[Hamlib-stationserver] Hamlib tinkering

[Tony L. <vk...@gm...>]

I finally got around to playing with rigctl/rigctld this afternoon with 
some mixed results.

Firstly, the setup:
I used the IC-7000, which is on COM10 (the USB CAT interface port). 
Initially I configured rigctld to use COM9 DTR for PTT, with no joy.  I 
simply removed the -r parameter and set the PTT type to "RIG", so it 
used CAT commands, which worked.  The server PC runs Windows Vista.  Had 
to use the \\.\COM10 workaround as documented on the Hamlib site to talk 
to the radio.

For the client, I ran rigctl on a Linux netbook, and pointed it to the 
IP and port of rigctld.  After sorting out a baud rate issue (my bad, I 
got the IC-7000 and scanner baud rates mixed up), it worked, well sort of:

What worked?
Getting and setting VFO frequency.  This was flawless.
Getting and setting PTT state mostly worked.  I sometimes had protocol 
issues getting the PTT state, but repeating the command or mixing it 
with getting the VFO frequency made it work.  Setting the PTT state was 
reliable, especially directly from the command line. rigctl did report 
"protocol error", but the command worked.
Getting the mode and CTCSS settings worked.

And the not so good?
I tried changing the mode, and here is where things went bad.  I was not 
able to change the mode via the rigctl/rigctld combination (I'm sure 
I've done it using rigctl directly on the Windows box). Attempting to 
set the mode resulted in a timeout, and after the attempt, the commands 
that previously worked no longer worked, until rigctld was restarted.  
Unfortunately for my purposes, this one is a show stopper.  I was able 
to get the current mode and filter, however (again until I attempted to 
set these parameters, then rigctld lost the plot, as described).

That's as much as I have tried so far.  Had this worked, I would have 
setup my EchoIRLP node as an experimental remote base server (since IRLP 
and Echolink take care of the security side of things, the rig control 
is purely over the Cat 5 LAN).

-- 
73 de Tony VK3JED/VK3IRL
http://vkradio.com