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Hello Bob,

Have been going through the docs on this and now decoding quite weak/noisy signals, quite interesting. Want to make sure I have covered everything else that "may not be documented". Most of the 14105 chatter here is marginal. Using latest 1.8.

Your #1 best way to improve 300bps AFSK packet is a better antenna on your side.? I do completely understand that this is the hardest thing to do though.? Ultimately, the 300bps AFSK mode without addons like FX.25 is not very robust and this is one of the many reasons other HF digital modes have tried to replace it.? I would argue the most popular of these in modern times is VARA though I pray the revitalized ARDOP-CF mode might make a comeback here.

I haven't found an understandable explanation on the term "slicers" yet. I am using the older format;

MODEM 300 1600:1800 B- 5@30 /1

ie what are the merits of using (say) B+ or even A+ instead. I see 9 "modems" on the log display with that (eg ___||||__). Has there been new modem development since 1.7? Might be nice to see a list of current modems (and summary) available.

The modem section is described in the Direwolf User Guide section 9.2.2 but each slicer is trying to simultaneously decode the signal with different frequency offsets to hopefully decode slightly off frequency stations (very common HF)? The downside on running more slicers is CPU load but it's really not much of a burden even on low power systems so I recommend you enable it.

FX25 and "FIX_BITS 1 AX25" also works well. Seeing quite a few recoveries. Am TXing 16.

These are both good things to have enabled and FX.25 will help a lot but only to those remote stations that offer it.

Am wondering how important audio input level setting (and even sampling division rate) is in regard to quantisation errors and dynamic range. If so is there a debug option that shows the occupied bit width, or is this what "audio level" actually logs?

The ideal audio level? is just to ensure you're getting some signal in while not clipping and Direwolf is very flexible here.? The sampling divisors are again a CPU saving thing if you really need it but it's been mentioned before that 300bps is a VERY slow mode so even using a /3 divisor won't hurt decoding much.

--David
KI6ZHD

开云体育

Have been going through the docs on this and now decoding quite weak/noisy signals, quite interesting. Want to make sure I have covered everything else that "may not be documented". Most of the 14105 chatter here is marginal. Using latest 1.8.

I haven't found an understandable explanation on the term "slicers" yet. I am using the older format;

MODEM 300 1600:1800 B- 5@30 /1

ie what are the merits of using (say) B+ or even A+ instead. I see 9 "modems" on the log display with that (eg ___||||__). Has there been new modem development since 1.7? Might be nice to see a list of current modems (and summary) available.

FX25 and "FIX_BITS 1 AX25" also works well. Seeing quite a few recoveries. Am TXing 16.

Am wondering how important audio input level setting (and even sampling division rate) is in regard to quantisation errors and dynamic range. If so is there a debug option that shows the occupied bit width, or is this what "audio level" actually logs?

Cheers Bob VK2YQA

开云体育

That's fantastic, John, thanks!? You rock!? I'll explore this.

73, Steve KF8KI

开云体育

Hello Maxwell,

Adding to Thomas's excellent points, I can add:

? - What radio are you using?

A. QYT KT8900D is a cheap chinesium 25 watt mobile radio

Try following the "The No-Test-Equipment Packet Adjustment System" section of and see if that helps.? Beyond trying Thomas's recommendation of trying a lower power level, I do think that using a better radio will help you a LOT.? Doing a simple Google search for "is a QYT KT8900D good for packet radio" gives a lot of damning reports such as:

??

????? "The KT-8900D is essentially a Baofeng UV-5R with a 20W power amplifier."

? ?? ?

That's NOT good and as I've unfotunately said many times on this list.. if you like your sanity, save yourself the grief and just get a better radio.? Probably any used amateur or commercial 2m radio will be light years better.

- What power RF level?

A. 25 watts of RF out, I checked with my surecom meter to verify and the SWR is also good

Ok.. good

- What antenna are you using?

A. UHF VHF diamond antenna clone with the three ground plane
radials at the base and a 5'8" fiberglass pole. Actually has a good SWR and
works great for hitting fairly distant repeaters or on simplex. Ive used it on simplex VHF
voice for about over 10 miles with great success

Ok.. good to hear but remember, a good SWR # doesn't mean much.? I can get a great SWR reading out of a resistor but that doesn't mean it radiates my signal where I want it to go.

- Where and how is the antenna mounted?

A. Peak of my roof clamped via the provided hardware to a pvc pole that enters my attic through
a hole we drilled through the roof.

Excellent!

