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

Dick Green WC1M wc1m73 at gmail.com
Fri Oct 7 14:39:24 EDT 2016 

FWIW, I wanted my Skimmers to use the same antennas I use with the rigs. I suppose a multiband vertical might have been effective, but it wouldn't have been a simple matter to set one up with the placement and feedline constraints I currently have.

My original intent was to use the dual-channel Afedri 822x, which costs about $350, to monitor just the bands to which my K3s are tuned. That would have been considerably cheaper than a QS1R with splitter/combiners. My cost went up a bit when I had to swap the dual channel model for two single channel models, but still a lot less than a QS1R. My four-channel solution is probably about the same as the QS1R with splitter/combiners, maybe a little more expensive.

I haven't delved deeply into what it would take to set up a QS1R in my station. I assume I'd have to use Skimmer Server to deal with multiple bands. Don't know the constraints, or whether I could have simultaneously run pandapter software on each band, like I can now.

73, Dick WC1M

-----Original Message-----
From: Pete Smith N4ZR [mailto:n4zr at contesting.com] 
Sent: Thursday, October 6, 2016 4:52 PM
To: skimmertalk at contesting.com
Subject: Re: [Skimmertalk] CW Skimmer Telnet command to set sampling rate?

Dick, a lot of RBN nodes (not mine) re using multiple antennas to a single QS1R.  One big multi-multi I know of  has an array of passive splitter/combiners merging the output of all its antennas, followed by a wideband amplifier to make up for the insertion loss and feed the QS1R.

OTOH, I use an active whip - the Clifton Labs unit that is expected to be reintroduced to the market by DX Engineering later this year or early next.  It is omni-directional, covers 160-10, and works quite decently.

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 10/6/2016 10:51 AM, Dick Green WC1M wrote:
> 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
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>
>>
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