TS-890 TRX Control

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DL1EBN
TS-890 TRX Control

Hello everybody,

would it be possible to integrate the TRX-Control for TS-890 and IC-9700 or does anybody know what to do to make TRX Control for TS-890 and IC-9700 working?

I use the two radios mentioned above. Both are connected to the pc via usb. That works fine with serval logsofts but not with cqrlog. Any help welcome.

VY73
Norbert, DL1EBN

oh1kh
TS-890 TRX Control

Hi Norbert!
Both rig models are supported by HamLib rigctld. So they should work with cqrlog.
Set NewQSO/preferences/TRXControl "radio1" settings for either one and then select Tab "radio2" and put setting for the other one there.

See the help (NewQSO/help) for further instructions.

if you have problems after setting both radios to preferences ask more help. Screen copy of settings page and dump file that you can generate using command console for starting cqrlog:

cqrlog debug=1 > /tmp/debug.txt

will help to pin out your problem.

--
Saku
OH1KH

DL1EBN
Hello Saku,

Hello Saku,

thanks for the tip. I'm pretty sure to have tried that in the past. But to be honest, I tried so many things that I'm actually not sure. I'll report what happened.

VY73

Norbert, DL1EBN

oh1kh
TS-890 TRX Control

Hi Norbert!

As you may have noticed we have open issue with two rigs. https://www.cqrlog.com/node/2517

It is interesting to hear your results. Maybe there is a bug deep down somewhere. More we have results, better we know.

--
Saku
OH1KH

DL1EBN
Hello Saku,

Hello Saku,

I gave it a quick trial because I'm a bit short of time. I will try the complete procedure you requested later on today. For now just a short Info:

First of all I could not find both rigs either the TS-890 neither IC-9700. I guess that this is important for the set of commands used during communcation PC/TRX. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but both are not on the list. I checked it several times. Than I tried to define the parameters. I know from other Logsoft like N1MM+ that I have to use /dev/ttyUSB4 with 115200 baud 8N2. That's what works with N1MM+. I checked the whole Manual of TS-890 with focus on USB comm/USB control. Not even one word about the portnumber. I tried out every possibility for each part and several radios from the list. No success.

As stated before, I'll come back with the info requested.

VY73

Norbert, DL1EBN

oh1kh
TS-890 TRX Control

Ah!
You must install (or update) latest Hamlib.

[saku@hamtpad ~]$ rigctl -l | grep 9700
3081 Icom IC-9700 20200719.1 Stable RIG_MODEL_IC9700
[saku@hamtpad ~]$ rigctl -l | grep 890
1015 Yaesu FT-890 20200323.0 Stable RIG_MODEL_FT890
2041 Kenwood TS-890S 20200714.0 Stable RIG_MODEL_TS890S
[saku@hamtpad ~]$

Note that with latest Hamlib rig model numbers are from 1000 upwards.
cqrlog preferences rig list fetches information from installed hamlib, so it will set itself up to date.

--
Saku
OH1KH

DL1EBN
Hello Saku,

Hello Saku,

thank you for the quick response. Would you tell me where to get "the latest" hamlib? The latest one I could find is hamlib3.3. That one does not include the two radios. It is the same list than on the cqrlog website. Number 3081 and 2041 are not included. It seems that you have a more actual one.

I have been using cqrlog since many years. But this time I set up a new computer for HAM purposes only. Therefore I downloaded the latest release of cqrlog. The processor is an i3 9th generation with 16GB RAM. The OS is UBUNTU 20.04 LTS.

By the way: I downloaded the latest release of cqrlog package about one week ago. Except the mariadb server everything was included. I would have expected the latest hamlib to be included too. It looks like to be the case because, as mentioned above, the latest hamlib seems to be 3.3. Maybe you can update the one inside the download file of cqrlog.

oh1kh
TS-890 TRX Control

Hi!
At least for Fedora they have released a package of Hamlib 4.0.
With a quick look it seems that Ubuntu still have 3.3, but perhaps someone Ubuntu user can tell it for sure.

Hamlib can be found from GitHub https://github.com/Hamlib/Hamlib as source that needs to be compiled by user. It is not very difficult, but for first time job it needs some study. How ever instructions are found from files README and INSTALL as usual with source codes.

Do not expect anything!
Official cqrlog is about year old. And package manages of different linux distributions may be even more behind.

The best way is to install/update Hamlib, and MariaDB with package manager like Synaptic. If there is no Hamlib 4 then compile it from source.
Installing cqrlog from package may cause old Hamlib and MySql to take a place as they are marked as dependencies fro cqrlog.

Either refuse dependencies when using packet manager to install cqrlog, or install it from tar file downloaded from download section of this web page.
After getting cqrlog running you can update it to alpha version from my GitHub. Update goes with script, so it is not very difficult.

