[Elecraft] sharing K3 RS232 to CAT and Remoterig

[tomb18]

HiSince there has been some discussions about virtual ports and comport sharing I would like to describe the technical aspects of win4k3s comport sharing and what sets it apart from most sharing solutions. 
Win4k3 is not a comport splitter. The best way to describe it is that it provides multiple virtual radios to any number of applications or hardware devices. It does this by being exclusively in charge of polling of the radio, and maintaining the state of the radio so that any other application that needs this information obtains it from memory and not from physical access to the radio port. The polling cycle has been optimized so that changes are almost immediate, and the complete api of Elecraft commands are queried for and cached. 
If the application needs to write to the the radio, for example to change bands, it gets access almost instantly, by a locking mechanism that is part of win4k3. At that point the state of the radio changes and other applications have that new state. 
Another area where win4k3 is different is that there can never be a race condition where excessive commands pile up in the radio command buffer. The response to commands sent to the radio are always a 1 to 1 event. There are never multiple commands sent and the the responses waited for. A single command is sent and then a response is waited for. To date, there is not a single application that will in any way fail when connected to the virtual port facility in win4k3. You can run n1mm, nap3, wsjtx,  dxlab, and others simultaneously in full contest mode for days. 73 Tom 

 



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-------- Original message --------From: "M. George" <m.matthew.george at gmail.com> Date: 2017-11-14  7:25 PM  (GMT-05:00) To: Jorge Diez - CX6VM <cx6vm.jorge at gmail.com> Cc: Elecraft Reflector <elecraft at mailman.qth.net> Subject: Re: [Elecraft] sharing K3 RS232 to CAT and Remoterig 
​If you want to share the K3 CAT RS232 port and feed with other hardware,
the best way I have found is using Win4K3Suite.  Not only will Win4K3Suite
let you share the CAT feed of your K3 with multiple software applications
at the same time, but you can do it with physical serial connections too.
Win4K3Suite connects to your K3's direct CAT/RS232 port and then manages
the feed to other physical ports and or virtual RS232 port pairs for
software connections.

For example, I can have N1MM+, DXLab Commander and WSJT-X all sharing the
CAT feed, each program follows the other if you want them all running at
the same time... and beyond that I can setup another connection to my 2K-FA
amp.  In this example, all three software applications think they are
directly connected to the K3.  They all can poll the K3 data and they all
receive the output data.

The latest version of Win4K3Suite lets you setup up to 6 Aux/CAT ports for
this purpose.  They can be virtual com port pairs for software or direct
connections to physical serial ports for an amplifier, SDA100, auto antenna
tuner etc...  It works very well and is rock solid reliable in my
experience.

I have a YouTube video that shows this... around minute 18 of the top of my
head.  In the quick demo in that part of the video I should the 2K-FA
following the K3 along with a couple software apps, N1MM+ and DXLab
Commander, if memory serves me correct.  Jump to minute 18 a watch for a
few minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ku8Gyl0amRY

I'm assuming this is what you are looking for with your remote rig
connection to your K3.  You want the remote rig box to think it's directly
connected to the K3 at the same time other software and hardware think they
are directly connected.

Win4K3Suite provides the best way to handle this IMHO and I have tried a
number of solutions that will work too... LP-BRIDGE, Omni-Rig etc... but
the other fall short when it comes to a transparent share across software
and hardware.

Max NG7M​

On Tue, Nov 14, 2017 at 1:23 PM, Jorge Diez - CX6VM <cx6vm.jorge at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hello
>
> At my station, I have Elecraft K3, Bandmaster III, SixPack, CAT cable
> connected to K3´s RS232
>
> So when I change bands in the radio, antenna is selected automatically
> through CAT cable and band decoder (Bandmaster III)
>
> Today I connected remoterig box, so needed to remove CAT cable to connect
> remoterig.
>
> So now I lost the feature to change antennas automatically when I change
> bands on the K3
>
> How can I do to share RS232 to have CAT and remoterig at the same time?
>
> thanks,
> Jorge
> CX6VM/CW5W
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-- 
M. George
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