Support for RC-28 USB encoder planned?

Hello,

it would be very nice if RC-28 Encoder is supported, including T/R switching and function keys.

73
Th.

1 Like

Hi Thomas,

If you can send me one, Iā€™ll try!

Weā€™re looking at supporting more generic controllers soon, possibly including off-the-shelf MIDI controllers, joysticks, and other HID-compliant devices. What I like about these items here, is itā€™ll give folks some more choices and price points. But weā€™ll see.

Most of the common functions in wfview are already bound to keystrokes, so many hardware devices exist which can send keyboard shortcuts with a single button.

Keystrokes are documented on our old wiki, soon to be migrated over to the new user manual.

Take care,

ā€“E
de W6EL

Hi Elliott,

if it helps I coud do any debugging/USB captures or tests.

Function keys with user defined macros whoul be also nice :wink:

vy 73
DK3DUA

Hi Thomas,

What operating system(s) do you have available?

ā€“E
de W6EL

Hi Elliot,

Win10 (PC) and Linux (PC,RasPi). And IC-9700 rig.
I could also set up a dedicated device (RasPi) with ssh access.

73
Thomas

Hi Elliott,

I have Windows, Mac OSX, and 7610, 705 and 9700 available, along with Icomā€™s RC-28 controller. Happy to assist if remote access to my gear is helpful.

Additionally, there was a very interesting thread on emulating a RC-28. The thread yields more information about how the mouse driver was made talk to the RC-28 hardware. Especially the bi-directional nature of the button LEDā€™s. The thread author gives hints on how he found the correct approach to talk to the RC-28.
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/rf-microwave/icom-rc-28/25/

My interest in this is in using Icomā€™s very well designed RC-28 ā€“ so I would be in support of creating / testing an open source driver for Icomā€™s hardware for Mac OSX / linux.

-Karl N7TWP

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Hi Karl,

This is very interesting indeed. And nice to see how it works from the inside.

If it really is HID-compliant, it shouldnā€™t be too hard to make it work.

Iā€™m honestly tapped out right now with the number of things we are working on. It sounds like the OEM Icom device presents itself as an HID-compliant device under linux, is this correct? Perhaps plug it in and run dmesg to see what it shows. Iā€™m no expert, but I think there are ways to use libusb to read from such a thing. Does anyone here know much about how to do this?

Maybe we can contact the guy that made the emulated RC-28, he may have insight into how to access one from userspace.

ā€“E
de W6EL

Hello,

the eevblog article is IMHO about replacing the hardware, without changing or modifying Windows PC side software from ICOM.

My RasPi says:
usb 1-1.2: new full-speed USB device number 4 using xhci_hcd
usb 1-1.2: New USB device found, idVendor=0c26, idProduct=001e, bcdDevice= 0.01
usb 1-1.2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
usb 1-1.2: Product: Icom RC-28 REMOTE ENCODER
usb 1-1.2: Manufacturer: Icom Inc.
usb 1-1.2: SerialNumber: RC-28 0203950
hid-generic 0003:0C26:001E.0002: hiddev96,hidraw0: USB HID v1.11 Device [Icom Inc. Icom RC-28 REMOTE ENCODER] on usb-0000:01:00.0-1.2/input0

Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0c26:001e Prolific Technology Inc.

One example for a USB rotary encoder I found here:

to control audio volume.

73
DK3DUA

P.S:
With
usbhid-dump -e all -s 001:004
I can see all send streams from device (press/release the 3 buttons, turn the wheel).

1 Like

Hi Thomas,

Wow, it seems like weā€™re pretty close!

I think the challenge is going to be getting that data into a userspace program.

ā€“E

Iā€™ll just add that I spoke with Phil before darkness hit the other side of the pond, and he thinks he can do it!

ā€“E
de W6EL

Having played with remote HF for 35 years, the RC-28 ability to work despite the focus of the client desktop is the Holy Grail. I tried using an old Griffen I had last weekend and gave up after an hour.

Don
W6CZ

1 Like

Hi Don,

My understanding is is that wfview will operate the same way once we get that controller mapped in. Phil definitely has the lead here as heā€™s already got something working with the ShuttleX controller.

ā€“E
de W6EL

Hi all.

Just to let anybody who is interested know, there is a branch of wfview on gitlab called ā€œshuttleā€, this contains initial support for the ShuttleXpress and ShuttlePro2 controllers. It actually works remarkably well and currently supports tuning using both the jog wheel and shuttle. Fast tuning can be accomplished by pushing the shuttle all the way over.

I havenā€™t built a binary for this so anybody who is ā€˜desperateā€™ to try it, will need to compile it themselves.

I have added some code to detect the RC28, but the lack of an actual RC28 makes it quite difficult to test :slight_smile:

A friend is building me a ā€˜homebrewā€™ RC28 from GitHub - gi1mic/rc28_emulator: RC-28 Emulator for RS-BA1 so once I have this, I should be able to get support for it added into wfview.

73 Phil M0VSE

Phil

Are the buttons mapable to various functions - most of all PTT?

I have a ShuttleXpress and you can give a function to each key, also PTT works when you have configured it. But I only used it with the Icom RS-BA1 software on windows.

You can find some info from this on qrz.com forum and on youtube.
for example this video (it is not my video btw):

VFO knob for SDR

I just checked with a simple USB (encoder) knob I had laying around, it works fine with wfview, the same as with Icom RS-BA1 software.
I have to point the mouse cursor to the setting I want to change I can then turn the know and it changes ie. the frequency like a real VFO knob.
This version has no extra buttonā€™s but I can try the express shuttle later which has the extra buttons.

(Remark: Iā€™m working on a MAC with no special drivers orso installed, but should work on Windows too I think, as it did for me with the Icom software)

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I installed the shuttlexpress today on my Windows 10 laptop, and this seems to work.
I programmed some keys and can use it for example for PTT on / off, tuning VFO etc. (for Mac I couldnā€™t make it work yet)

Hi Chris

I have already added direct support for the shuttle express/pro in the shutttle branch of wfview. This works without any additional drivers (the shuttle software must not be running) and means that wfview doesnā€™t need to be in focus. It also supports all platforms.

This will be included in a future release of wfview.

73 Phil

Hi Phil,

you and the rest of the WFview team are the greatest :wink:

  1. Chris
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