SmartSDR Via Microsoft Azure

John Konrad

Ok I’m on a budget here guys and recently picked up a used 6300. I was able to set it up on my very old Windows 10 tablet but it keeps crashing. I mostly use linux for work and home but I also have a iPad Pro for work which works great but I’d like to use WSJT natively. After lots of messing around I’ve decided I need to just get a windows machine.... but I’m out of cash having bought the radio. So Microsoft has programs for students and developers. They are giving me a lighting fast Azure Windows 10 server. I installed SmartSDR 3.1.12 and set it up to connect to my radio via Smartlink and I can Remote Desktop Connect into the azure server to run programs. It was very fast and easy to set up and, so far, it works perfectly with just one minor exception: DAX seems to have deleted the Remote Desktop Audio driver (so I can’t hear anything) AND DAX is giving me errors. I tried calling flex yesterday but the voicemail asked me to open a ticket. So I tried doing that but smartlink, flexradio.com, this forum, the support desk all have different log-in systems and I can’t get the support ticketing system to reset my password. -K5HIP

Bill -VA3WTB

It is looking for the default audio device on the computer. are you saying that your audio device is no longer listed? in the computer

John Konrad

Correct. The default audio device (Remote Audio) is no longer listed.

Pat Hamp

Check under device manager and reinstall.

Pat

John Konrad

Prior to installing SmartSDR the “Remote Audio” speaker worked fine and was listed as an audio device in device manager but, after installing SmartSDR, it disappeared. 

I'm not sure how I reinstall something that completely disappeared from the device manager. I also can't just plug in a USB speaker or something because this is a virtual device.

ctate243

Im not all together certain a cloud based windows solution would be something that would be reasonable to expect flex to fully suppor..  particularly if said cloud based solution has its own implementation of audio drivers required to bridge that gap.  This may be more of an AZURE support issue.

John Konrad

I agree and I have no expectations of support just the lack of funding and general unwillingness to spend well over $500 and many hours of my time ordering and configuring a hardware machine when I can get the virtual machine free plus booted and configured in minutes. I can certainly understand why support would not want to touch this but I would think the community (and possibly the business side of flexradio) would be interested in a solution that doesn’t require purchasing more equipment.

ctate243

may be worth pinging Azure support.

Dale - AE6DS

Did you check that remote audio is enabled in the RDP client on your end? IIRC Azure doesn't create the cloud side audio device unless the client side exists. You may also run into problems if you are suspending the instance and then reconnecting.

John Konrad

That helped removed the red x from the speaker icon but it also removed all the DAX connections from sound options... and the "driver error" is still present when opening DAX.

Dale - AE6DS

Driver error meaning the pictured error message above from DAX, or an actual windows driver error? My suspicion is the drivers are fine, but that the order things start will matter. The RDP connection causes creation of the audio tunnel on the cloud side, so if DAX is running without a client RDP it sees the default audio go away and gets angry. Of course it's easy for me to have uninformed suspicions from a safe distance. Sound and graphics on cloud instances is tricky. It can interfere with the ability to do live migration so there are often a lot of complicated things happening behind the scenes.

John Konrad

Sounds about right.

Here is the most recent driver error message:

Dale - AE6DS

Maybe you are getting closer? 

On my system, even without the DAX application running I see four DAX devices in Device Manager (Audio, IO, MIC, and TX).

John Konrad

It's possible.

The DAX devices are showing up in my device manager but they are not showing up in my Sound Control Panel .

Dale - AE6DS

On the cloud end, are windows audio and endpoint services running (check with services.msc)? Sorry, we’re reaching the end of my Win10 cloud expertise.....