[Elecraft] Serial to Ethernet - TCP/IP connections

[Steve Jackson]

Ken

A variety of inexpensive (3rd party) devices are on the market to do exactly
as you propose.

One source is NetBurner:

http://www.netburner.com/products.html

Digi also sells top grade products.

(I am only a customer of these firms.)

My personal experience trying to lobby multiple well-known and popular
'premium' ham application developers, whose products I have purchased, to
support even basic existing Elecraft rig functionality, via well-documented
serial port command syntax, was ... discouraging.

I see the world from their point of view as well.  Hams have a wide variety
of skill levels these days.  You or I might be able to adopt IP addressable
rig functionality with ease but others might find it most challenging.  The
"help line" costs of a technology shift like this might be higher than the
product's revenues could support.

I might suggest (as I have here in the past) that instead Elecraft offer an
I/O module upgrade that uses Bluetooth.  This interface could support
well-established wireless audio and serial port profiles.  There'd be no new
wires - hooray! - hence, no RFI or grounding issues, and modern computer
operating systems already support these interfaces, making them readily
accessible to programmers.

What a terrific treat it would be for me to use a wireless digital-audio
headset like this one:

http://www.blueparrott.com/products/blueparrottb250XT.html

while that same wireless interface supported a Bluetooth mouse for my P3 and
a Bluetooth serial port for my computer.  As a plus, the K3 cabinet would
not need to have another connector on it, so, I could even keep my existing
RS-232 port!

73 Steve KZ1X/4
K1, K2, K3, etc.
Celebrating my 11th year of daily Elecraft reflector lurking