Serial CAT support in SSDR for Mac

Eric Macauley · January 2021

Does anybody know if there are plans for the integrated CAT support in SSDR for Mac to support serial CAT in the future? Is it just using an integrated copy of xCAT (which also only supports CAT via TCP)?

I’d like to try to use Skookumlogger but it only supports CAT via serial, unlike rumlogNG which supports CAT via TCP. I reached out to the developer of Skookumlogger, but he seems reticent to support Flex either directly (via direct TCP connection to the radio server) or indirectly (by adding support for CAT via TCP) because of a grievance of Flex not supplying SSDR for Mac with the purchase of the radio.

I went down the path also of trying to configure a virtual serial port to TCP bridge using socat utility, but due to a limitation on how the underlying IOKit framework in macOS works, which is what many Mac apps use to find serial ports, including Skookumlogger , the virtual serial port created by socat will not appear in Skookumlogger as an option for CAT configuration.

Alan · January 2021

I am no expert on Com ports....but.....Try using Eterlogic.com's VSPE on the Windows side:

http://www.eterlogic.com/Products.VSPE.html

VSPE can set up an ISP client on the Windows computer. Use the ISP client to pick up the broadcast from MacSDR CAT. Then, again using VSPE make a virtual COM port within the PC connecting the output of the ISP client to your windows application needing a COM port.

Alan. WA9WUD

Eric Macauley · January 2021

There is no Windows PC in play here, trying to find a way to get Skookumlogger (Mac app) talking to the radio, completely in a Mac ecosystem.

K3DCW · January 2021

Two options here at present.

1) Try using RUMlogNG for your contesting. It is free and has a great contest mode that supports all of the major contests and many smaller ones. It also supports CAT via TCP and works with SmartSDR for Mac.

2) Check out this prior post about configuring serial port control using SOCAT. It requires the installation of a few tools, but it works. I didn't test it out with SkookumLogger but I did with Fldigi.

https://community.flexradio.com/discussion/8023286/serial-port-cat-control-with-smart-sdr-for-mac

Eric Macauley · January 2021

Thanks K3DCW, aware of rumlogNG and socat, but per my original post, socat solution does not work with Skookumlogger because of its reliance on IOKit framework in macOS for identifying serial ports.

Kevin WM4J · January 2021

Eric, I did reach out to Marcus about adding this functionality. We had a couple of email exchanges back on 9/30/20. He didn't say no but I don't think it was high on his priority list because it wasn't an often requested feature. Here is a diagram I put together to explain to Marcus what I was requesting.

It might help if you reach out to Marcus as well, if more people are requesting the feature it might raise it on his priority list. You can reference my email exchange (Kevin (WM4J) on 9/30/20).

In SmartSDR if you click "SmartSDR --> Preferences -->Information & Support" there is an option to "Contact Developer" which you can use to email Marcus directly. I have reached out to him multiple times with feature requests and bugs he has been very responsive.

Eric Macauley · January 2021

Good suggestion Kevin, I will reach out to Marcus as well.

Mark_WS7M · February 2021

Maybe a little off topic but I with CAT for Mac had a WinKeyer too

Serial CAT support in SSDR for Mac

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