I have feeling that you are not very familiar with program installing, so I'm not writing full instructions yet. We must go on step by step.

As summary:
Unfortunately official cqrlog is very old (alpha version is 22 steps ahead)
Hamlib and MariaDB live their own life and must be updated separately from cqrlog as cqrlog package installs certain version and running cqrlog does not upgrade it's dependencies.

Now ,as first step, look at HamLib from GitHub. Download source and read instructions there and try to compile it. Ask for help if you get stuck.

--
Saku
OH1KH

DL1EBN
Hello Saku,

Hello Saku,

thank you for being patient with me. You are right, I do not install software very often, but I think I'm familiar with the procedure to do that. First of all I found out, that the the hamlib-package from the official Hamlib Project Page is still Version 3. The link you provided lead me to a git-page with a Hamlib-Master. This one did not work because there was no "configure" file but a "configure.ac". Maybe some FEDORA stuff which is obviousely not compatible with UBUNTU.

But after some search I found a hamlib Version 4 on sourceforge.net which could be installed easily. Unfortunately IC-9700 and TS-890 are not included, even if there are lots of new rigs. Also the line-numbers you provided are not included.

VY73

Norbert, DL1EBN

oh1kh
TS-890 TRX Control

Hi Norbert!

There is a script named "bootstrap" in Hamlib-master root directory. Run that and it will make new Makefiles for you and after that you are able to compile source in normal way.

--
Saku
OH1KH

va7gp
TS-890 TRX Control

I was stuck at the same point - no "configure" file. So, your reply helped a lot, Saku. It is compiling right now..

-Gord VA7GP

oh1kh
TS-890 TRX Control

Just answered to Gord topic "FLRIG CQRLOG" that if you can not find latest HamLib you can install latest wsjtx (2.2.2) and then you will find "rigctld-wsjtx" that is rather new. Just change that /with path) to preferences/trxcontrol/rigctld path.

That is one solution that popped in to my mind now.

--
Saku
OH1KH

va7gp
TS-890 TRX Control

Comment about latest Hamlib from SourceForge:

There appears to be a command error in CQRLog - when starting rigctld, CQRLOG inserts the "Device" after the -r switch. If the "Device" is left blank, or set unnecessarily to /dev/ttyS1 (example), then CQRLOG fails to start rigctld:

Starting RigCtld ...
/usr/local/bin/rigctld -m 4 -r -t 12345
Recommend using --vfo switch for rigctld if client supports it
rigctl and netrigctl will automatically detect vfo mode
rig_open: error = Invalid configuration
Warning: For better performance, background image should be the same size as the output image
rigctld failed to start!

However, inserting the desired poll-rate into "Device" will allow CQRLOG to start rigctld:

Starting RigCtld ...
/usr/local/bin/rigctld -m 4 -r 500 -t 12345
Recommend using --vfo switch for rigctld if client supports it
rigctl and netrigctl will automatically detect vfo mode
Warning: For better performance, background image should be the same size as the output image
rigctld started!
Connected to 192.168.0.27:12345
Sending: fmv

However, even in this case, I get no actual rig-communication, no Frequency / Mode / VFO as I expect... :-(
-Gord VA7GP

oh1kh
TS-890 TRX Control

Hi Gord!

Thanks for showing up a bug that must be fixed. If there is no value there should not be the parameter either.

How ever did you try this? https://cqrlog.com/comment/8617#comment-8617

It seems to work here (I have no rig, I'm not at home). Cqrlog is getting frequency ok. Also changes frequency. But change of mode will stuck rigctld (or flrig). but it might be because there is no rig for flrig to control.

--
Saku
OH1KH

DL1EBN
Hello Saku,

Hello Saku,

I have been working since hours on the new Hamlib installation. Your hint with "bootstrap" was right. I can do the install procedure with the HAMLIB-MASTER now. First of all I realized that there is no change in my riglist.
Maybe I did not read the "INSTALL-DOC" carefully, but suddenly I realized that the Master is installed in /usr/local not in /usr/bin like the predefined path in CQRLOG is. Therefore I thought it would be easy to change the path. But that doesn't work. I can change the path, but CQRLOG doesn't find rigctld. There is only one device "cmbModelRig1" nothing else.
I checked the path an found out, that everything seems to be there except the "riglist". During the installation process I did not see any error message. I tried to set an option for configure "./configure --prefix=/usr" which makes the system to install the rigctld into /usr/bin/ as foreseen in CQRLOG. That doesn't help either because the riglist is still missing.
Also I found a file called rigs in the downloaded package after I unpacked it. There I found a list called Kenwood. I checked that list several times but could not find TS-890. Maybe the TS-890 should have shown up anywhere else to be found by CQRLOG.

