Remote Ham Radio Station Control

The concept is increasing in popularity, due to renting or whatever the case maybe be that prevents one from setting up a home station.

Oddly enough there are very few straight forward ways to do this.

Not to long ago I detailed how to set up a web based receiver, using a Raspberry Pi, Icecast, and a CIV/CAT capable radio using hamlib:

http://kb9mwr.blogspot.com/2013/04/raspberry-pi-web-based-rig-control.html

Think; two cheap Raspberry Pi micro computers.  One with a speaker mic.  Stream with speakfreely, over a VPN, and use the hamlib php web for remote frequency control.
 
Many are familiar with hamradio deluxe for local station control. It does have remote server and client functionality. What it lacks is a way to transport the audio. You have have to use other software such as Skype to transport the audio.


One of perhaps the most elegant ways to operate remotely is with a fairly new product (2010) from Remote Rig. The RRC-1258MkII consists of two devices; one placed at the host, and the other at the client. They handle remote control and audio. They require no computer either (after setup), just a compatible radio with remove-able head. The head connects to one device, the RF guts to the other, and just ethernet between them.

It's not the cheapest solution, but perhaps one day radio manufactures will adopt this idea of a an ethernet transport cable between the head and radio deck. Till then, ham clubs could invest in one. Many club stations see little use, and this way a number of members (some not able to afford a nice station or able to put up antennas) would benefit.

I have to say however the remote rig guys figured out the TTL communication between the head and deck and managed to encapsulate that in standard TCP/IP is truly awesome.

It even works with radios that don't have direct CIV/CAT control, like the FT-8800, FT-7800, so you don't need to own a really expensive radio to be able to use it remotely.

Perhaps in the future there will be more radios that are remotely tunable (CAT/CIV). It would be awesome if the cheaper handhelds like Baofeng, would support this. Till then, the Kenwood F6A HT works great with Hamlib.

It would be nice if future base/mobiles like the Yeasu ones would just have an ethernet jack on them.
Yeah I know, but it's nice to dream!

Here is some good info about remote transceiver operation:
http://alloutput.com/amateur-radio/remote-transceiver-operation/ 

Raspberry Pi web based rig control?

A while back my friend and I found hamlib, a development library designed to remotely control nearly any CAT/CIV capable transceiver or receiver.  It compiles and works just fine on the Raspberry Pi.

 Before-hand ensure you have these dependencies installed:  
 libltdl-dev or libltdl-devel or libtool-ltdl-devel (use yum/apt-get)  
 wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/hamlib/files/hamlib/1.2.15.3/hamlib-1.2.15.3.tar.gz  
 tar -xvzf hamlib*  
 cd hamlib*  
 ./configure  
 make  
 make install  
 ldconfig   

 


So we have been using SSH and hamlib to control a remote Icom 706.  We have been using speak freely to stream the audio.

I have been meaning to try and create a PHP/CGI web based front end for this.  Couple that with darkice and icecast for a way to stream audio to that browser.

There is network daemon version of rigctl that works like so:

rigctld -r /dev/ttyUSB0 -m 311 & 

Then control can be done via TCP port 4532:

 root@darkpi-ice:/# telnet localhost 4532  
 Trying 127.0.0.1...  
 Connected to localhost.  
 Escape character is '^]'.  
 f <---- I sent this and got back below:  
 1590000  

Here is a screen shot of my web control front end:

Here is the radio with the Raspberry Pi, USB sound input, USB TTL converter for CIV.
Basically a way to enable web based control of a radio with CIV.  Remi, F4ECW has some example PHP code for this that I snagged from a Yahoo group.  It also appears to have a start for remote fldigi.

{Update}
http://ok1zia.nagano.cz/wiki/WebRig

Another good project would be to layout a small board with jumper selectable COR and PTT transistor configurations than can be interfaced to the Raspberry Pi GPIO.  So far I have just been bread-boarding this.

I just haven't had the time to create such art work and submit it to Far Circuits.


Again if anyone wants to beat me to the punch on either of this, please do.
Worth reading: "Raspberry Pi: A Tiny Computer for Big Projects" by; Matt, KB3TAN - CQ Magazine, March 2013