[Skimmertalk] CW Skimmer Telnet command to set sampling rate?

Thu Oct 6 10:51:43 EDT 2016

I may have misunderstood the QS1R architecture, but I believe it has only
one antenna input. I don't have a multiband antenna that covers all the
bands of interest -- I have mostly single-band resonant antennas (I do have
a tribander, but it's fixed South). I suppose I could build a timer-driven
switch to cycle the QS1R input among different available antennas, but I
think that would be more complicated, difficult and expensive than what I'm
proposing, mainly due to the antenna switching constraints of my station.

My station can have up to four antennas available for SDRs to use. Two of
them are available by sharing the main antenna of one of my two K3s via a
little trick of routing RX OUT to a splitter that feeds RX IN and an SDR.
The other two antennas are from a secondary antenna farm that has its own
SO2R switching system that combines with my main SO2R switching system via a
pair of 2-port stack matches. Sometimes the antennas in the secondary farm
are unused and will be available for an SDR, and sometimes that feedline and
bank of antennas will be in use by one of the K3s.

So, I can have up to four SDRs connected to four different antennas to
monitor four bands.

73, Dick WC1M

-----Original Message-----
From: Andy KU7T [mailto:ku7t at ku7t.org] 
Sent: Thursday, October 6, 2016 9:53 AM
To: 'Bob Wilson, N6TV' <n6tv at arrl.net>; 'Dick Green WC1M' <wc1m73 at gmail.com>
Cc: 'skimmertalk' <skimmertalk at contesting.com>
Subject: RE: [Skimmertalk] CW Skimmer Telnet command to set sampling rate?

I may be missing something, but why don't you use a 7 band QS1R and connect
to local telnet port with your logging software?

Andy
KU7T

-----Original Message-----
From: Skimmertalk [mailto:skimmertalk-bounces at contesting.com] On Behalf Of
Bob Wilson, N6TV
Sent: Thursday, October 6, 2016 1:10 AM
To: Dick Green WC1M <wc1m73 at gmail.com>
Cc: skimmertalk <skimmertalk at contesting.com>
Subject: Re: [Skimmertalk] CW Skimmer Telnet command to set sampling rate?

Both Writelog and HDSDR support OmniRig, and HDSDR will synchronize your K3
VFO A frequency with the HDSDR cursor, if that's what you're looking for.

