[Elecraft] K3 Remote VFO tuning control

[Iain Kelly]

All,

Further to my email below I've now written a page on my website and have 
included a zip file with the script for people to have a look at. No 
warranty or guarantee can be offered for the use of the software, nor 
any responsibility for anything going wrong. I've not thoroughly tested 
the script, though I've not had any problems on my system.

I'd be interested in comments on the functionality and usefulness of it.

73, Iain M0PCB

On 08/01/2013 17:21, Iain Kelly wrote:
> All,
>
> I only caught this thread partway through, and the recent Digest 
> emails have been quite lengthy so I don't even know who was asking 
> originally. However I do have my own solution to this problem.
>
> I originally wanted something to be able to fire off the DVR without 
> using a contest logger, currently Win-Test and the LUA scripts 
> available. Sadly for the local RSGB VHF contests I use another program 
> that doesn't have rig control. I found a program called K-Keys by KE3C 
> which allows up to 10 macros to be defined and assigned to keyboard 
> short-cuts.
>
> I then found KTune by G4ILO and that got me thinking about an 
> off-board controller for tuning and custom macros. I came across the 
> ShuttlePROv2 which is a video-editing tool and has a jog wheel, 
> fast-fwd and rev control and a number of buttons. These actions can 
> all be assigned to keystrokes in the driver application. However, I 
> found that although KTune worked well with this, K-Keys wasn't able to 
> pick up the keystrokes.
>
> The ShuttlePRO is definitely generating the correct keys, so I had a 
> problem after having spent £70 on the controller. A friend of mine 
> suggested I ought to write something myself using AutoIt - a windows 
> scripting tool. Based on an example file and a DLL someone had written 
> for it I managed to cobble together an application that sits in the 
> background and controls the K3 nicely through LP_Bridge.
>
> I've implemented most of the macros I want to do, mode switching, amp 
> control and message memories as well as variable rate tuning and jog 
> wheel for VFO A and stepped tuning of VFOB and automatic 2kHz CW 
> split. I am planning on making the SSB mode change smart by reading 
> the frequency from the rig and setting LSB and USB depending on the 
> answer. I also want to make the 'split' intelligent for CW and SSB as 
> well. I'm also thinking about adding in a GUI to configure the macros 
> and com port settings, but I'm not able to promise I can do that any 
> time soon as the program is working for me as it stands.
>
> I'm not a software engineer, the settings etc are all hard coded, but 
> I was able to generate an executable that I have in my start-up 
> folder. I only wrote it on Sunday 6th Jan so it's not finished but 
> certainly working in I guess an alpha test.
>
> If anyone would like a look at the script I can send it to them, I've 
> not had chance to get it onto my website yet (www.m0pcb.co.uk) but 
> hoping to do that today. I am not really willing to release it as a 
> working program yet as it's very much a prototype at the moment.
>
> If anyone is interested it might be best to talk off-line as I often 
> don't get chance to read through the daily digest emails in much 
> detail and I may miss things.
>
> 73, Iain M0PCB
>
>