The whole process is very confusing for me. As soon as I have installed the mail soft I can provide you with sreenshots, messages or whatever helps to solve the problem.

VY73

Norbert, DL1EBN

va7gp
TS-890 TRX Control

Hello, Norbert:

I don't know as much as Saku (!), but I will try to help.
Like you, I downloaded and struggled to compile; using 'bootstrap' was the key I needed. When I compiled hamlib, I did nothing special and everything did go into /usr/local/bin.

So now, if I try to locate rigctld, I get two responses

$ locate rigctld
/usr/bin/rigctld
/usr/local/bin/rigctld

But, when I tried to use rigctl, it failed :-( I had to add /usr/local/lib to my PATH; your system may be different:

ldconfig

Check this is now the case:

# cat ld.so.conf
...
/usr/local/lib
...

My system, and the new hamlib, do not have the command you mention - no riglist.
So, perhaps you can try this command, with the full path to the new executable:

$ /usr/local/bin/rigctl -l |grep 890S
2041 Kenwood TS-890S 20200714.0 Stable RIG_MODEL_TS890S

Does this help? I hope it does...

-Gord VA7GP

DL1EBN
Hello Gord,

Hello Gord,
you gave the right hints. Thank so so much. Even if I did the same than before. Suddenly it worked. CQRLOG was able to find the files needed. The rest was just to input the right data. Both, IC-9700 and TS-890 working fine.

VY73

Norbert, DL1EBN

oh1kh
TS-890 TRX Control

HI Norbert and Gord!

Nice to hear about the progress.
By default Hamlib compiles and installs to /usr/local/bin. But it is rather easy to change, there are instructions at the beginning of INSTALL file. Use "--prefix=/usr" as parameter for config and it goes to /usr/bin overriding the existing one.

Then there is just one version of HamLib in same location as the old one. System thinks it is still installed from package and will update it later when official package is released.
But if that is bad, just run again "make install" and the self compiled one is there again.

--
Saku
OH1KH

DL1EBN
Hello Saku, hello Gord,

Hello Saku, hello Gord,

thank you for your support and patience. Up to now I thought software would have always the same behavior because it follows the rules which were defined by the programmer. That is obviously wrong. I tried the install with the prefix before. That did not work. Also the step which pushed it to success was what I did before. It didn't work. I checked everything several times if there would be a wrong spelled word or a wrong path. I couldn't find anything. Even when it suddenly worked, I just decided to try another way. Suddenly I saw the correct frequency on the TRX control window. Maybe it was a matter of patience. I don't know.

But now I'm glad that everything works fine.

There is a suggestion I got while I was trying out the "new" capability of my CQRLOG setup. There is a Window to display the DX-Cluster and a Window to display the Bandmap. It could be useful if the Bandmap would show the whole actual band with frequencies and the stations from the DX-Cluster. If the radio is manually tuned to a QRG where the Bandmap shows a call, the call would be copied into the "New QSO" mask with all known infos like Call, QRG, Mode, Direction etc. We use this helpful function very often in contests where we log our data with N1MM+. But others like LOG4OM etc. have this function too.

VY73

Norbert, DL1EBN

oh1kh
TS-890 TRX Control

Hi Norbert !

Not a bad idea. But I think only if there is no rig control.

Then QRG and mode is useful, otherwise they are "included as hidden" when double click will set radio to that mode and frequency.

It is finally question about screen size usage. If you work just SSB/CW without rig control there may be room for expanding bandmap. In other cases monitor(s!) are always too small.

One way, maybe suitable for all, could be the usage of mouse over hint text. When cursor is over a callsign in band map a hint flash would show full information. (I am not sure could this be done)
What do you think about that?

--
Saku
OH1KH

DL1EBN
Hi Saku,

Hi Saku,

thanks for the quick answer. I'm glad that you think about it.

My opinion is, that specially rig control is the key for it. We have two functions for the Band Map. If the Band Map is configured like showing the active band only, it is useful two have the frequency indication at the side. It could also be sensitive for the mode. Just to display the cw or ssb part of the band. While you turn the vfo a marker walks alog the frequency scale. As soon as it hits a displayed call, it takes over the call and all info about it into the "New QSO" window. The window could be a small one, displayed at the right or left side to be configured by the user, like all other windows.
If the Band map window is configured to show all calls from the dx cluster it would possibly make no sense to show a frequency scale because you could loose the overview. In that case I would decide to follow the process you described. But even than I would like to take over the call and frequency/mode by double mouse click.

For the dx guys and the the ones who are after diplomas etc. it could be helpful to have a display like a statistical info about the rest of the dx cluster which tells you on which band you find stations not worked and how many of them. Just a number not more. If than the DX-cluster is configured to show stations that are posted from skimmers in your area, you would have a better chance to hear and reach these calls.

VY73

Norbert, DL1EBN