How do I determine stations connected ?

Dale97 · December 2022

I have a Raspberry Pi on the same network as a Flex 6600. I want to use that to connect to the Flex radio and determine if any stations are connected and if so the station names. With SmartSDR, if "Multiflex" appears in the bottom line of the window I can hover on that and see the other station connected. I can also see my station name at the bottom of the SmartSDR window. I have looked over the SmartSDR TCP/IP commands and have not found any that read this information. How would I determine if any SmartSDR clients are connected to the radio, if so how many and the station names set?

KD0RC · December 2022

Hi Dale, I wrote a little test program for a Raspberry Pi that does exactly what you are looking for. When I can get back to my shack later today, I will dig that up and send you the code.

It is written in C# forms using the Visual Studio IDE. I originally tried to use FlexLib, but it doesn't work under Unix. This version uses the text-based (native) Flex API. It should be easily ported to any C-based language if you don't want to use C#.

KD0RC · December 2022

Hi Dale, Here is a Visual Studio C# forms program (Raspberry Paestro) that shows how to find a Flex, connect to it and bind to a connected GUI Client (like SmartSDR). It has very little functionality, but does show the stations that are connected and even lets you choose which one to bind to. Hopefully this will get you going.

Paestro.zip

I have this running on a Raspberry Pi 4, but I suspect a Pi 3 would work just as well.

Be sure to have the Pi ethernet connected to the same network segment as the radio.

Let me know how this works. If you have issues, post back here and I will do what I can to help.

Dale97 · December 2022

Thanks. I took a quick look a that, will dig deeper later on - at the moment I am trying to take advantage of dry weather to get a long wire up. This radio will eventually move to a mountain top repeater site. Right now we are just working to get it operating so we can create documentation and train some people. I have the Flex on a VLAN along with a Raspberry Pi 4. The Softether VNC server allows remote stations to connect at layer 2 so they see the Flex radio as if it was on their network - no need for the SmartSDR login credentials. I played a bit last night with netcat trying some of the SmartSDR TCP/IP API commands. I watched the Youtube video that Annaliese created which was helpful. I was hoping to stumble on a status/info command that would return the count of clients connected and their station names. I will dig through your code and see if I spot how this is done. Thanks & 73, Dale, K7FW

David Decoons, wo2x · December 2022

Also look at Node Red for Ham Radio group. There is a flow written for the Flex that shows you that and more. There are flows to control other peripherals as well (amps, tuners, rotors, AC, DC relays, antenna switches, wattmeters, etc).

Node Red server can run on a Pi and probably is best platform to run it on due to reliability of Pi OS and low power consumption

When you start planning a remote station, start giving thought to being able to control and monitor as much as possible and have contingency plan in place in case you lose control. Driving up to a repeater site may not be possible in some areas at parts of the year. My remote base requires snow mobile access at some times during the year.

Luckily the local station does not.

73

Dave wo2x

How do I determine stations connected ?

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