Hi,
Has anyone reliably set up the use of dual radio’s? I am using a Nooelec SDR dongle with SDR++ as a receiver and an IC-910 as the transmitter. BTW, the Gpredict & SDR++ combo is super cool for linear sats since you can see the whole pass band on the waterfall in SDR++, click on a conversation to snap to that frequency, and Gpredict will automatically doppler correct to track to that frequency you selected. This works flawlessly and is really, really awesome.
Now I am trying to add TX radio control to the mix, and really all I need/want it to do is doppler correct to of the same frequency I have already set manually with the dial, much like the downlink. I have set up and tested rigctld and can use Gpredict to control the IC-910 alone (to varying degrees of satisfaction, but at least the interface is proven to work) so I have connectivity with the software, although I might have a difference of opinion on some of the radio settings the software uses.
However, when I select the two radios, control of both/either becomes erratic and the application often locks up and crashes. I am using SDR as the device 1 RX and IC-910 as the device 2 uplink, and have different ports for the different devices to avoid conflicts there.
I am wondering if anyone has successfully gotten this dual rig arrangement to work and might have any tips.
Thanks,
Bill
Hi Bill,
I have a similar setup as you are describing.
And it works really reliably.
Did you already check the debugging messages?
73
Daniel, dl7ndr
Thanks for the tip - I’ll check the debug level and see if anything interesting gets reported
That really helped, in an indirect way. I’m not sure why I thought I needed the radio in full duplex sat mode, but selecting TX only really fixed the crashing problem. Now I’m still frustrated with the TX tuning. On the RX side, it works flawlessly, use the radio to select a frequency and gpredict will accept it as the new frequency and doppler correct. However, on the TX tide, this seemed to work well enough just tinkering with it, but as soon as the bird came in range, gpredict will not let me adjust the TX frequency with the radio dial anymore, it keeps snapping back to the frequency in gpredict. I’m not (or shouldn’t have) locked the two with the L button, so it should allow me to change the frequency with the dial, and then doppler correct off of that - right?
Welcome to the community Bill.
I’m not much help but i will be watching with interest how you make out. I currently run PstRotator and the IC-9700 but your method seems interesting.
Regards
Karl.
Hope I got you right.
Try this
AND locked the two with the L button.
Thanks dl7ndr, apparently that was the ticket. I would not have expected that result from the description of that feature, but it seems to be working. Made 3 contacts on AO-07 last night. It is still pretty finicky - I can do things in the wrong order and loose the gpredict control of one or more radios, and if the second radio is not durned on, the first won’t track - but heck, I can make notes and follow a process. So far this seems to be the ticket for rig automation. Now, to tidy it all up since it is pretty much a mess. Thanks for your help!
