PowerShell Beginner - Use With SmartSDR and Its Menus

W4JBB

I've I have mis-posted, please redirect me to the correct category. :)

I am an absolute PS beginner. I have written a few scripts at work but they pretty much call a text file and ping IPs in that text file. I had to look at a lot of pages online to even figure out how to do that. All of that has been copied, modified, and used in my own code. I do the same with VBA in Excel.

With some reluctance, I have finally realized that, if I want to use VARA or other Windows-only programs, I'm going to have to use Windows (yes, I've tried CrossOver but macOS went all 64-bit a couple of versions ago and CrossOver kind of works but I cannot get VARA to work reliably and I don't want to bodge something together - I want it to just work). So, I use Win11 in a VM on my iMac. ;)

I have written scripts in Apple Scripts but it is completely different than PowerShell. Most of those Apple Scripts call other programs after SmartSDR for Mac is running (i.e. an instance of JS8Call and Fldigi or similar). While I can get Apple Scripts to open SmartSDR for Mac, I cannot make it connect but that's not the subject of this post.

Here's an example of what I'd like to do (I have a Flex 6400)...

1. Open SmartSDR and RMSExpress.
2. Start the VARA HF modem in RMSExpress.
3. Manually select and connect.
4. Once finished, have another PowerShell script shut down the VARA modem and RMSExpress.
5. Detect if SmartSDR is already running and start VarAC and JS8Call (I have this working [it's fairly simple] but it doesn't detect if SmartSDR is already running. This script is run after I shut down everything in 1 - 3 and then restart SmartSDR) or any other program(s) (I figure if I can get two running once, I can figure out how to get something different running).

I'm not asking anyone to do this for me; I just need pointed in the right direction.

This is what I've written so far:

Start-Process -FilePath "SmartSDR.exe" -WorkingDirectory "C:\Program Files\FlexRadio Systems\SmartSDR v3.4.21"

Start-Sleep -Seconds 3

Start-Process -FilePath "js8call.exe" -WorkingDirectory "C:\Program Files (x86)\js8call\bin"

Start-Sleep -Seconds 3

Start-Process -FilePath "VarAC.exe" -WorkingDirectory "C:\VarAC"

Thanks,

Joel - W4JBB