Maestro winkeyer 3 autospace - how to enable?

W3PH

Day 3 with my Maestro - so far mostly good.  I'm having trouble getting used to the built in Winkeyer - is there a menu for setting its options?  Autospace doesn't seem to be on and I'd like to enable that.  

John G3WGV

In fact there are a great many WinKey parameters, such as weight, dit/dah store enable/disable and trigger points, autospace, etc. To expose all of these parameters via the CW menu would require significant effort but the interface is entirely software driven, so Flex might want to add that to the wish list.

W3PH

Keyer settings (other than iambic a or b)  aren't available now?  Yikes. The marketing blurb says "Integrated Winkeyer 3" and I assumed there would be a Winkeyer settings menu.

I've resorted to using an external keyer for now, but that detracts from portability.  Seems odd to not have a Winkeyer option menu - I know that not everybody does CW anymore, but for some of us, that's all we do ;-)  I use an external keyer with SmartSDR & my 6500, but I thought the Maestro CW setup would be better.  Fingers crossed that this will get fixed at some point.  (Also the raspy sidetone is awful, but it looks like that will be fixed in an upcoming update).  

Having some serious buyer's remorse at this point, but since they're software issues hopefully they'll get fixed.  Very nearly put it back in the box after using it for an afternoon. 

km9r.mike

I did not purchase maestro and for now do not see a need to do so, however, I too would expect the full menu for the installed winkeyer 3.  It is funny, there are quite a few here ( not just cw ops ) who have expressed a very strong desire for capabilities w/o the old peripherals ( i.e. digital w/o external sound cards and cw w/o external keyers ) and a lot of very hard work has gone into that to make it happen. AFSK based digital signals produced by flex SS rigs via dax are among the cleanest on the bands as a result of this hard work. CWX works flawlessly. FRS has a very strong track record of addressing user needs / desires and your ask seems to be very reasonable. Access to winkey menu settings is possible in n1mm's config tab so precedence has been set. I suspect it is just a matter of time until maestro's software incorporates access to these settings as well. 

Not armchair quarterbacking , but I wonder if a purchase option to install winkey usb hardware into the Flex SS rig ( at initial purchase or retrofit ) would have been the easier route to take and would have avoided a lot of the hard work that went into developing/ implementing CWX. 

John G3WGV

As a 100% CW op I put a lot of effort into the WinKey interface in my homebrew logging program. The image gives an impression of the range of WinKey functions available. The ability to change the dit/dah trigger point is particularly useful - you'll see I quite like a fairly early trigger. The parameters on the far right are log interface rather than WinKey specific.



One can debate whether it is useful to expose parameters like weight and dit/dah ratio - indeed when I was working on the original design of WinKey with K1EL I argued that he should not include them as it encouraged poorly formed code. I think that the following additional parameters could usefully be exposed. It turns out not to be a particularly large list:

Store trigger point (slider)
Bug key
Ultimatic key
Dit/Dah store on/off
Auto space
6 dit word spacing

73, John, G3WGV

W3PH

Good list. I'd be happy with just auto-space. It could be added to the screen where you can turn iambic on/off.

Phil M0VSE

I would like to see some way of connecting to the Winkeyer via software. I have had less than a stellar experience with the Flex Winkeyer emulation with HRD/N1MM+ so would love to be able to connect to the 'proper' Winkeyer internal to the Maestro. I'm not sure if it is possible without knowing how the Winkeyer is physically connected but if it was then it would also be possible to use your favourite software to change any settings.

73 Phil 

John G3WGV

I suspect that would be impractical Phil. WK provides a serial port (nowadays via USB) to the controlling software. This serial port (or its internal equivalent) is used by the Maestro to expose the parameters we already have in the CW menu. Furthermore, there is no physical egress (USB or RS232) on the Maestro to which the WK interface could attach.

It's relatively straightforward to code support for the additional WK parameters and that is the correct approach. I'm sure Flex Radio will put it on the wish list if we ask nicely.

73, John, G3WGV

Eric-KE5DTO

Thanks for the feedback.  We definitely do intend to expose more of the Winkeyer functionality over time.  For tracking, this is in our system as #3292.

John G3WGV

Thanks Eric. Are us mere mortals able to see what's "in the system"?

Eric-KE5DTO

The issue tracking system isn't public if that's what you mean.  We will occasionally give a glimpse into what's coming down the pipe in terms of software releases, but we tend to keep our cards pretty close until release time for a number of reasons (ability to yank an under-performing feature/fix, competition, etc).

W3PH

Has anything come of this request (expose more Winkeyer functionality, at least autospace) in the Maestro?  Also, has the raspy sidetone problem been resolved?

Eric-KE5DTO

No change on either of these yet.