Hi All. (Charles, David and Ian)
Thanks for the replies, all very useful.
Charles:
Re the stuck PTT, yes, that is what I found too. As soon as the program grabs
the port, both DTR and RTS are set high, irrespective of what you expect, or
have specified in the .conf file.
The circuit for my little interface is at:-
if anyone is interested. An 11k pdf.
In that case, all I had to do, was leeve RTS stuck High, and tell Direwolf to use
the DTR line, but activate it by sending it -ve.
PTT /dev/ttyUSBx -DTR That worked for me just fine with that interface,
configured so RTS goes to PTTkey, and DTR goes to PTTblock.
Hope something helps you with your PTT mayhem.
David:
Yes, I'm aware of the audio level indicatior, but that ONLY shows, when it's
successfully received and decoded a packet. Along with the most excelent little
tuning indicator! Problem is, here in the UK at home, there is a very high noise
level, so decodes are rare, but the overall peak/average "Level" would be about
the same. (I've 'scoped the audio from the radio, the AGC in fast mode does a
good job.)
So it would be very usefull, if a live level indicator could be provided by DW even
with no decoding, so that the radio's line out level, and PC's soundcard settings
could be setup very much easier, and a lot quicker than waiting (sometimes for
10's of minutes) for something to be successfully decoded so you can try and
guess what to do with the level settings.
Thanks for the recommendation re the "alsactl store" and "alsactl restore" idea.
I'll look into that, also invoking DW from a script. Doing all that from a script
does seem to be a good idea. I just need to learn the correct way. (I'm still a
Linux novice when it comes to many things others take for granted!)
The PTT control I can work arround for now, but it obviously needs sorting as
others seem to have found issues with it also. (Stuck in TX etc.) I must admit,
I've not tried it via a "Real Hardware" serial port, only over USB<>RS232 things
(both FTDI and Prolific.)
It is sometimes the default behaviour of the drivers, if a port is "opened" by an
app, DTR and RTS are asserted by default. But, the controling application can
easily override that behaviour, if so desired. I've done it myself in a "past life"
with other software I was supporting, on another OS, plus other Linux ham apps
(Fldigi, Flrig etc) do the correct thing.
(The same PC also has those installed, and they work realy well with the exact
same hardware etc. As does also, QSSTV!)
Not sure of Hamlib. I've messed with that in the past, but I found it very hit n
miss. Again, when it works, it works very well. (I have used Grig in the past
too.) But if there is something bad about the configuration, it's a nightmare to
untangle. It's also another layer of complexity that is not good for ones sanity
when portable/mobile! ;-)
Ian:
Same comments re the level settings. DW only provides an indication of the
input level once it's successfully received and decoded something. I (and others
I think) feel that something "live" is needed in real time, to set the levels before
leaving it alone to decode stuff.
OK on your particular use of Direwolf. Nice...
I have a working setup on a Pi that I plan to leave monitoring 30m while I'm
away, as a RX only gate to the IS. I had it running well a few weeks back, but
found I had to moderatly overclock the Pi (900MHz) and drop the sample rate to
11k, to get acceptable performance, but it was working very well, 5 decoders at
40Hz spacing. The Pi was running at about 60% usage. (Raspian with HW
floating point.) The RX was/will be a KX3.
With one of the cheap stick on heatsinks, the Pi's CPU temp is back down to less
than it was at 700MHz with no h'sink. I left it running for a few days, no
problems (then...)
Yes I know the IC-706 rigs don't support CAT command for PTT, but other radios
do, though some have other issues if you go that route...
Also, yes, udev rules are magic, once you've figured things out.
Yes too, the default text/background colours on a LCD screen are terrible. I too
use -t 0 to turn the colour off, then I can read it!
Thanks again everyone. Now to go find and read about those Alsa settings
tools. And general shell scripting too I suspect.
Still a lot to learn, and time ticks on. Two weekends to go, then it all gets used
in anger! And I realy would like to have everything at least startup in the
"right" way, especially the audio level as seen by DW from the Radio.
73.
Dave G0WBX. (Lunchtime over, back to t'mill.)