A. My coax is regular RG8x 50 ohm stuff with PL-259 connectors on each end.

It's a bit lengthy at about 45 feet long I believe. But that can't really be changed in this case unfortunately

Thomas already mentioned it but especially for UHF signals, that coax isn't great but it will work.? Consider upgrading it to get the full power of your radio into the antenna and not be heat in the coax.? I personally love LMR400 if you can afford it.? 9913 is pretty good stuff as well.

Thank you David. I find it strange mainly because I have successfully connected at least once to a winlink node and sent (and received) email, but pretty much that was it. I think I have limited it down to two things:

1. Audio settings on the desktop
2. radio/cable quality. Radio is very crappy. It is however 25 watts and I have a decent antenna up on the
peak of my roof and I am in a very relatively non-mountainous area (central Arizona, near-ish to phoenix)
and my home brew cables do not have Ferrite chokes.

Power is important but it's not your primary issues.? You might consider going through my audio tuning test steps at:

??

to ensure the audio in/out is actually CLEAN and free of buss noise, RFI noise, etc.

??

Should I look into getting a radio with a superheterodyne receiver? Would that help with RX quality possibly?
I got a pretty good check and am considering what to order. I would really like to get a yeasu, preferably dual
band but VHF only would also be fine for me. What yaesu would you reccommend that can be found used
and prefferrably has prefabbed digirig cables? hopefully under $500 as well :) (and I'm not opposed to used of course)

You don't need a $500 radio to run packet.. far from it.? If you're going for a dedicated packet radio.. I encourage you to go for a mono-band VHF radio which keeps it simple and reliable.? If you have the budget, getting a radio with the rear 6pin PACKET port really helps on all the initial tuning steps, keeps it clean, etc.? I'm personally a big fan of Kenwood radios and if you can find out, a v71 is ideal.

Also, I am very bad at writing and formatting these things so I apologize in advance for that.
Thank you. I will make sure to set the TXDELAY to a lesser value and of course try the alsa device name instead.
Then I will follow up with another email. :)

And I will compile 1.8 and see if that works better also. Thanks

Ok.. good luck and let us know how it goes.

--David
KI6ZHD

T

On 12/12/24 7:02 PM, Thomas Leibold via groups.io wrote:

Hi Maxwell,

I'm using Direwolf (version 1.7) primarily for "connected mode" sessions and I can confirm that it does handle those very well. I only remember two instances were Direwolf failed and in both cases the most likely root cause was an underpowered laptop (weak CPU and insufficient memory) doing too many things all at once.

Your computer sounds more than adequate for the purpose unless you are doing some other compute or memory intensive work at the same time (e.g. participating in distributed computing networks that are designed to maximize the use of your resources).

Another very important (and often overlooked) aspect of packet radio is the antenna and once again what you describe for your setup is more than adequate for the purpose. The antenna sounds like a X50A or similar and being mounted up high is a good choice. Perfectionists would like a better feedline than RG-8X for that distance but I don't see this as a problem (you lose about 2dB on 2m and about 3.5dB on 440MHz).

Things to try:
- as David already suggested, try to tune the audio settings especially transmit audio which has a direct impact on the amount of FM deviation (you want to stay close to the maximum deviation allowed without having your signal clipped in the radio).
- some Chinese radios are really slow switching between Transmit and Receive. Try listening on another radio to see if you hear the remote station answering before your own radio is ready to receive it (you may have to watch the Direwolf console for that). If that is the case, there is really no fix except a different type radio. While the remote station will eventually try again, a radio that has such poor turn-over will accumulate a significant number of retries in a short period of time and eventually the remote station will just give up.
- some cheap radios are "pushing the limits" to get the maximum output power. It is worth trying if you get better results when you switch to a lower transmit power level.

73,
Thomas
KK6FPP

Thank you for your kind words and feedback Thomas. I will have to try these options tonight when I have time to. KK7WXH

Hi Maxwell,

I'm using Direwolf (version 1.7) primarily for "connected mode" sessions and I can confirm that it does handle those very well. I only remember two instances were Direwolf failed and in both cases the most likely root cause was an underpowered laptop (weak CPU and insufficient memory) doing too many things all at once.

Your computer sounds more than adequate for the purpose unless you are doing some other compute or memory intensive work at the same time (e.g. participating in distributed computing networks that are designed to maximize the use of your resources).

Another very important (and often overlooked) aspect of packet radio is the antenna and once again what you describe for your setup is more than adequate for the purpose. The antenna sounds like a X50A or similar and being mounted up high is a good choice. Perfectionists would like a better feedline than RG-8X for that distance but I don't see this as a problem (you lose about 2dB on 2m and about 3.5dB on 440MHz).