73,
Bob, N6TV

On Wed, Oct 5, 2016 at 3:00 PM, Dick Green WC1M <wc1m73 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks, Pete.
>
> Stopping CW Skimmer, editing the file and restarting is a bit awkward, 
> but possible. One problem is that I'd have to hit the Run button after 
> the restart. Perhaps I'll send an enhancement request to Alex :-).
>
> SkimScan is neat, and I think it would work with my equipment, but 
> it's not what I'm looking for.
>
> I'm attempting to create an Assisted SO2R station that only uses local 
> copies of Skimmer for spotting. Of course I could use the RBN or a 
> combination of RBN and one or more local Skimmers, but I like the idea 
> of an all-local system that only spots what my station can hear. It's 
> still Assisted (by a definition I helped create),  but it feels more 
> like something between Unassisted and Assisted: no other human ops
involved.
>
> I started out with an Afedri 822x, which is the dual-channel model. 
> The dual-channel seemed like an attractive way to monitor the antennas 
> on each of my two K3s, using a splitter and RX OUT/RX IN, a design 
> suggested to me by N6TV.  This approach frees me from the limitations 
> of IF-based solutions. I like the Afedri's combination of network and 
> USB access at a reasonable price. Unfortunately, the dual-channel 
> implementation doesn't work with CW Skimmer (both I/Q streams are 
> muxed into 4-channel audio) and while there's a Skimmer Server plug-in 
> for the dual-channel Afedri, it always assigns the lowest frequency to 
> channel 0, which would force me to always have the attached K3 on the
lowest frequency band.
>
> So, I returned the 822x and bought two single-channel Afedri SDR-Net 
> units. In this case, it's possible to run separate instances of HDSDR 
> and CW Skimmer for each SDR and route the spots via Telnet into 
> Writelog. It works really well, but frequency changes are problematic.
> I want the LO to be fixed in the center of the sample rate (e.g.,
> 7,048,000 Hz when on 40m with a 96K sample rate), not following the 
> rig frequency (which moves the scan window, like IF mode). The only 
> way to do that is to manually change the frequency in HDSDR (or the 
> Adfedri SDR-Net Control Box program) and also in CW Skimmer. The 
> Afedri SDR-Net Control Box program can send the frequency to Skimmer 
> via Telnet, but the frequencies for each band are fixed and not what I
want.
>
> So, I modified my antenna-switching software, AntennaMaster (AM), to 
> set the SDR LO via an Adfedri-supplied program and the CW Skimmer LO 
> via Telnet. This works great. In fact, it works so well that I'm 
> considering getting two more SDR-Net units to operate independently of 
> the K3s on unused antennas for other bands. That would give me Skimmer 
> on four bands simultaneously (of questionable value at this point in 
> the solar cycle, but what the heck.)
>
> The only thing I can't do is set the Skimmer sample rate. I'd like to 
> do that so the scan window is optimized for the size of the band. Say, 
> 48K on 30m, 96K on 40m, 192K on 20m, 15m and 10m, etc. Probably not 
> really necessary, but nice to have.
>
> The other thing I'm looking to do is communicate with HDSDR via its 
> DDE interface so I can set it's frequency from my program too. But 
> I've been unable to find any documentation on that interface. Anyone 
> know where I can find it?
>
> 73, Dick WC1M
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Pete Smith N4ZR [mailto:n4zr at contesting.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, October 5, 2016 10:55 AM
> To: skimmertalk <skimmertalk at contesting.com>
> Subject: Re: [Skimmertalk] CW Skimmer Telnet command to set sampling rate?
>
> Dick, to the best of my knowledge, the only Telnet commands 
> implemented are those shown in the "Telnet Commands" section of the CW 
> Skimmer Help file - which does not include a sample rate command. The 
> CW Skimmer.ini file has a section for each type of radio.  The one for 
> the SoftRock looks like this:
>
> RigNo=1
> [sdrSR]
> SignalRate=96000
> CenterFreq=14040000
> CenterOffset=0
>
> Since the ini file specifies the sample rate (signal rate), it should 
> be possible to create a batch file that would stop the software, edit 
> the sample rate to a new value, and restart.
>
> You don't mention if you are using one of the multi-band Softrocks, 
> but if so you might want to look at SkimScan SR by W3OA, to be found 
> at http://dickwilliams.byethost17.com/SkimScanSR.html?i=1. While it 
> does not provide for changing the sample rate, it offers the ability 
> to band-hop on a variety of user-programmed schedules.  It's a very clever
piece of work.
>
> 73, Pete N4ZR
> Download the new N1MM Logger+ at
> <http://N1MM.hamdocs.com>. Check
> out the Reverse Beacon Network at
> <http://reversebeacon.net>, now
> spotting RTTY activity worldwide.
> For spots, please use your favorite
> "retail" DX cluster.
>
> On 10/5/2016 3:06 AM, Dick Green WC1M wrote:
> > Hello all.
> >
> >
> >
> > Is there a Telnet command for CW Skimmer to set the Sampling Rate in 
> > SoftRock mode?
> >
> >
> >
> > I'm able to use the SKIMMER/LO_FREQ command to set the LO frequency, 
> > but there doesn't seem to be a similar command to set the sampling 
> > rate. Is it unimplemented or just undocumented (I should be so lucky.)?
> >
> >
> >
> > 73, Dick WC1M
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Skimmertalk mailing list
> > Skimmertalk at contesting.com
> > http://dayton.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/skimmertalk
> >
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Skimmertalk mailing list
> Skimmertalk at contesting.com
> http://dayton.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/skimmertalk
>
_______________________________________________
Skimmertalk mailing list
Skimmertalk at contesting.com
http://dayton.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/skimmertalk