[RTTY] Commercial Interfaces

[Kok Chen]

On Dec 9, 2012, at 4:12 PM, Tom Osborne wrote:

> Cost around $40 and works FSK or AFSK.

When comparing prices, you need to look at the "extras" that you would need to complete the setup.  

With the Buxcomm, I believe you will need to add the cost of a decent sound card with a -96 dBFS noise floor if you want to be comparable to a DigiKeyer II from MicroHAM.  

And if you want to operate CW, you will need to add a Winkeyer, which is present in the MicroKeyer II, DigiKeyer II and RigExpert.  

The original poster had asked about a Yaesu, so an CI-V interface is not an issue.  But Icom owners will need to add the cost of that also to the less expensive interfaces.

There really is a reason why the MicroHAM and RigExpert units cost so much, in addition to being built very well (the SignaLinks also have very good build quality).  With commercial Digital Interfaces, my experience is that you really do get what you pay for.

Interfaces such as the ones from MicroHAM and RigExpert also come with built-in UARTs to give you jitter free FSK keying (albeit, the ones from MicroHAM can only get you to 45.0 baud, and while the RigExpert can give you 45.45 baud, switching to 75 baud requires a hardware reconfiguration on the latter).

You probably can't go wrong with either MicroHAM or RigExpert.  IMHO with interacting with them technically beacuse I write software on the Mac that works with their products (different categories), both their designers (OM7ZZ and UU9JDR) are extremely good at what they do.  OM7ZZ only designs the hardware portion of his interfaces, but from what I can tell, UU9JDR does both software and firmware at RigExpert (in addition to his antenna analyzers; I have no idea when Denis finds time to sleep).  They are both the chief bottle washers at their respective companies.

73
Chen, W7AY