Touch Portal

Joe N3HEE

Anyone using Touch Portal to control your radio and computer ?  I will be playing with one soon.

https://www.touch-portal.com/

Ted VE3TRQ

Interesting cross-platform tool. Might just be useful if I ever allow my Mac to fully control my 6600M. For now, I find the remote control capability of SSDR iOS fills the need.

Joe N3HEE

I spent an hour or so with Touch Portal last night.  I must say it is very good !  Easy to configure and work with.  I bought the full version for $8.99.  That was a one time cost !  Stream Deck is a monthly fee of $2.99 or $25 per year.

Touch Portal can do many of the same things as Stream Deck and has some features that Stream Deck does not offer.  However it is missing some plugins that I found useful in Stream Deck including FRStack REST plugin of course.  They are in the early development stages of Touch Portal and are quickly adding user requested features.  I have contacted the developer for information on SDK or API posibillities.

The nice thing about Touch Portal is that I can re-purpose my 10 year old iPad into a dedicated touch controller.  It will allow as many buttons on a page as you like.  I have 35 buttons on my main page.  I was able to control many Flex radio features using hot keys via FRStack.  It features button logic which allows you to create multi press buttons which is really nice.

Here is look at a my simple main page buttons.  Color coded buttons.  Orange for folders, green for radio control and blue for computer control.  There are also many icons to choose from when I get the time to make this look pretty.

Ted VE3TRQ

I’ve got the perfect old iPad for this, BUT the darn thing is too old - won’t run the version of iOS needed for Touch Portal :-( Progress!

Joe N3HEE

WOW !!  I thought my iPad was old !  Mine is on iOS 10.x  Do you have an old Android device laying around

Ted VE3TRQ

Nope, no old Android devices (well, not totally true, I do have an old Android BlackBerry). My “old” iPad won’t run anything beyond iOS 5 :-( It’s a Gen 1. I suppose I might just try the old DTek 60 BB, but it’s screen is too small to be useful. I don’t really want to use my current iPad because I tend to use it to run SSDR when it’s talking to / controlling the Flex.

Joe N3HEE

You can buy a nice new 10 inch Android tablet for well under $100.  That's probably big enough support 50 buttons on a single page !

Joe N3HEE

I made more progress with my Touch Portal integration last night.  I am now able to control radio functions using FRStack REST API via PowerShell scripts as well as using hot keys. I can now recall memories and global profiles.  I can start and stop memory scans and other functions with a single toggle button.  Button icons also change depending on what state the button is in.  I'm finding much of the same functionality as Stream Deck.

I find that I can have 50 buttons of reasonable size on a single page with a 10 inch iPad !  This is great for keeping your most used buttons on a single page. This to be a big advantage over Stream Deck's 15 button per page limit on their iOS app.  I'm sure they will change that limitation soon ?

Next steps are to work on color schemes and button designs to make things easy to find and navigate.  That's one of the challenges with 50 buttons on a single page !

Once I'm done I will export and post my Touch Portal profile as a template for others to use.

I spoke with Touch Portal developers yesterday and they plan to release a software development kit soon so that others can develop plugins for Touch Portal.  I was surprised at how quickly they responded.  I told them what I was using Touch Portal for and they seemed interested.  They are listening closely to their users and taking quick action ! 




I call this my Tetris theme !

Joe N3HEE

More work on Touch Portal pages and icons.  I now have 48 buttons available on the main page.  This is about right.  Got all the N1MM and Shack controls working yesterday.  


Main Page - 48 Buttons


N1MM Page - 35 Buttons


Shack Page - 35 Buttons

Joe N3HEE

Worked on adding some icons to the buttons today.  Looking better now.  There are now 70 spaces for buttons on the main page.  This is about ideal for a 10 inch device. The folders on the first row lead to other pages and functions.  Everything else is directly accessed on the first screen with one button press.  There are multi press buttons for WWV (2.5Mhz & 10Mhz), Mode (LSB/USB), Mem Scan (Start & Stop).  

Joe N3HEE

I tested my N1MM touch controller during ARRL SS CW contest this past weekend.  It worked great and was nice to have one button access to needed Q's and Mults as well as returning to my run frequency with a touch of a single button. 

bob2020rs

[{"insert":"Hello All, I am relatively new to Flexradio, and Touch Portal. Just today, I downloaded Touch Portal, and made a few simple pages. I received my FlexRadio 6400 mid February. So all of this is new to me. I am hoping to get a Touch Portal template for the Flexradio 6400, from anyone willing to share. For me, it's kinda overwhelming at this point in the learning curve. Thank you and take care.\n73,\nBob KB8BYW\n"}]

bob2020rs

[{"insert":"Hello All, I am relatively new to Flexradio, and Touch Portal. Just today, I downloaded Touch Portal, and made a few simple pages. I received my FlexRadio 6400 mid February. So all of this is new to me. I am hoping to get a Touch Portal template for the Flexradio 6400, from anyone willing to share. For me, it's kinda overwhelming at this point in the learning curve. Thank you and take care.\n73,\nBob KB8BYW\n"}]

bob2020rs

[{"insert":"Hello All, I am relatively new to Flexradio, and Touch Portal. Just today, I downloaded Touch Portal, and made a few simple pages. I received my FlexRadio 6400 mid February. So all of this is new to me. I am hoping to get a Touch Portal template for the Flexradio 6400, from anyone willing to share. For me, it's kinda overwhelming at this point in the learning curve. Thank you and take care.\n73,\nBob KB8BYW\n"}]

bob2020rs

[{"insert":"Please forgive me for the three identical post. \n"}]

N9WA

Hi Joe! In an earlier post, you said you'd export and post your Touch Portal profile as a template for others to use. Is that offer still good? :smiley:

I've used Touch Portal to extend functionality of my PC for months, and would like to incorporate the shack into my flows.

Thank you!