Macros for adjusting agc-t in remote ops (Comm Cat Mobile)

Marty

I am building macros for use with CommCat Mobile.  I would like control the agc-t from a macro. I have the macros from the psdr cat command manual ; but cannot get it to work. I would like to put both the start and stop macros on the same line with the : seperater; I have not been able to do this with any macros. I.e. Monitor on/off takes up 2 macros instead being on one line . I have created a CommCat Mobile profile with the agc-t set a fixed setting; but this varies from band to band. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I've worked with Howard (Comm Cat developer) on these problems without any success; he suggested that I try the Flex community.

pa0bie

Just to be sure , What do You use as seperator between macros on one line ? The : or the ; ?

I have made macros to use in DDutil with the ; as seperator.

No problems at all.

ZZFA00144300000;ZZMD01;ZZFI02; as a example.

BobT

Marty,

There is currently no CAT command in CAT for SmartSDR to control AGC-T.  What PA0BIE says is correct, each CAT command must be terminated with a semicolon.  No other character will work.

BobT

Marty

I guess I was not very clear on my request. I have been using the semicolon as a separator since the beginning with no success. Secondly, I am using PSDR not SmartSDR (can't afford a 6XXX just an old 5K , hi). 
Let's try this again:
I am trying to put 2 macro commands on the same command line separatored by the semi colon. This does not work for me. I can put the 2 commands into 2 different macros and it will work, so I know the macros are okay.
I have macros working for turning the monitor on/off, remote tuner on/off  but again they are in separate macros i.e. monitor on is in macro 10 and monitor off is in macro 11.
I have tried without any success to get them to work on the same line. I dont know if I have them in the right order or not (on/off or off/on); I have tried them both ways with no success.
I have talked to the developer of CommCat Mobile and send him the macros and he could not get them to work either. He is the one who suggested trying the community.
I would like to develop macros for adjusting the agc-t . volume and drive control. I have the command lines but like I've said, no workee.
At the present time, I have created a PSDR profile for CommCat Mobile which has the agc-t and other settings set at a pre-defined value. The problem there is switching from one band to another often requires adjustments. On a remote op, this is not possible..

I will be demoing CommCat and CommCat Mobile at Field Day for the local club and would like to resolve this issue.
Thanks for the help, I hope the above explanation clears things up. Frusration leads to poor writing and I'm good at that. hi

73
Marty
W8AKS

BobT

Does it work when you send a single CAT command via CommCat? 

Bob

BobT

I downloaded the trial copy of CommCAT and had no difficulty connecting it to my F5K.  All of the built-in commands in the Tuner work fine.  It appears there is no trial version of CommCAT Mobile (and I don't own an IPhone anyway) so I'm no help there.

I suspect the problem may be in the serial port setup or a firewall issue.  Can you describe how you are connected?  Which virtual serial port software, port assignments, etc.?

Bob

Marty

Hi Bob, It seems like we have a disconnect regarding what I am asking help on. I have CommCat and Comm Cat Mobile( apple app store -free) installed and running for over a year with numerous contacts. That is not the problem, the problem is getting 2 psdr macro commands to function on one line in one macro box vice two. I have some functions such as monitor on & off , antenna tuner on and off. The problem is for instance in monitor on, that line resides in macro box 10; while to turn monitor off, that line resides in macro box 11. Efforts to combine the 2 lines in one macro box have failed. They have been separated by the semi colon. The order in which they are put in the macro box have been reversed i.e. Mon on ; Mon off and just the opposite. This is not a big deal but when you only have 12 macro boxes to work with and 6 are tied to basic operations (call, exchange, tu and 73, it doesnt leave much room for other choices. One of the first questions I am going to get at the demo is "why do you take 2 macro boxes? Cant you combine them?" That is why I am trying to resolve this issue. Thanks for your help, i really do appreciate it. 73 Marty W8AKS

BobT

There is no disconnect, I've just been trying to gather data in order to figure out what is going on.

CAT for PowerSDR can (and does) accept any number of commands strung together with a semicolon terminator between commands.  That is precisely how data is buffered in the CAT code.  Incoming serial data is stored in one long string and each command is parsed out based on the terminator.  If the command is valid, a result is returned.  Otherwise, the "?" error message is returned.

DDUtil builds macros just like what you want to do and they function correctly.  Just to make sure that nothing has changed since I last used it, I connected DDUtil to my F5K and executed several canned macros, one of which contains 8 different CAT commands strung together.  Everything worked as advertised.

The question here is why command strings don't work from CommCAT.  CommCAT is responsible for parsing the commands and relaying them to the CAT serial port.  Since it seems to work correctly with one command per macro, we need to figure out what is different when two commands are strung together.

Does CommCAT have any sort of error reporting or logging facility?  Do you have a serial port monitor that will let you look at the communications between CAT and CommCAT?

Bob