Flex 6000 CAT Commamds

Flex appears to have commands to send CW remotely. If anyone has used these commamds, did the Flex play back a sidetone back to the remote computer?

I also saw UDP ports in one panel which might be used for audio like in the ICOM radios.

I must admit I did’t read in detail since I don’t own a Flex.

The Flex does not generate a sidetone when sending CW remote via SmartLink using the CWX panel, CAT commands, or any logger software.

I wrote a specific application to use a local Winkeyer to generate the sidetone.

WKFlex - CW remote with SmartSDR and Winkeyer — FlexRadio Community

73, Max

Hi Bob.

Flex has numerous ways of sending CW and remote sidetone is an often requested feature. The Icom rep is correct in that the only way to do it would be for the client to generate the sidetone as any other method would result in significant latency. The Flexradio Maestro achieves this by internally generating sidetone but this isn’t available on the SmartSDR app.

SmartSDR CAT is quite a high level interface, there is also an API which allows applications to directly interrogate the radio at a lower level.

Having said all this, it is highly unlikely that wfview will support any radio other than Icom for quite a long time as there would be a lot of work involved.

We already have a plan for adding CW support to wfview, but again this is a longer-term feature.

73 Phil M0VSE

Hi Max,
I’m imagining how that would work.
Lets see, I can send 30 CW characters to my remote IC-7610 in just over 3 ms at 115,200 baud. If my 7610 is set to send at 6 WPM, it will take my remote radio about 50 seconds to perfectly send the 30 characters.

You are using local software to send to a device (winkey?) to generate a tone to match the perfect CW the remote 7610 is sending over the 50 seconds. Sorry, I find it hard to believe the remote CW and local tones would be in sync.

Hi again Phil.

In my scenario, I am sending the CW using CW commands from a program or keyboard, not from paddles.

The sidetone generated from the remote 7610 may reach my ears hundreds of milliseconds later than sent and when all characters are sent, it is followed by CW from the other ham. Is that latency a problem?

I think the ICOM specialist understood the value of the 7610 sending a sidetone back to the remote computer, in this case where CW is sent using CW commands.

I like the idea of using CW commamds to send CW. There is no distortion, no frequency spread due to distortion, no random delays. I am not approximating a sine wave and sending it over an audio stream to the remote 7610 radio transmitting sideband thereby simulating CW.

Am I missing something?

ICOM generates the sidetone for CW indeed locally on the client.
Latency is a huge issue when it comes to speech, let alone for cw.

We have some thoughts on how we can “fix” things but it’s a low
prio due to the issues.

Yes we do have ideas, plans and even got wildly good ideas from another developer
but we cannot simply “use” it (and tbh not sure how the talks went with the author there)

Hi Bob,
You asked about the Flex generating any kind of sidetone while running remote and I just wanted to confirm that indeed Flex does not, as also pointed by Phil.
I’ve been operating remote during the last 10 years with different rigs including the 7100, the 7610, and the Flex.
At the end of the day sending CW remotely can be reduced in 2 scenarios, a) with paddle, b) with messages. In my experience sending messages requires a sidetone mostly to check on the speed. A simple tone generated LOCALLY by the sending app covers this scenario. Sending with paddles (or any other manual means) is more complicated and can only be achieved using some sort of dedicated hardware (2 x K1EL winkeyers, remoterig boxes, the Maestro) that generates a LOCAL sidetone. Any attempt to get feedbacks from the remote side will be a disaster.
Happy to help if needed.
73 de Max, N5NHJ (I8NHJ)

“Any attempt to get feedbacks from the remote side will be a disaster.“

I don’t see how when you send from keyboard or memories. It gets sent in microseconds to milliseconds, then you sit back and listen to it being sent. Then when it ends, you copy the remote hams response.

I’ll contact you separately so we can understand what the other is contemplating.