Things to try:
- as David already suggested, try to tune the audio settings especially transmit audio which has a direct impact on the amount of FM deviation (you want to stay close to the maximum deviation allowed without having your signal clipped in the radio).
- some Chinese radios are really slow switching between Transmit and Receive. Try listening on another radio to see if you hear the remote station answering before your own radio is ready to receive it (you may have to watch the Direwolf console for that). If that is the case, there is really no fix except a different type radio. While the remote station will eventually try again, a radio that has such poor turn-over will accumulate a significant number of retries in a short period of time and eventually the remote station will just give up.
- some cheap radios are "pushing the limits" to get the maximum output power. It is worth trying if you get better results when you switch to a lower transmit power level.

73,
Thomas
KK6FPP

开云体育

Hello Maxwell,

Dire Wolf version 1.7

I would recommend to try Direwolf 1.8 from the develop branch.? It's basically complete at this point and has lots of improvements since the v1.7 version that was released on Oct 28, 2023.

ptt/input soundcard: digirig mobile
pipewire-pulse is my audio "server"
I'm using pavucontrol to monitor input audio levels

Once again, it is decoding on aprs and some messages from the PBBS servers, but not maintaining
Connections.

In the connected packet world, it's very common to be able to create initial connections but have the connection quickly fall apart after that.? That's because the initial connection packets are very short but after that, all the follow-on packets are much larger and thus more susceptible to corruption.? This is a classic example of mistuned audio levels.

A lot more details are needed here before anyone on the list can help you here:

?? - How sure are you that your RX and TX audio levels are properly tuned?? Did you follow any specific guides on this tuning?? If so, please provide the URLs

?? - How far away are these other packet stations you are trying to connect to?

?? - Can you send us the Direwolf packet logs from your side of a connection that made a connection but and then broke?? Ideally, please send us the logs from the other remote side as well as.

?? - Per your last email, I see you're running a "(qyt kt8900d) (cheap radio)".? I'm not familiar with that specific radio but I do know that most inexpensive Chinese radios using embedded SDR technology work ok for voice communications but don't work very well for packet due several different criteria.? Can you try testing with a quality mobile radio?? I ask because this is a very common issue with cheap Chinese HT radios and when the user moved to a quality HT, their issues went away.

?? - I see you're running Linux Arch with a 6.12.x kernel but what about the other hardware / software details?

???? - Is this a mobile installation or something at home?
? ? ? - What radio are you using?
? ? ? - What power RF level?
? ? ? - What antenna are you using?
? ? ? - Where and how is the antenna mounted?
? ? ? - what kind of coax are you using and how long is it?
? ? ? - what computer hardware are you using?
? ? ? - Is direwolf running on the bare metal hardware, in a VM, in a container?

Also, attached is my direwolf config:

# direwolf.conf of KK7WXH

CHANNEL 0
MYCALL KK7WXH
MODEM 1200
AGWPORT 8000
KISSPORT 8001
IGTXLIMIT 6 10
ADEVICE pipewire pipewire # using audio devices set in pavucontrol (digirig for mic)

DR> instead of using "pipewire" and all of it's complexities especially with setting the mixer levels, consider trying using a ALSA device instead.


TXDELAY 100 # my radio is slow to tx (qyt kt8900d) (cheap radio)

DR> A "TXDELAY" setting of 100 (that's 1000ms) is definitely too long.  For most of these Chinese made SDR-based radios, I would recommend to start with a setting of "20" or "25" and then work your way down but I doubt you will be able to get lower than "18" (aka 180ms).  I also recommend setting "TXTAIL 10" and see if that is needed for your setup or not.  All of these settings are detailed in the Direwolf User Guide:

   #Section 9.4.5
   

--David
KI6ZHD

Thank you so much for your responses

To answer some questions:

- Is this a mobile installation or something at home?

A. At home, on a desk with a bench power supply.

? - What radio are you using?

A. QYT KT8900D is a cheap chinesium 25 watt mobile radio

- What power RF level?

A. 25 watts of RF out, I checked with my surecom meter to verify and the SWR is also good

- What antenna are you using?

A. UHF VHF diamond antenna clone with the three ground plane
radials at the base and a 5'8" fiberglass pole. Actually has a good SWR and
works great for hitting fairly distant repeaters or on simplex. Ive used it on simplex VHF
voice for about over 10 miles with great success

- Where and how is the antenna mounted?

A. Peak of my roof clamped via the provided hardware to a pvc pole that enters my attic through
a hole we drilled through the roof.

- what kind of coax are you using and how long is it?

