CW Skimmer on 3 bands...

k0eoo

After Ed helped me get CW skimmer going on my 6500 I had to see if I could get more than 1 band running...  Well I got 3 slices and 3 CW skimmer's going at the same time....  Too bad there wasn't more signals on the bands....  GREAT JOB FLEX, ED AND PETER....

John W9KXQ

Dennis, can you point me to Ed for some help on the CW skimmer?  I spent 1.5 hrs today trying to get it to work.

Thanks,
John
W9KXQ

k0eoo

Sure John, just follow the SDR-Bridge conversation that's the one after this on in the main conversation list.  Ed Russel W2RF wrote SDR-Bridge to interface CW Skimmer with the Flex-6000.  Let me know if you have any trouble getting to him....  Dennis, k0eoo

John W9KXQ

Dennis,
Thanks for the info, I will reach out to Dennis tomorrow.

John
W9KXQ

k0eoo

In my original post I forgot to thank Alex, VE3NEA, for the GREAT CW Skimmer software and working with Ed and Flex to interface them together....

Ed - W2RF

John,

I hear you are having startup problems. What are the symptoms?

73 Ed W2RF

John W9KXQ

Ed,
I followed (I think) the set up, but having never used CW Skimmer before (I heard lots of good reports on it) I was ready to try it, but in the end I gave up as I could not get it to display any information even though I think the bridge was set up correctly.  If you have a few minutes this AM, I can call you or you call me and maybe we can get it up and running?  618-664-0219

Thanks Ed.

John
W9KXQ

Ed - W2RF

Do you have team viewer? If not download it here: http://www.teamviewer.com/en/download/windows.aspx so I can login on your machine and take a look.

John W9KXQ

I do, I will get on that computer in about 5 minutes and send you a direct note.   Send me an email to this address:  W9KXQ@arrl.net.

John
W9KXQ

Tim - W4TME

John - you should never post private information on the Community.  All content is indexed by Google and will be in the Internet's great store house in the sky for ever.

John W9KXQ

Tim, thanks, I knew that, but it is a temp password, so figured I was safe.  I will wait for Ed to contact me directly.

John
W9KXQ

DK1EY

Hi folks,

I just set up the same thing on my Flex 6300. Now my question:

Does anyone of you manage to spot the slice A's stations to N1MM VFO A bandmap and the slice B's stations into VFO B bandmap?

VY 73
Tom
DK1EY

Ed - W2RF

Hi Tom,

That can be done only with SDR-Bridge and WriteLog. But it works great!

73 Ed W2RF

DK1EY

Hi Ed,

I was just wondering, because I found the N1MM+ tab on http://www.qrv.com/sdrbridge.html.



Is there any chance that N1MM(+) will be integrated in a future version of SDR-Bridge? It is just the missing connection to the second "VFO" in N1MM, everything else works perfect.

I just do not want to move to another logging programme, as N1MM is first choice here, and everything is aligned to interface with N1MM.

By the way: A great piece of software, I am very impressed. Where is the PayPal "Donate!" button?

VY 73
Tom
DK1EY

Ed - W2RF

Tom,

As with all CAT radios, the second VFO is on Slice B. You should be able to select that in SDR-Bridge instead of Slice A. Or you could run a second Panadapter on DAX IQ 2 with its own Skimmer, assigned to Slice B.

You say that the N1MM CAT interface is "perfect." However if you try WriteLog I think you will find many important features that are not possible with CAT radios. For example, it supports up to four "radios," one for each DAX IQ channel, and Skimmer clicks transfer not only the frequency, but the callsign to the logger.

I was initially hopeful that N1MM+ would offer an automation interface that would make CAT-free support possible. Since this turned out not to be the case, I have removed the N1MM+ tab on the latest build.

Thanks for trying the program and for the positive comments. Enjoy!

73 Ed W2RF

DK1EY

Dear Ed,

everything works as you described above:



The only problem is pushing the 2 slices skimmers data into two different bandmaps. DAX and the 2 VFOs works great, I think it is a point in the telnet/cluster setup. 

Dont get me wrong: skimmed spots from slice A appear on the skimmers bandmap. On the N1MM bandmap, where I route the skimmed stations to, at the moment it is only possible to get data from one cluster (which is in fact my skimmer VFO A output). The same works with VFO B but I have to decide either to spot the VFO A stations or the VFO B stations. That is the only critical point in my workflow.

I will investigate further and publish my findings here but if you have an idea how to get it working, I would be very thankful for it.

Have a good day and hpe cuagn!

VY 73
Tom
DK1EY

Ed - W2RF

Tom,

You may need to aggregate the spots from the two Skimmers before sending them to N1MM. For that purpose I use WinTelnetX, available here:http://www.k1ttt.net/software.html#wintelnetx

Hope this helps,

73 Ed W2RF

DK1EY

Ed,

My idea (which is not proven yet): In SDR-Bridge there are ports assigned to the slices (VFOs). At the moment I cannot setup those ports in SDR-Bridge as I want to. E.g. Slice/VFO A has the port number 7310, Slice/VFO B has the port numer 7320. If I could setup the telnet port as I need to, the problem could be solved, because I could forward both slices spots into both bandmaps in N1MM (and filter for the desired bands in each bandmap).

VY 73
Tom
DK1EY

Ed - W2RF

Tom,

For frequency synchronization to work, the Skimmers need to be assigned to different ports. In our example that would be 7310 and 7320.

Some loggers are able to connect with multiple ports, and so could connect to both 7310 and 7320. I think N1MM+ can do that.

For loggers that don't, the only solution is to aggregate. That means to use a program like WinTelnetX that allows multiple inputs, and consolidates them to a single output port. So it would pick up 7310 and 7320 as inputs, and combine (aggregate) them. Then that combined stream is sent to an output port, for example 23. Finally port 23 is assigned in the logger as an input port.

Let me know if you have questions about how to set this up.

73 Ed W2RF

DK1EY

I just played around a bit with WinTelnetX, but cannot manage to afford exactly what you described. Connecting port 7310 and 7320 to route them to port 23.

Could you give me a short hint how to do this?

Many thanks for your help.

73
Tom 
DK1EY

Ed - W2RF

I will be posting a simplified WinTelnetX INI file soon.

DK1EY

Great! I am looking forward to testing it!

Ed - W2RF

I've put a WinTelnetX ini file on the QRV Systems web site especially set up to handle the two Skimmer problem. It is called wintelnetx_2iq.ini

You can download it at http://www.qrv.com/download/wintelnetx_2iq.ini

This ini file maps (aggregates) ports 7310 and 7320 to port 23. To get it started click the "connect" icon (first one on status bar of each window) for the port 23 window and connect the logger to localhost:23.
Next start the two Skimmers and click "connect" on the window for each port. Spots from either Skimmer should appear in the logger bandmap.

This worked for me but I've used the program a lot. You may need to learn a bit or fiddle around with the program to get it working, but this should do it!

73 Ed W2RF

DK1EY

Ed,

you made my day!

Everything works just fine now and shortly I will upload a setup guide, how to integrate all this stuff to configure an outstanding contest-machine.

Kind regards and deep thankfulness. Chapeau!

Tom
DK1EY

DK1EY

As promised: HOW-TO: Setup FLEX-6X00 with N1MM / CW Skimmer for multiple slice contest operating

AH0U

If you found an answer to this, can you pass it along
TNX AH0U