Hi Ken, let's see If I can help clarifying this doubt.
This feature allows an operator to be able to plug multiple QDXs to a single computer simultaneously and be able to identify them easily. I requested this enhancement to Hans some time ago and he gladly offered to implement it (Thanks again Hans), a little background story on it: I have a remote station in PR with a QDX that backs in time before the High Band version was available. When the High Band version became available, I've built one and the desire to add it to that remote station came to light, that means having there 2 QDX Transceivers, one high band and one low band. The problem on doing that lies in that the device name for Serial port and audio card would be the same if "BOTH XCVRS Are Connected AT THE SAME TIME" thus making it impossible for me to identify which one is the one I intend to use at a given time (This in fact is true for the Sound card, for the serial ports there are many ways to identify one without any device change, in fact my original wish was specifically for the sound card but while discussing back and forth Hans saw the bigger picture and included the serial port too). This is where the 'Custom USB name' Comes in to play, with this feature I can be sure at all times which XCVR is the target. Now changing WSJT-X config each time I'd like to switch between HIGH and LOW Bands would be a nuisance and that's where the --rig-name comes into play exactly as in Linas video. I can create 2 shortcuts, one for low and one for high using the software switch to point to the corresponding configuration. Everything I'm stating here is true just for Linux as on Windows there's no way to set a "name" for a serial port. Maybe a couple screenshots can Say more than a thousand words:
Here there are Both a LOW band and a HIGH Band connected to the same Linux PC. Note the similarity between Custom USB Name and the serial port used in Putty?
Now let's go to the WSJT-X part, here?is where the Custom USB Name feature shows in all of its gloriousness, This is the WSJT-X configuration for the XCVRs showing how to use the Custom USB Name. Note how the name matches what was configured in Custom USB name in the QDX Config?
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These are 2 different shortcuts for WSJT-X in my Linux Desktop. These shortcuts point to separate configurations for each XCVR using the --rig-name switch, "/usr/local/bin/wsjtx --rig-name qdxhigh" and "/usr/local/bin/wsjtx --rig-name qdxlow" that's basically what Linas was trying to demonstrate with his video but on a windows PC. This feature won't matter on Windows but the shortcut with --rig-name serves the same purpose.
Hope this clarifies one of the feature's use cases.
73 de KP4RX
