[K3PZN-List] raspberry pi club

[Peter Morton]

On Friday of the blizzard, I was playing with my Raspberry Pi and 
connected a Signal Link between it and my FT897.  (I normally use the 
FT897 as an FM base station on 6, 2 & 440.)  Raspian Jessie recognized 
the Signal Link USB sound device.  I loaded FLDIGI and it worked on 
receive quite well.  I set it up for MT63 on 145.410 and left everything 
on overnight.  Saturday morning I found the EOC MT63 overnight activity 
in the FLDIGI receive window.

After snow blowing for three days, I finally got back to the shack to 
play some more.  I began checking into what it would take to get CAT rig 
control from FLDIGI running on the Pi.  After investigating the rear 
connectors on the FT897 and looking for appropriate cables, I found, on 
eBay and Amazon, interface cables with a self-contained FTDI UART chip 
with TXD and RXD brought out at TTL levels to a mini-DIN connector that 
mates with the CAT connector of the FT897. [Search for a Yaesu CT-62 
cable on Amazon and look for the USB version (not the RS232 version sold 
by Yaesu).]  The cable I purchased is made by Valley Enterprises.  FTDI 
makes the cable with pig-tail leads, without the mini-DIN connector.  
See: http://www.ftdichip.com/Products/Cables/USBTTLSerial.htm

Raspian Jessie recognized the FTDI UART and I now had CAT control of the 
FT897 while running FLDIGI on the PI.  So, two USB ports on the PI were 
now being used to interface the FT897 and two for the keyboard and 
mouse, so I had to disconnect the wi-fi USB dongle and use the wired-lan 
connector for internet.  I'll look for a USB hub soon.

I set the transmit audio level for FM by observing a spectrum analyzer 
and setting the TX audio level for a spectrum width of about 10 KHz.  
Anyone have a better method?  I also set the audio level for HF data 
(SSB) to just tickle the ALC meter while operating at 50% power.  It has 
taken me a while to digest the FT897 menu system for setting up modes 
and levels.

So, I now have the FT897 under control of the Raspberry PI running 
FLDIGI.  My next step is to try running the FT897 remotely via the PI 
from another PC on my network using VNC (see 
https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/remote-access/vnc/README.md).

I'll let you know how it goes.

All the above can be done with just about any rig with the appropriate 
interfaces.  It just takes some figuring out.

-Pete, W3GVX


On 2/6/2016 4:31 PM, Steve S wrote:
> Got FLDigi going on my pi this afternoon, copying psk on 20m. It works surprisingly well. Have not tried to xmit yet. I don't have an isolation xformer thfor mic input. I used a usb sound adapter for audio since I think the pi uses PWM (pulse width modulated) sound output and I would guess this would not sound very good on the air. USB sound adapters are really cheap nowdays, under 10 bux.
>
> Had alot of trouble with Jessie op sys revision. I couldn't get my wireless wifi to work with it. Also ended up corrupting the SD card a couple of times after update/upgrade. Gave up and went back to Wheezy and all good.
>
> 73;
> Steve
> NY3A
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