RRC Micro & K3

[vk4cmv]

Hi - I recently bought an RRC-Micro and RRC-1258MkIIs (for remote radio) and have been having limited success hooking this up to a K3.

Testing so far has been on the LAN behind a router - ie. the RRC-1258 is hooked up via an ethernet cable to the back of the router, as is a PC running Win 8.1 Pro 64 bit. I've also got a small notebook that connects wirelessly to the router.

Where necessary I've made cables to connect the K3 to the RRC-1258 - in addition to standard audio cables and an RS232 cable. All these cables have been scrutinised and tested many times so I don't think there are any issues there.

Anyway - in a nutshell, the problem is this:

• When I configure and run the PC-Client software, I receive the rig's audio perfectly - so perfectly that I can copy JT65 signals by connecting RRC-Micro to a virtual audio cable - perfect!
• When I try to open COM2 over the network using Omnirig, I get a brief burst of activity where the frequency of the rig is passed back to the Omnirig application over the open virtual comport - and then it endlessly polls the K3 for frequency and general information without receiving a reply

Back in the good old days of real COM ports, the symptoms would be diagnosed as buffer full or perhaps the flow-control has latched-on - but with these virtual comports, it's hard to say what is going on.

This is so, so close to working - it's very frustrating.

Just for fun, I've attached a screen shot that shows what happens when the comport gets opened - I turned the debug flag on in PC-Client and ran a tail on the debug logfile - you can see the point at which PC-Client stops getting replies. t=20:52:18

I've fiddled and fussed with the RRC-1258 web client settings, tried early versions of the PC Client - all without effect.
Sadly, I don't have an RRC-1258 I can use at the control end to test the link another way.

Any ideas?

regards, Julian VK4CMV

[roland]

You could add following test.

Open a Telnet connection to the RRC-1258MkII
and select D (Debug) and then 2 (Com2 Debug on/off ).
You will see "com2-debug = 1"

After that you will the serial data going to a from the radio.
TX = data from RRC-Micro via  RRC-1258MkII to Radio
RX = data from Radio via  RRC-1258MkII to RRC-Micro

That way you can see if the Radio really stops sending data
or if the PC-stops receving the data from  RRC-1258MkII

[vk4cmv]

Thanks Roland -

I did as you suggested and attach the screen shot of the DOS window with Debug of COM2 going.

As you can see, it ends abruptly with "SIP timeout, state = ERROR".

The audio continues on however, and the RRC Micro program looks like it hasn't lost communication with the remote side.

My estimate of this timeout is around 4 seconds.

So presumably the RRC Micro keeps a 'session' alive on the RRC-1258MkII after the initial SIP is successful? I wonder what conditions would terminate the session.

thanks & regards, Julian

[roland]

Thank Julian.
We will look into what can be causing this.

[vk4cmv]

Thanks Roland, much appreciated.

I can configure the RRC-1258mkII to give you access - all the port forwarding is set up on the router. Just let me know.

Regards, Julian

[roland]

Thanks Julian. Much appreciated.
Drop the settings in a PM or mail to roland@microbit.se

[Jan (Microbit)]

Julian,

We suspect this also could be the root of the problems you see(if your radio-RRC is on firmware version 2.85):

http://www.remoterig.com/forum/index.php?topic=3656.msg16766#msg16766

[vk4cmv]

Jan/Roland - 2.84 firmware fixed the issue - I can now tune my K3 remotely using HRD with RRC Micro running.

Thanks so much for the help.

Let me know if you'd like me to help test beta versions of the firmware beyond 2.85.

best regards, Julian


[ Oh - and this is just a tiny bug that you might want to fix in the RRC Micro program .... almost a maintenance task, not critical:

When RRC starts up, it touches some files in the MicrobitLogs directory - which on my PC is in the Documents directory. If this part of the directory tree is unavailable to RRC Micro, it will just sit and wait for it to become available and never starts up the application. It should probably exit with an error message if it can't open these files.

I only noticed this because my documents directory is on a bitlocker protected drive which I manually key in a password to after login, so it's unlikely that anyone else would have seen this behaviour ]

[Jan (Microbit)]

Jan/Roland - 2.84 firmware fixed the issue - I can now tune my K3 remotely using HRD with RRC Micro running.

Thanks so much for the help.

Let me know if you'd like me to help test beta versions of the firmware beyond 2.85.

best regards, Julian

Great! And thanks to you too for your support! 

I have attached a new firmware which hopefully should work with all configs:

RRC-control <-> RRC-radio
RRC-Micro <-> RRC-radio
RRC-Nano <-> RRC-radio

Note that if you are using the first config (RRC-control <-> RRC-radio) then both RRCs have to be upgraded.

[vk4cmv]

Yes - 2.86 beta  works fine for me - in RRC-Micro <-> RRC-radio mode

73 & well done for finding a fix so quickly

Julian