[Elecraft] K3 suggestion

[Phil Hystad]

I am thinking that the main reasons for wanting Ethernet over Serial has more to do with some technical issues rather than actual usage difference issues.  Some of those technical issues that I can think of are:

1.  Serial interfaces, especially those that depend on Serial to USB come in all kinds of differences.  The Elecraft crowd probably uses mostly FTDI or Prolific Interfaces but each needs drivers and these drivers often need to be updated when new operating system software is installed (not always though).  With Ethernet, the interface is much better universally supported by the operating system (out of the box).  Indeed, it has been a decade or more since I had to install Ethernet or TCP/IP software stack separate from the operating system.

2.  Personally, I think TCP|UDP/IP type connections are easier to program and software (socket APIs) are almost always supported for a large variety of programming languages.

3.  With Ethernet, the individual devices are addressable in a manner that I believe is much nicer than serial port addressing.  But, this does introduce a new problem of assigning IP addresses to a range of devices (e.g. 10.x.y.z).  I have worked with other types of real-time data acquisition devices that have IP addresses which are normally sequentially assigned to a fixed sequence or with most Elecraft equipment you could have a menu feature for setting the IP.  Or, DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) could be used for IP addresses to be assigned by the host computer.  This is a detail that might be the most troubling but there are solutions.

4.  With Ethernet, the Elecraft rig could act as a client who initiates a request as well as a server that responds to an unsolicited request from the host computer.  This would allow much more powerful methods for interfacing data.

5.  There are some interesting things that can be done such as remote computing (made easier) and a few other things.  For example, how about a web application that interfaces to your K3 or other Elecraft equipment using AJAX or the new Websockets (NOTE: yes, this requires that the Elecraft equipment does more than just implement a TCP/IP stack, they must implement an HTTP server as well but this can be done).

Just my two-bits.

73, phil, K7PEH



On Jan 5, 2013, at 6:05 PM, David Moes <dmoes at nexicom.net> wrote:

> Im just wondering    what would the advantage be to using ethernet over serial other than perhaps for remote operation.   for me this would be an nice feature.
> 
> I did here a comment today while scanning the bands a wish for an XYL roofing filter.  (-:
> 
> 
> On 1/5/2013 1:38 PM, Dr. William J. Schmidt, II wrote:
>> My wish is for an Ethernet connection.  I'm actually working on a retrofit
>> to my radio right now using an embedded solution, but it could easily be
>> build into the I/O board.  I'll share it when I'm done.
>> 
>> 
>> Dr. William J. Schmidt - K9HZ / J68HZ/ 8P6HK/ ZF2HZ/ J68HZ
>> 
>> Owner - Operator
>> Big Signal Ranch
>> Staunton, Illinois
>> 
>> email:  bill at wjschmidt.com
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
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