A. My coax is regular RG8x 50 ohm stuff with PL-259 connectors on each end.
It's a bit lengthy at about 45 feet long I believe. But that can't really be changed in this case unfortunately

- what computer hardware are you using?
My desktop is a fairly old workstation but still very usable.
Here are the general hardware specs:

kk7wxh@hamshack
---------------
OS: Arch Linux x86_64
Host: Precision Tower 5810
Kernel: Linux 6.12.4-arch1-1
Uptime: 1 day, 15 hours, 45 mins
Packages: 1076 (pacman)
Shell: bash 5.2.37
Display (27G2G3): 1920x1080 @ 60 Hz in 27" [External]
DE: KDE Plasma 6.2.4
WM: KWin (X11)
WM Theme: Breeze
Theme: Breeze (Dark) [Qt], Breeze-Dark [GTK2], Breeze [GTK3]
Icons: breeze-dark [Qt], breeze-dark [GTK2/3/4]
Font: Noto Sans (10pt) [Qt], Noto Sans (10pt) [GTK2/3/4]
Cursor: breeze (24px)
Terminal: konsole 24.8.3
CPU: Intel(R) Xeon(R) E5-1660 v3 (16) @ 3.50 GHz
GPU: NVIDIA Quadro K2200 [Discrete]
Memory: 5.03 GiB / 62.72 GiB (8%)
Swap: 10.39 MiB / 4.00 GiB (0%)
Disk (/): 48.19 GiB / 467.40 GiB (10%) - ext4
Local IP (wlan0): 192.168.0.86/24
Locale: en_US.UTF-8

- Is direwolf running on the bare metal hardware, in a VM, in a container?

A. It's running bare metal on my desktop.

Thank you David. I find it strange mainly because I have successfully connected at least once to a winlink node and sent (and received) email, but pretty much that was it. I think I have limited it down to two things:
1. Audio settings on the desktop
2. radio/cable quality. Radio is very crappy. It is however 25 watts and I have a decent antenna up on the
peak of my roof and I am in a very relatively non-mountainous area (central Arizona, near-ish to phoenix)
and my home brew cables do not have Ferrite chokes.

For 1:

I will attempt to use the alsa device names of the digirig and out cable

For 2:

Should I look into getting a radio with a superheterodyne receiver? Would that help with RX quality possibly?
I got a pretty good check and am considering what to order. I would really like to get a yeasu, preferably dual
band but VHF only would also be fine for me. What yaesu would you reccommend that can be found used
and prefferrably has prefabbed digirig cables? hopefully under $500 as well :) (and I'm not opposed to used of course)

Also, I am very bad at writing and formatting these things so I apologize in advance for that.
Thank you. I will make sure to set the TXDELAY to a lesser value and of course try the alsa device name instead.
Then I will follow up with another email. :)

And I will compile 1.8 and see if that works better also. Thanks

KK7WXH

开云体育

Hello Jeff,

There is the very basic file at and there is a per commit overview at

--David
KI6ZHD

开云体育

Hello Maxwell,

Dire Wolf version 1.7

I would recommend to try Direwolf 1.8 from the develop branch.? It's basically complete at this point and has lots of improvements since the v1.7 version that was released on Oct 28, 2023.

ptt/input soundcard: digirig mobile
pipewire-pulse is my audio "server"
I'm using pavucontrol to monitor input audio levels

Once again, it is decoding on aprs and some messages from the PBBS servers, but not maintaining
Connections.

In the connected packet world, it's very common to be able to create initial connections but have the connection quickly fall apart after that.? That's because the initial connection packets are very short but after that, all the follow-on packets are much larger and thus more susceptible to corruption.? This is a classic example of mistuned audio levels.

A lot more details are needed here before anyone on the list can help you here:

?? - How sure are you that your RX and TX audio levels are properly tuned?? Did you follow any specific guides on this tuning?? If so, please provide the URLs

?? - How far away are these other packet stations you are trying to connect to?

?? - Can you send us the Direwolf packet logs from your side of a connection that made a connection but and then broke?? Ideally, please send us the logs from the other remote side as well as.

?? - Per your last email, I see you're running a "(qyt kt8900d) (cheap radio)".? I'm not familiar with that specific radio but I do know that most inexpensive Chinese radios using embedded SDR technology work ok for voice communications but don't work very well for packet due several different criteria.? Can you try testing with a quality mobile radio?? I ask because this is a very common issue with cheap Chinese HT radios and when the user moved to a quality HT, their issues went away.

?? - I see you're running Linux Arch with a 6.12.x kernel but what about the other hardware / software details?

