Allow others to access your radio via SmartLink

K1SZO

I was just reading the SmartLink Quick Start Guide and was wondering if you would be able to allow other people access to your Flex 6xxx radio via SmartLink without handing over your SmartLink logon?

The reason I ask is my intention was to put the radio at the ham club's shack and allow our members to use the radio.  Provide their SmartLink account rights to connect / use the radio.  

I would be a bit concerned about giving my credentials out to someone else.  Especially if my SmartSDR / radio license is attached to it.

Ria

No, not yet. It would be a nice feature to have and I believe that Flex talked about such a feature being available in the future.

What I would do and what we did for Dayton was log into a common account. So if you share a radio with friends, just give them access to that account. You can do that for the club radio. Log in to a club account and it will work that way.

Ria

K1SZO

Thank you Ria!

David Decoons, wo2x

You can create two SmartLink accounts. One for personal and one for club. Just remember in order to register the radio to an account you need to provide a local PTT or Local CW key closure at the radio.

What some of us have done for remote base operation is use a couple of relays that can be controlled over the Internet. One connected to the rear PTT port and one to the Remote On port.

Enable Remote On in SmartSDR and you can toggle the radio on and off. As long as the Remote On Relay is closed the radio will be on.

The Relay to the PTT jack is so you can register and deregister the radio from SmartLink remotely. Dave wo2x

Jim Gilliam

You can also use a VPN network. It should be similar to connecting to the LAN which will not have the smartlink restriction according to what I have read.

Jim, K6QE

David Decoons, wo2x

The one security issue with sharing the VPN with others is you open the network to acces by others. Dave wo2x

AA0KM

Would the (local operator) be able to see what the remote person is doing as far as freq.mode,power etc?

While in remote operation will the (local) person be able to key the mic-keyer etc etc and join in also?

I guess dual login would have to happen which isn't there yet?

NX6D Dave

I've been encouraging FRS to give us some simple account maintenance tools.  When you consider how little information is in an "account", a means to delete the account would be enough.  I currently have two accounts and would like very much to delete one of them for password maintenance reasons.

NX6D Dave

No, when the radio is operated remotely, you sit and watch the blinking lights and wonder what is happening.  During the process of debugging this feature, I sat and watched lights one day.  It was fascinating, and spooky.

You probably need some station automation features to make this work, at least if you work in multiple bands.  The USB cables feature is a station automation feature and it's certain that more will be coming.  I use a USB cable to operate an antenna switch, so I can go from band to band and switch to a suitable antenna.  When I first built this system, I thought I was just being lazy.  I could switch antennas by hand, so why go to all of this trouble.  Now I know the reason.

David Decoons, wo2x

No. You can only connect one client at a time in v2.0. The radio audio is routed to either the remote client or local radio speakers but not both. Dave wo2x

AA0KM

Thanks I was  wondering what I might see locally in remote operations and what I would be able to do.

David Decoons, wo2x

You will see your radio in the radio chooser along with the public IP of the remote connected client. You will be able to force disconnect the remote user but they will also be able to force disconnect you. Best to have a good agreement on how you are going to share the radio. (Scheduled operating times). Dave wo2x

Ria

You can see some things.

If you open up DDUtil or a similar utility you can see what frequency they are on. You can also set up a CAT port to display the frequency on DX Lab Suite commander or some other software.

The remote user can also set up a DAX channel and you can hear what they are hearing.

You won't see the panadapter or waterfall, however. 

David Decoons, wo2x

DAX will only work if it is on a PC on the local LAN. Remote DAX via SmartLink is not in the 2.0 release. Dave wo2x

Ria

Correct. This is for monitoring what your remote users do. 

Gerry Jurrens

Dave, has anyone worked out a "foolproof" way to remotely disconnect my antenna?

AA0KM

Thanks for more interesting information. Just was wondering how much local monitoring the remote-user you could do. Sounds like some ways around it things.

AA0KM

Thanks for more interesting information. Just was wondering how much local monitoring the remote-user you could do. Sounds like some ways around it things.

Eric-KE5DTO

Until there are more tools available, you can use the "I forgot my password" link on the SmartLink login page to force the pw to change if that is your concern.

K1UO Larry

Do you mean something like this Gerry?..
http://www.vibroplex.com/contents/en-us/d9157.html