Omni-Rig and DXlabs commander - Elecraft K3 and Digi-U mode

 

In my particular setup I've been using SDR-Console with an Airspy R2 for receiving on 6m. This allows me to have several "slices" of the band receiving simultaneously, which in turn allows me to watch a few FT8 frequencies plus voice, if I'm interested. 

In order to accomplish this, SDR-Console uses an external radio control program called Omni-Rig. Omni-Rig is effectively a software API to a hardware radio. It allows multiple software packages to gain access to the radio at the same time. In my instance, I have 2-3 copies of JTDX and SDR-Console all polling my Elecraft K3, and also keying the radio when each one is in transmit. 

I then select a receiver in SDR-Console, which then tunes the K3 VFO to whichever frequency I want to transmit on, all while having each independent receiver sending audio to each JTDX instance.

This issue is that Omni-Rig doesn't always behave well.

I've been using DXLabs DXkeeper for the last couple of years and have had good success with it. I operate 99% data modes, but on occasion I do like to make some SSB contacts. Having to log the frequency by hand was a bit of a pain so I started down the road of trying to integrate the Commander application for rig control. The main issue is that SDR-console, which is a critical part of the operation, only supports Omni-Rig as an external control program. So, we start building a house of cards to make all of this work. 

I came across this article on the DXlabs documentation site that partially explains how to do it:

https://www.dxlabsuite.com/dxlabwiki/SDRConsoleCWSkimmerConfiguration

SDR-Console-->Omni-Rig-->(com1 virtual null modem com2)--->(com2)Commander(com3)--->K3

It ALMOST worked!

The issue that I was running into was when I selected the data mode on SDR-console, by the time the commands made it down to the K3, it ended up in Data mode, AFSK, which wasn't helpful. It needed to be in Data Mode A. After lots of debugging serial CAT commands, I took to the DXLabs groups.io page and started asking for help. 

In the end it was basically determined (By Joe, W4TV) that Omni-Rig was only passing the mode change, and not specifying the sub-mode. Commander was using a default of RTTY, AFSK, which didn't work. 

The end result was that I had to modify the Omni-Rig k3.ini file to set the additional sub-mode command when we issued the mode change from SDR-Console. 

Here is the change that needs to be made:

[pmDIG_U]

Command=(MD6;DT0;)

ReplyLength=0

As of right now, everything seems to be working. I can change modes without issue.

The only side note is that JTDX (or WSJT-X, if it applies) needs to set the radio mode to none, otherwise if you have SDR-Console in USB, JTDX will want to keep it in Data or USB mode, ymmv. 

I'm also using VOX keying in JTDX as it seems to switch out of TX slightly faster than when I was using CAT for PTT.