???? - Is this a mobile installation or something at home?
? ? ? - What radio are you using?
? ? ? - What power RF level?
? ? ? - What antenna are you using?
? ? ? - Where and how is the antenna mounted?
? ? ? - what kind of coax are you using and how long is it?
? ? ? - what computer hardware are you using?
? ? ? - Is direwolf running on the bare metal hardware, in a VM, in a container?

Also, attached is my direwolf config:

# direwolf.conf of KK7WXH

CHANNEL 0
MYCALL KK7WXH
MODEM 1200
AGWPORT 8000
KISSPORT 8001
IGTXLIMIT 6 10
ADEVICE pipewire pipewire # using audio devices set in pavucontrol (digirig for mic)

DR> instead of using "pipewire" and all of it's complexities especially with setting the mixer levels, consider trying using a ALSA device instead.


TXDELAY 100 # my radio is slow to tx (qyt kt8900d) (cheap radio)

DR> A "TXDELAY" setting of 100 (that's 1000ms) is definitely too long.  For most of these Chinese made SDR-based radios, I would recommend to start with a setting of "20" or "25" and then work your way down but I doubt you will be able to get lower than "18" (aka 180ms).  I also recommend setting "TXTAIL 10" and see if that is needed for your setup or not.  All of these settings are detailed in the Direwolf User Guide:

   #Section 9.4.5
   

--David
KI6ZHD

开云体育

Hi Max

Not really a direct help to your issue, but I had a strange problem IPV4 vs IPV6 with paracon/direwolf and ended up changing to QtTermTCP for further experiments.. It also talks AGW to direwolf.

Cheers Bob VK2YQA

开云体育

Hi All,

On my second Direwolf installation.? Previous was in a tracker. Loved it.?? This time I'm working on an iGate to potentially be used in APRS tactical messaging applications.? In my use case, some traffic will be by radio and some via server.

I'm hoping to take advantage of the decoded traffic logs, but I'm finding in my searches that at least as recently as 2020, iGate traffic isn't logged, only RF traffic.? I have LOGDIR set and an RF channel configured with IGTXVIA (which just isn't hooked up at the moment), but it's not logging anything, leading me to believe that RF traffic logging is only for received RF traffic (as opposed to transmitted traffic as well).

Have there been any developments on this front since then? Logging screen output to a logfile would require me to decode the packets, and I'd rather not reinvent the wheel.? Unfortunately, I can't seem to find mention of the RF only logging in what Github currently has for the user guide (section 9.5) - V1.7 10/2023.? I might also add that the file format description reported to be "later in this section" is also absent in that document.

Did I miss a more recent version somewhere?

If there still isn't an option to have Direwolf log iGate traffic, may I request that addition to the feature list please? And if that's the case, does anyone have recommendations on an expedient way to get to decoded iGate packets?? I thought I saw a library somewhere.? Might have to go find that again.

Also, not sure that it's relevant to the question, but currently my setup is running in a Debian 12 VM in Virtual Box (under Win11).? I don't have it hooked to a radio for RF functionality currently, but the iGate is configured with some source filters and it's humming away with the packets I want to see.? That won't be my final setup, but it's handy for testing and development.

Any help appreciated.

73, Steve KF8KI

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Hey Thomas,

If you tell the kernel to ignore the CM108 as a human input device (HID), is Direwolf still able to use the CM108 GPIO pins for PTT ?
It's okay if you don't know, I can try it here when I have some spare time.

I know what you're asking and the best I can tell, this change shouldn't impact the HIDRAW functionality.? This change specifically impacts just the INPUT GPIO going through the libinput libraries and should leave sound and output GPIO alone.? I ultimately cannot test as I don't have one of these boards so that's why I left my email a little open ended but I'm sure this is at least on the right track.

--David
KI6ZHD

Hi Greg,

I believe the practice of using Volume Up/Down inputs on soundcard interfaces started with Allstar looking for a way to detect CTCSS and CoS signals from the radio.

I wouldn't call it either a software or a hardware defect, it is a "hack" in the meaning of re-purposing an existing feature for something else entirely. It works well when done properly but it can have unintended consequences.

73,
Thomas
KK6FPP

开云体育

Personally, I hate applying a software fix to a hardware problem, or vice versa.? Does anyone know why they would connect the Volume Down pin to something associated with Squelch in the fist place?? I must be missing something about the use case...

Greg? KO6TH

Hi David,

If you tell the kernel to ignore the CM108 as a human input device (HID), is Direwolf still able to use the CM108 GPIO pins for PTT ?

It's okay if you don't know, I can try it here when I have some spare time.

Thanks
Thomas
KK6FPP