expect it to work so it does need sorting out. The TS-2000 back end in
Hamlib does have some tweaks so that it works with SSDR, e.g.
recognizing the Flex Radio rig identities. These tweaks were made back
when most Flex Radio users were using PowerSDR and DDUtil to hook up
everything and at that time I don't believe the TCP/IP protocol for CAT
was available. The bottom line is that as things stand even though the
TS-2000 emulation route is reliable it is not problem free since the
SSDR TS-2000 emulation is not much like a real TS-2000, fortunately for
most of WSJT-X's requirements it is close enough with the current tweaks
in Hamlib. It would be better if the dedicated flex6xxx Hamlib back end
were the driver of choice so sorting out these problems of instability
is desirable.
With respect to a whole new rig control mechanism for multiple receiver
rigs, that would be nice but, as WSJT-X is basically an application that
is designed to interface to a single receiver transceiver, it doesn't
really add much value. WSJT-X handles multiple receivers by allowing
multiple instances of WSJT-X to be started, so having a unique audio
source and sink along with an optional CAT control port for each
"virtual" rig is what we need. I take your point about the user
complexity of setting up multiple audio stream pairs and CAT emulations
for Flex Radio users but it does work well and requires little
maintenance once configured. Most importantly it allows WSJT-X, and I
expect other digi-mode software, to use a basic radio model that works
with boat-anchors with no CAT through to the most sophisticated modern
rigs. There will always be users with Flex Radio or even rigs like the
IC-7610, K3, etc. with proper dual receivers who want to operate on more
than one band or mode simultaneously, I have no problem with requiring
them to do some extra work to support extra features possible with their
advanced station equipment.
73
Bill
G4WJS.
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