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Simone Marzona edited this page May 9, 2017 · 21 revisions

Rig Remote User Manual

Table of contents

  1. Running Rig Remote
  2. A Brief Tour of Rig Remote's Display
    1. Rig Control options
    2. Bookmarks Panel
    3. Scanning Control
    4. Bookmarks import and export
  3. Configuration file
  4. Config_checker.py

This wiki page is what we have so far as a user manual for Rig Remote. The UI is pretty intuitive and the tool in general is simple. As the time of writing the snippets of code are correct, but this may slightly differ in the future.

Running Rig Remote

If you are using Rig Remote from the git repository, Rig Remote is launched from the console with :

python ./rig-remote.py

If you installed the EGG with:

easy_install rig_remote-2.0-py2.7.egg

Then Rig Remote is launched from the console with :

python /usr/local/bin/rig-remote.py

All the valid options are available requesting the help message :

python ./rig-remote.py --help

usage: rig-remote.py [-h] [--file ALTERNATE_CONFIG_FILE] [--verbose]

Remote application that interacts with the rig using rigctl protocol. Gqrx
partially implements rigctl since version 2.3

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --file ALTERNATE_CONFIG_FILE, -f ALTERNATE_CONFIG_FILE
                        Overrides the default config file.
  --verbose, -v         Increase log verbosity.

Please refer to: http://gqrx.dk/, http://gqrx.dk/doc/remote-control,
http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/hamlib/index.php?title=Documentation
Author: Simone Marzona <[email protected]>
Additional features :features: Tim Sweeney <[email protected]>
License: MIT License Copyright (c)
2015 Simone Marzona Copyright (c) 2016 Tim
Sweeney

A Brief Tour of Rig Remote's Display

Since release 3 rig-remote is able to connect two rigs. The UI has changed to accomodate this new feature. Some controls have been added and some of the previous controls has been moved to the menú bar. The rationale behind being able to control more than one rig from a single tool may seem not obvious/useful. The careful reader will see that this feature enables the user :

  • to scan and monitor (with autobookmark) a frequency range using one rig, while doing a more in dept analisys of a recently discovered frequency with the other rig
  • to scan a frequency range with two rigs splitting the range in two parts to save time (not yet supported)
  • to tune a full duplex comunication (basetower uplink and airplane downlink)

There are three main areas: Bookmarks panel (left), rig controls (top right) and scanning controls (low right).

While all the basic buttons that allows for the interaction with the rigs are duplicated, one set for each rig, all the scanning features apply to the first rig only.

Bookmarks panel.

A bookmark is a tuple of frequency, mode, and description. The mode and description can be empty. Bookmarks can be created, removed, recalled. The information that constitutes a bookmark can be entered manually or fetched from the rig (except for the description; that must always be manually entered). Bookmarks are saved as a csv file.

Rig Control options.

This set of options are located in the top right part of the UI, they are present in two sets reporting the same options.

  • Rig Configuration: This defines the tcp/ip address and port of the rig to control. This may be in either dotted-decimal format or a fully qualified domain name. The port number default is what gqrx uses, but may be any port number greater than 1024.

  • Rig Control (there may be more than one): The data entered here is used to create and delete bookmarks, which in turn can be used to control the rig you are connecting to. The frequency is expressed in Hertz, and it may contain commas to make things visually easier. Once a bookmark is added, the rig may be tuned to it by using the RECALL and the SET button. The removal of a bookmark is done selecting the bookmark and using the delete button on one of the rig-control areas. The current frequency and mode the rig is tuned to can be retrieved by clicking the GET button.

Scanning controls.

Remember that the scanning features apply only to the first rig.

  • Scanning Options: These are general options that define the behavior of Rig Remote while doing a scan. These options are used both while scanning bookmarks and frequency ranges.

Signal Level is the minimum strength of a signal needed in order for Rig Remote to detect it.

Delay is the amount of time Rig Remote stops once a signal has been detected, in seconds. Unless Wait has been checked, it will then resume scanning.

Passes specifies the number of loops over the bookmarks/defined frequency range. Entering 0 here will cause Rig Remote to continuously loop until you hit the STOP button.

Wait causes Rig Remote to wait indefinitely on an active signal until it is no longer detected. It then stays paused for the delay time specified above, and if no new signal is detected, it resumes scanning. This is available only in bookmark scanning.

Record causes the rig to record the audio from an active signal, if the hardware supports it.

Log causes all detected signals to be logged to a file, the name of which can be specified in the configuration file.

  • Frequency scanning starts a scan on the defined frequency range tuning one frequency every interval. Frequencies are in kilohertz, and may contain commas. If you select auto-bookmark, then one bookmark for each active frequency will be added once the scan has ended.

  • Bookmark scanning starts a scan with the frequencies listed in the bookmarks. A bookmark may be skipped by selecting it in the list and clicking the LOCK button. Bookmarks that are "locked out" will be highlighted in red. They may be unlocked by selecting and clicking LOCK again.

  • Options:

Save-on-exit will save all the current parameters to the configuration file. Bookmarks are always saved, regardless of this setting.

Always-on-top keeps the Rig Remote window above any others.

Bookmarks import and export..

Import and export functions are accessible through the bookmarks menú. Rig-remote supports only rig-remote and gqrx as file formats. While importing, Rig-remote will detect the format of the imported bookmark file. When exporting the bookmarks the user is asked to choose the output format.

Notes on entering data and parameter field.

Rig Remote is fairly strict about what you can put in an entry field. If you enter something that Rig Remote can't work with, it will display a pop-up message and return you to the field to continue editing it. Sometimes you may be offered the option of using a default value instead.

Configuration file.

Rig Remote defaults to creating a configuration file in your home directory, as .rig-remote/rig-remote.conf (in Linux). That can be changed with the command line option shown above. In it you will find all the parameters listed above, plus the option to change the default log file name, in the form of parameter=value. If you delete a configuration option, Rig Remote will use the default value. The configuration file has been updated and now it has all the options grouped in sections identified by "[section_name]" for an easy reading. Lines starting with '#' or ';' are parsed as comments.

Config_checker.

Config_checker has been added when I changed the configuration file syntax adding sections. I wrote this simple script for updating the configuration file and I added some other features that will become useful when submitting bug reports. The idea is that this tool will be used for managing all sort of upgrades that may happen in the future, and for directly submitting bug reports.

python ./config_checker.py --help
usage: config_checker.py [-h] [--check_config CHECK_CONFIG] [--dump]
                         [--update_config UPDATE_CONFIG]

Utility to check the configuration files and to update them to the last
version.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --check_config CHECK_CONFIG, -cc CHECK_CONFIG
                        Path of the config folder we want to check.
  --dump, -d            Dump some useful info for debugging.
  --update_config UPDATE_CONFIG, -uc UPDATE_CONFIG
                        Path of the folder we want to update.The config file
                        will be overwritten and a .back file will be created
                        too.

Config Checker is providing three main features:

  • update_config: this option updates the configuration file of rig-remote to the version supported. I decided not to provide any backwards compatibility while going to configuration changes into Rig-remote. This small utility will cover this use case both for the configuration file and the bookmark file. The updated configuration file will have the same filename and a .back file will be saved with the previous config file.
  • dump: this option will dump several informations related to the Python versions and OS/platform versions. The main use case for this is while filing bugs or issues that may be related to or impacted by the environment or the Operating System.
  • check_config: this option will do a set of very simple (so far) checks on the configuration file and on the bookmarks file.

This tool is going to be expanded a bit in the future, but so far this is it.

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